misinformation quotation

I wish I had a source for this quotation, but I assume it comes from something I was reading in 2001, when I was teaching at the University of Iowa. I taught this nutty class called the Rhetoric of Drugs, and I was also reading a great deal about the civil rights movement and its aftermath at the time.

I’m spending the day packing for my upcoming move to a house in town (no more frozen pipes–hurrah!). I ran across this scrap of paper, which contains some notes on student speeches, a rough outline of what we were going to read and discuss in March, and the following:

Information is the raw material for new ideas; if you get misinformation, you get some pretty fucked up ideas.

–Eldridge Cleaver, former Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party

It seemed relevant to, well, I could make a list. I’m sure you could make your own.