sure I'm Mickey chick I'll oh I'm the
regional news manager at M live for the west side of the states I live here in
Kalamazoo my interest in this topic is well I'm certainly no expert in fake
news but I am a practitioner of journalism and that's what we do at the
local level every day and I really appreciate this opportunity to be here
and talk about this topic I think it's important probably now more than ever
obviously very timely and so thank you for having me key and I have to share
this microphone so my name is sue Ellen Christian and I teach journalism in the
School of Communication I also teach media literacy and so those two things
together have a lot to do with fake news and thinking about incredible
information and who creates it and why and I think it's a great turnout I think
we're in the media environment we're in I'm just so glad that people are
interested in this topic and trying to learn more about how they can be smart
consumers of media I have my own microwave I'm the specialist tonight
apparently so my area of expertise what I'd like to research and what I write on
is in campaigns and elections political behavior the intersection between faith
and politics and one of the things that we seen in the last year especially
during the campaign is kind of the the idea that fake news has gone mainstream
that it has become so common that now it almost becomes troublesome to try to
assume that what you see is true instead of assuming now that and having
skepticism that everything is false and having to go and do your own detective
work to figure out what's true and what's not and so I think a lot of what
interests me in this process is our is thinking about it being aware of our own
cognitive biases our own desire to agree and to be with people who agree with us
and how that shapes our media consumption and how that kind of creates
a feedback loop that creates what are the infamous bubbles that we live in
thank you all I guess just dive right in with our
first question this term fake news has been thrown around a lot recently so
from here of different different perspectives what does this term mean to
you and you can think it's a useful term or a problematic term what do you think
of this term let's do it I think it looks like you mustard okay I'll go the
term is a misnomer I mean there's really no such thing as fake news because if
it's false it's not news I mean really and I mean at its core journalism is
about seeking the truth and if somebody is peddling falsity intentionally then
that's not news those are called lives you know the term fake news yeah I
understand why we use it and in the conversation I think it's important for
people to discern and dissect what it means I think it means different things
to different people I think to our president it means any story that he
doesn't like and I'm not joking you know when he comes out and says that you know
the media is the enemy of the American people because the Washington Post The
New York Times and CNN are asking tough questions
I think news consumers need to really look at that and and think for
themselves about what that means and then certainly and I think it's all and
Peter know far more than I do about the issue of real fake news which is people
sitting in their basements in Moldova or wherever peddling false stories but I
think it's important to get out there that right now it's the president who is
using this term the most is really elevating its stature and and to really
think about what that truly means and I think it means there are stories and
questions that make him uncomfortable
well when I think about fake news and try to talk about it I tend to agree
that you have news and then there are news that the stories that contain
information that is not true so there are some things that we can say
for example the story that came out last year that there was one of the most
shared stories in social media which was that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald
Trump and so this was completely false information but social media went crazy
with it and it got far more interactions than any of the true stories that were
perhaps equally a scandalous from either side of the of the political aisle so I
think that this question about being able to tell what is just a flat-out lie
that's designed to drive traffic to make money for somebody and what is an effort
at political manipulation trying to get us to act and think differently about
politics for some other political end I think - there's a difference between
news that you don't agree with but that's still accurate and so per Pete's
point of it is not something you want to believe or something that you
particularly are inclined to believe but it's still rooted in facts and sourcing
and credible credible sources I think I really wish we would all come up with a
different phrase than fake news I mean maybe it's BS maybe is I'm trying to
remember to call it something like you know purposeful misinformation because
it's it's designed to deceive that's its point there's nothing as Mickey said
there's nothing newsy about it and in terms of its intent its intent is to get
your attention and so they'll that's pulling no punches
I mean that's definitely doing everything that that particular new site
can do or sorry there I went a particular website can do to to get you
to click on it and to pass it along so in that sense it is all about attention
and not about information so my next question we are seeing a lot more of
this disinformation that purports to be used that perhaps is just downright
false or maybe is misleading and very taking them back but there seems to be a
lot more of it that is proliferating and going viral so what are the consequences
of the massive sharing this proliferation of these misleading or
downright intentionally false stories Peter I think we don't know yet so the
research does come out that has looked at the impact of fake news actually on
the election itself has shown a really negligible effect if you try to measure
that as far as did Donald Trump win because of fake news there's not really
good evidence that that actually occurred but when we look at things in a
little bit more nuanced way what kind of effect would we expect to see from
certain kinds of people consuming certain kinds of news that we see that
people get their own beliefs reinforced repeatedly and so one of the
consequences is that when you get your own opinions reinforced repeatedly
you're much less likely to think that you're wrong and you're much less
amenable to the idea that somebody else could be right and so you kind of shut
yourself off from what could be plausible arguments in an alternative
interpretation so I think this is really one of the major consequences is the
capability of these news stories have for reinforcing what we already believe
in spite of the facts and this is both on the left and the right this is not a
conservative issue this is not a liberal issue everybody has this kind of natural
tendency to process information in certain ways that reinforces that kind
of that kind of thinking I also think that the some of the sites are are just
having fun it's a gotcha joke that's created by a satirical news
site and it's all intent is to be entertaining the other side not only the
confirmation bias and that the factor that people are going to keep believing
what they want to believe in function within a that bubble of belief but for
journalism today I actually used to work with Mickey at the Chicago Tribune so my
background is as a journalist and I feel like there's been never been a more
important time for journalism to stand up and remember its roots and
and it's it's foundational principles of credible sourcing and asking how do you
know what you know and asking that again till you have a really high degree of
confidence that what you're publishing is in fact the most thorough information
that you can get and it's based on primary documents and it's based on
expert sources and I feel like the consequences of the proliferation of
fake news is that there's a further erosion of trust in journalism and a
further erosion of trust in credible news sources and people are more
confused than ever about who do I trust especially if I they're not really my
ideology where do I turn and I think that's a really profound impact on
people who are are already busy and it's a real burden on the citizenry to stay
informed yeah I think that it was a really good point I mean in some ways
just having the conversation around the term fake news provides a win for those
who want to try to weaken legitimate credible news organizations by creating
planting seeds of doubt creating that now look every journalist needs to be
needs to be able to you know stand up and show their you know stand behind
their story and write truthful stories I'm not I'm not arguing against that at
all but it almost becomes like the big lie in some ways with some of the over
and over repeat something until some people maybe not everybody but more and
more people start to think that it's true you know - I think the computer
explain a little bit about you know the confirmation bias and people filtering
themselves with just information that you know confirms what they already
believe I think that's a different issue than quote-unquote fake news and that
can be opinion columns by a conservative columnist or opinion liberal columnist
that you may or may not agree with I think we'll probably get to this in
but and that's that's a whole other major issue in many ways a separate
issue from just peddling stories or falses you know I think cycling back to
your original question when we think about the role of social media in this
we look at the role of Facebook for example we tend to really focus on how
important we are in this particular moment but Facebook is pretty new we
don't really know how it's going to evolve to affect journalism in the
future I think this is a terribly important question because no longer are
people seeking information only tied to just going to a few big news stations
like they were when I was a kid or just a handful of news 24-hour news channels
like when our students were kids but now we're looking at everybody being able to
distribute any information that they happen to come across and I think that
that I don't think we're exactly sure on what the impact of that is going to be
when the people distributing information don't have those kind of that kind of
journalistic ethics that Sue Ellen is talking about another question that I
had is there something unique about the nature of online publishing perhaps even
involving the monetization of the internet that facilitates the spread of
what we're calling for take news well sure I mean everybody the publisher
today and that's a good thing but it also carries great consequences and
anybody can write a provocative tweet or a Facebook post and and if it's you know
exciting enough and gets enough people interesting there that can get shared
you know millions of times that's a good thing but it's also something we all
need to recognize and be very careful about you know when we talk about you
know fake news that in the context of the New York Times or Washington Post or
CNN everything these are trained journalists who are really into hiding
their craft do they make mistakes sure of course video but by and large these
are really good journalists that there's a
very different things and somebody who can write anything on social media and
have it take off and and that's where I think the citizens we really needs to
educate themselves as we go forward this is terribly time consuming to do that so
so I this actually happened to me last month I saw a news story about a guy
that I'm pretty skeptical about and I said oh some of this story came across
my newsfeed I said wow that sounds really provocative I should go check
that out and so I went I checked it out and the story was reporting about
something that he said that was really provocative that sounded just like that
guy should have said just like I thought he would and so I did the the really
intelligent thing and I immediately shared it on Facebook I wiki read it
first I read it first and it had quotes and it fortunately
linked me to the original article and then it was really great for me because
all kinds of people then said I was a really you know it was a really
important that I shared this because people really needed to know this and
thanks doc Maha that's really amazing and then one wise friend said this
really doesn't sound like something that guy would say I said that had to be put
on my professor hat and then I went back to the original article and then went
back to the original source for the original article and it turns out that
two and a half hours of video later he actually ended up using the provocative
statement that was in the original piece to draw his skeptics in so that he could
then spend two and half hours refuting the argument but the problem was it took
me two and a half stinkin hours to get to the bottom of a simple question and
that I think most people are not willing to do that I must have been crazy to do
with myself but it goes it takes a lot of work to
become very well informed them to debunk your own preconceptions it took a long
time for me to do it debunk my preconception in that sense but social
media makes that easy and if I can just say one more thing in terms of
monetization you know if you if you have a blog you what you want to do is you
want to drive traffic to that blog you want to be an Amazon affiliate or you
want people to buy they'll buy stuff through your links through your blog and
you want that right but if you write boring stuff people won't come to your
blog so the most traffic that I ever got was an article that
short blog article that I wrote telling people why President Obama was not a
Muslim and you could not believe the traffic I got on that one so you know
that kind of provocative stuff really gets people's higher up and it gets
their attention and that drives a month that drives money you have some the idea
of how time consuming it can be for ordinary citizens to fact-check
everything that comes across the newsfeed who has if anybody who has the
responsibility to try to monitor or correct this proliferation
responsibility so you could start with advertisers on Facebook and onto social
media sites they can choose to put pressure on on Facebook in particular to
say I don't want my ads to be adjacent to deceptive in content so they could
you know money talks and that's it to me a really natural place that a lot of
people forget they say us and my next point is you know readers read before
you click despite what Pete says I mean hopefully won't always take two and a
half hours but we're going to talk I think a little bit later on things to
look for and help discern what's true and what's not
or at least what's questionable and maybe should take you some more time
hopefully not two and a half hours but that is you know it's I'm I'm impressed
another I was exhausted also you know Facebook and Google have taken some
steps but they can take more to try and prevent the spread of big news now by
the way in the upper right hand corner I believe it is on Facebook on the post if
you think that it's suspect news you can hover your clicker over we or what I
want to see your cursor over it and one of the options that you have now is to
report it is I don't think this is true so that's a step in the right direction
also Facebook has hired some fact third party fact checkers to check information
and they are now labeling stories as false once they have determined
that they're trying to ensure that only quality news is in their newsfeed and
there are certainly experiencing growing pains I think peeps exactly right that's
fairly new in the history of publishing and so as they're figuring out are we
are we a content provider or are we supposed to be doing something more and
they're having their own internal battle with that how much do they control
content they're supposed to be a site that disconnects people and now they're
in a different industry frankly looking at content and how do they monitor that
and do they even want to get into that and how do you deal with censoring and
some other important First Amendment rights so it's not going to be an easy
path but if we look at advertisers and the platforms and then the consumers of
news that's a great start and I think it starts with the citizens you know
democracy is not easy and you know we're a really interesting moment of time you
know we come we come through decades of mass media where you had very few
information holders if you will you know the broadcast networks Ned where our
Murrow and Walter Cronkite and I used to watch dan Rather at night after dinner
and in a few major newspapers that people trusted those days are
splintering as we know and we're in this moment in time where that's
disintegrating and we're into this era where you know again you know
everybody's a publisher and and it's really on all of us it's on all of the
citizens in a democracy - really can we have our digital time yeah yeah
the first thing I do is look at the website and then I think I don't wanna
jump too far ahead but you know I do have you know new sources that over time
I come to trust I do try to fill my newsfeed with a variety of news sources
and so forth but if my first rule of thumb is it gotta where the address that
I don't recognize I you know I look at it pretty cautiously and that's kind of
my starting point but back to the point of the question who's responsible I
really think it's it's on all of us it's citizens in a democracy to really work
this out I didn't think that's the case - and
that's been my one of my important premise in campaigns in general is that
a big part of the reason the candidates act the way they do is because we let
them and we let them get away with yourself and so as citizens we have some
responsibility not just in the media consumption patterns but also in the
political actions that we respond to as an elective entity you know I think this
question about how we handle information is it's an old one it's always been the
case that we've had people that we trust or that we go to who we find trustworthy
to filter a bunch of information for us and this is one of the roles of the
media plays is it's supposed to filter information out so we can get the the
stuff that we need and the problem is though you have most so many different
sources but that seemed to be some coming as really from it from really
specific ideological angles that it's difficult to sort through some of those
questions about the validity of my sources compared to the validity of
somebody else's that comes up a lot is this idea of balanced news coverage even
when we're talking about what we often think of as mainstream media whether
that actually is true or not is another issue but we also run into situations
where the available evidence the facts seem to be much more strongly on in
favor of one particular perspective than another so I'd like to
as making this particularly so how do you as a journalist balance multiple
perspectives and sharing multiple perspectives on an issue when there the
evidence might be strongly in favor of one point of view versus another climate
change right we're you know pretty much 99.9% of people believe that you know
climate change is real and then most of those people believe that there's human
cause to that so how much weight do you give to a climate change denier I would
say it depends on the context of the story you know if you're covering of a
scientific panel that's talking about climate change in the context of what's
happening in Antarctica or whatever you don't you're not required to run out and
find an opposing point of view just to try to gin up the story that said if
there's an event that's being held by a group of climate change deniers or a
panel discussion where it's a robust debate one side of the other then you're
going to give both points of view I think the key is the context of the
story I think ping-pong journalism where you
go and try to give each side equal weight does doesn't serve really anybody
our ultimate goal is to try to find the truth or you know the best version of
the truth that we can possibly find so my short answer is you're not obligated
to go out and find an opposing point of view just to have an opposing point of
view if the overwhelming evidence goes the other way
I would add that there's a bias in professional news as well it's the
fairness bias and that idea of if I give one side I have to give the other well
for starters sometimes there is only one legitimate side as Mickey just gave a
great example of but also often times there's far more than just than one side
and the other there's multiple perspectives and increasingly to me it
points to the importance of authoritative reporting so that you can
actually do what journalists are hired to do which is sort through the
cacophony for news consumers and explain to them we really looked into this and
here's the you know prevailing point of view based on expert data based on
scientific information based on people in the know and we did the work for you
and so the more that news organizations are pressured by the 24/7 news cycle to
publish before they're ready I think the more that because part of its the
commercial need to publish first publish fast but also that news consumers
definitely they want to know it now and so in that sense everyone being willing
to be patient including the news organizations that in some cases might
publish too quickly because they didn't they want to get beat and I think
there's an important element to the idea of authoritative reporting will help to
address that that bias of fairness that that ping-pong journalism that you
mentioned you know that the exemplar comes to me since I don't know climate
change stuff because I'm a social scientist not a climate scientist but I
know elections and so when President President Trump says things like massive
voter fraud took place in which three million illegal aliens voted and caused
him to win the election and I'm sorry caused him to lose the popular vote
right or that busses were going from Massachusetts to
New Hampshire busing in people to vote in New Hampshire with absolutely no
evidence I mean I I think every liberal I know would love to find actual
evidence of actual voter fraud that would completely undermine Donald
Trump's election they would love that and so you think if we're out there that
they would be the ones to find it but I think here's where the reporting comes
in is that all the research that's out there that looks for voter fraud has
found voter fraud but in very small amounts scattered all over the place in
a completely uncoordinated pattern and there's no widespread systematic
evidence for voter fraud at all it's virtually impossible to make happen in
this system like ours and so I think the media then has a really remarkable role
to play in this because they can simply say there is literally no evidence and
what reason this comes to mind is that the New York Times a few weeks ago
published an article which they were responding to Kelly and Conway talking
about alternative facts and they basically laid out the the parameters by
which they would actually call a prominent politician out as perpetuating
a lie you know they identified the difference between untruths and
alternative facts or alternative interpretations and actually saying
Donald Trump is perpetuating a lie that can and they spent a long time
justifying what it would take for them to do that in terms of identifying
intent on the part of the person who is dissenting from in giving this
alternative narrative of something that is the very broad consensus among
elections professionals so I think that this is a really interesting aspect of
question for journalists you were seeing something right now that I've never seen
in my career which is you know leads of stories saying you know
president Trump asserted , without evidence , just shutting down certain
claims in headlines and first sentence of stories and and I think that media
needs to be careful that they're absolutely right without you know
whatever news organization is doing that but
I've never seen this in my career and journalists today have to be that much
more on their game than to come to these press conferences prepared and ready to
ask tough follow-up questions because of some of the assertions that are being
made the techniques that journalists typically used to check your stories
well talking to credible sources as one credible sources is one quite you
looking at credible documents whether it's a you know give an example you know
if there's a house fire in Kalamazoo and the Kalamazoo Department of Public
Safety puts out a news release or Western puts out a news release about
something happening on campus that's a credible news or a source you know our
currency is journalist is credibility and that currency only goes so far as
that people believe the stories that we produce whether it's TV radio online
whatever and if we get it wrong and yes we get it wrong from time to time we
make mistakes that we correct that because that goes to to the credibility
of the news organization and that we put our Corrections out there and we're
transparent about that but the techniques are to talk to people and to
look at sources whether documents or otherwise or at you know public meetings
that there are credible sources of information yeah got it I just add that
investigating if people are who they say they are so if I'm reading a news online
news story and I'm not sure I don't know that particular federal agency or Bureau
of whatever it's easy to Google and yes journalists you know use Google just
like everyone else as a starting point and then going from there to try and
think through how else do I know that this information is credible so talking
to a variety of expert it's not just one or two looking for
primary documents is essential talking to people who were at the event as
opposed to second and third-hand information all of those sort of tried
and true techniques that journalists do I think that news consumers can do as
well the challenge in that though is that when you make a mistake the
retraction or the correction never gets as much publicity as the original
exciting sexy story and so the problem is that the exciting sexy headline gets
can go viral but then the correction just kind of doesn't really make it into
the popular circulation as much and so I I'm you know this is this is great for
us to know this but as critical consumers what can we do to become aware
of when those Corrections happen so that we kind of have this continual
monitoring is there a way that is there like a standing database or something
that that we can use to try to see that in that it is that corrected information
yeah I think for the newspaper we - I mean if there's a major error you will
see a correction on page one that's pretty where typically we're not talking
about show-stopping fundamental errors that alter the course of the story it's
usually a fact in the middle of a story or something that yeah misspelling or
some sort of fact of you know how the fire started this versus that that gets
wrong and and yes often those are are put on page two online we correct the
story online and will note that the story is impressive and that's alright
well it depends I mean if it's a if it's a correction again it goes to those I
guess the heart of the story we will put them at this if it's more of a ancillary
detail that was wrong we'll put it more at the bottom
context I think is important for questions as well a little while ago
Peter you mentioned filter bubbles and I think most of us are probably familiar
with this term at some at this point so when a media consumer largely interacts
with people who agree with them who are sharing stories which reinforce a
particular point of view what can we as consumers do to try to step out of our
filter bubbles well I'll tell of this audience what I tell and that is to make
sure and be intentional about seeking alternative and multiple and diverse
sources of information so if I if I have students in my class are who are liberal
I tell them every once in a while you ought to tune in to Fox News and listen
to what they're saying and see if there could be something what their argument
is for my students who are conservative I say every once in a while you should
probably go watch Rachel Maddow okay just to see if what she has to say
resonates or make sense or seems credible I tell them about my own media
consumption habits I'm really straightforward with them in the
mornings I tend to watch Morning Joe because I like knowing here's the
conservative guy here's the liberal woman all of their guests you know where
they stand right and so I appreciate that they bring in people with different
perspectives to argue about stuff and to even to make they're there in their
snide little comments or their jabs you know that's useful for me to kind of
recognize the vocabulary of the conservative job in the liberal jab so
that I can be a better more well-rounded consumer and then I can go out and
gather information from other sources as well but that that basic exercise of
regularly and intentionally getting information from sources that you do not
naturally agree with I think is really important for your intellectual
development yeah hold true for Thanksgiving dinner as well where you've
gotta sit next to the relative you don't agree with I think it's really true it
means don't don't unfriend the person on your Facebook feed who you're ready to
unfriend and/or do worse - so you know seeking out alternative viewpoints and
and no kidding trying to cultivate a variety of people in your in your life
and in your social media sphere who might challenge your beliefs I
I also think a really great tip is to challenge those who are extreme within
your ideological point of view so the champion moderates to champion moderate
viewpoints I think is really important to our our public dialogue yeah I
couldn't agree more about intentionally speaking out this goes that's my point
about the responsibility being on all the citizenry I think it's all of our
responsibility to seek out sources of information multiple sources of
information quick funny aside I remember my father during the Olympics every year
would watch the Olympics I'm CBC because he wanted the Canadian perspective
because again so bummed out by hearing the pro rah rah rah Americans if you
want to hear another perspective so we've watched the CBC in the Olympics
but but is that kind of example that I think we could all learn from in terms
of our news consumption going forward yes right if you're a Twitter user like
I am follow multiple news organizations follow NPR follow Fox they just follow
you know all the big ones in and and but including those that have other points
of view one of the best interviews from this past weekend was Chris Wallace at
Fox News just taking it to Wright's previous over this over Trump's tweet
about the media being an enemy of the American people I think the chief of the
staff of the president thought he was going to get a friendly interview from
Fox News and he got a whole world of hurt and tough questioning frankly and
and analysts it was really interesting as a journalist to watch
well that came online a couple of months ago in the walls of eternal they have a
red feed blue feed of websites that you can go to and basically they've gone
through and they've found kind of red meat red red sights that kind of red
meat blue sights and they show you parallel tracks of what the kinds of
posts are that you see coming on a particular story so if you pick Donald
Trump then you get this a stream of kind of super liberal screens about Donald
Trump and his latest things and then on the same page you get a slew of what the
conservative sites are saying about Donald Trump I'm really the kind of the
same set of issues and I think this is really useful and I'm you know I think
students who look at that can get it get a sense of and adults too let's be
honest you can get a take a look at that and say what do I recognize in terms of
what I like to see this because reading this red feed make me feel really good
or does the reading this blue feed make me feel really angry or however this
works out in your ideology I think it's really good for you to be able to
recognize the buzzwords that are being thrown around by both sides I tell my
son about this and he said you know that I never really found that kind of stuff
any very useful so what I found useful was then finding reading those kind of
extreme articles and then going to find a really well reported well-balanced
article to see how it ought to found and so I thought that was really insightful
from from him to get both of those and then look how look at how it's supposed
to work and be a seeker of facts don't just read a bunch of opinion whether
it's left or right search out good factual articles or news sources and how
do you know the factual we'll look at the sourcing look who they're talking to
are they are they sourcing to credible bodies of information but but seek out
facts and don't just get caught up in the political talking points and the
opinions that because of look opinions cheap you know facts are hard to come by
and should be cherished
you want to make sure we have some time for audience to die so I'll just finish
with this one last thing are there any um any sources that you consider to be
your go-to sources for factual information or middle-of-the-road
I don't necessarily want to say unbiased but let's go with less biased sources I
love the BBC probably / Nikki's father's points you know and out of the us
centric point of view is I love Al Jazeera
I wish they still had a DC presence I just wanted to say that I also think
that the fact check sites if you don't know about them factcheck.org what
effect and I know I've heard liberal friends
say I mean conservative friends say you know those are have a liberal spin to
them they're not really checking all the facts but I think that the four big ones
taken together really give you a pretty accurate view of what's not true so if
you're really questioning it's a great place to start I you know I'm amazed I'm
a mainstream journalist I tend to follow and a lot of the mainstream news
organizations I I do read the Washington Post quite a bit as part of my Kalamazoo
Gazette subscription you can unplug here but you get free access unlimited access
to the Washington Post and I know that you know there are conservatives in fact
right before the start I have an email from somebody blasting the Washington
Post is liberal look if you read the columns in editorials sure they have a
left bet I'm more interested in factual reporting and they have really
high-quality factual reporting NPR is great BBC is great I do follow Fox News
on Twitter I don't watch a lot of cable TV personally but I do
a consumer a lot of news on online and but again I'm not interested in Bill
O'Reilly and Sean Hannity nor my frankly interested in Rachel Maddow I'm looking
for news factual you know fact-based news and a lot of those mainstream
organizations do a very good job of that there's much political news I get a lot
I think Politico is fairly reliable I think in
general newspapers like the New York Times and The Washington Post they're
factual reporting is pretty reliable and NPR I think is pretty reliable but but
here's the thing is I oh I don't go in thinking that because it's on these
particular sites that it's by just by definition true right I always try to
keep a skeptical view because not so much because I think journalists are out
to present a permit a skewed view of the world but I think that the kinds of
questions that they ask the kinds of stories that they write would do reflect
a certain point of view I think MPR is reporting for example in general on
Morning Edition and all things considered is pretty good reporting but
they certainly ask the kinds of questions that are mostly of concern of
you know secular people who are center-left and the kinds of questions
that they ask I'm not hearing questions that I might think that that sound
conservative or that sound particularly faith-based and so it's not I think that
they're trying to intentionally skew things I think they just most reporters
just don't see things from a certain perspective and so they asked different
questions but I'm balanced the reporting I find to be pretty good where where I
think conservatives have don't understand it places like NPR is they
listen to the to the talk shows so they listen to on point or they listen to
Diane Rehm or something like that and of course she's off the air now but they
listen to those and they say there's those tend to have much more liberal
bent in terms of the guests that they have on the questions that they ask the
presuppositions that they bring to the table so whatever news source I listen
to I just try to keep in mind what is the general tenor of and instead of
assumptions that the journalists seem to be bringing to the table in their
reporting and just use that as is making sense of what they say not
that I think they're trying to you know indoctrinate anybody but they've got a
worldview in that matters those two consuming multiple sources of news and
then being a critical thinker be a critical news consumer don't just take
one source as gospel I'd like to open it up to the audience for questions um we
are recording the session let's go for the purposes of our reporting I'm going
to repeat back to any audience question so that we microphone can pick it up I
would also like to invite anybody to come on and ask dollarfranc needs to be
a job creator and it has an entirely new is burgeoning industry in Sabrina
I mean there are certainly versions that people have different points of view in
different versions of stories right I mean a fact as a fact you know the sky's
blue or the waters wet that sort of thing but different people think you get
but different people can go to this event and come away with their own
version there you know you use their own biases their own perspective and so
forth so there are I think different versions of truth perhaps my job is to
try to seek out a verifiable version of the truth of any given event and in
terms of whether Donald Trump is fact check I think Peter answered that I
think the answer is there's a whole lot of people who are working on
fact-checking the president's those lady websites as Sue Ellen mentioned or
factcheck.org and PolitiFact those are two big ones and Washington
Bothell Washington Post fact checker as well easily just like Lisa's in but
now like that that's a big historical question
I can tell you the political part of the political story is that over the last 40
years the political parties in general have become more polarized so largely
kind of stimulated by the civil rights movement the Democratic Party saw that
it was going to start encountering massive losses in the south and the
Republican Party saw opportunities for gain in the south
and so what happened is that in your grandparents generation you could find
at any given point in time in Congress a lot of liberal Republicans and a lot of
conservative Democrats by the time we got to the 1980s the night that started
to deteriorate and by the time we get to this decade there are virtually no
liberal Republicans left in Congress and there are virtually no conservative
Democrats left you can find a handful who on a couple of issues are not quite
as liberal or not quite as conservative but the national level I think this has
really been driven by political party strategy and opportunities that they've
seen in the in the political environment and to a certain extent I think they
it's hard to tell where the where the causal arrow belongs so to some extent
people think political scientists think that this might have come from the
grassroots and filtered up to the top and there are other political scientists
who look at the question and say this really was an elite kind of set of
transitions and then we're starting to see that's reflected now in the public
more than we did in the past so big picture there's a long historical story
that has I think mostly to do with kind of American sorting to the two major
political parties and I think that racial divisions and the civil rights
movement and its impact had a signal to play in them and to piggyback on that
the other element is money and the incredible amount of financing that's
going into campaigns now and the more extreme the candidate the more money
they're able to generate for their campaign and it's very difficult to be
an underfunded candidate and get attention and and pay for the
advertising you need to pay for in this attention economy that's what we're in
with social media it's an attention economy so how'd you get your attention
as a fledgling candidate who's underfunded and that's really difficult
because of just what we're talking about people don't spend time to read
something they're flipping through their feed sorting and clicking and passing
and sharing and so the more vitriolic points of view
so real thing means or legitimate state news you know there were websites and
there are websites and I am NOT an expert in having Peter expelling know
more about this idea but there are you know websites that are purveying just
falsehoods you know that before the election putting out certain points of
view generally pro-trump for the most violently yet words that were that we're
generating false are okay and they're intentionally putting out fake news so
that's the real fake news element I think the term though is now being
co-opted by the President to essentially label any story he doesn't like or when
he gets tough questions about an issue that he doesn't appreciate and in you
know you I watched his chief of staff's interview on Fox News Sunday also
whenever they see an eye on the sourcing they see that as an opening and anytime
journalists use amount on the sourcing and Dave Beck you know that gets dicey
because we serve to put our credibility on the line stories better be right if
you use anonymous sourcing and so I'm not saying there's no fake news there's
there are the fake news website and then I'm saying the other to me the bigger
more troublesome issue is this labeling of stories fake news as an attempt to
try to put journalists on their heels and plant seeds of doubt in the public's
mind
certainly there are new sites that are ideologically biased so they are
presenting it's a real event in the real speech or a real you know development
that's worthy of coverage but they are reporting it by very selective sourcing
so it's going to sources that they know are going to agree with a particular
point of view whether it's right or left or you know something in between and so
I think it there is legitimate news that then is distorted by ideological bias so
that's still an event that happened it's rooted in reality but then it's yeah
it's distorted by the sourcing and by how the story's approached for the
audience Pete mentioned earlier like an NPR audience there's a specific audience
that a news organization knows as its base and remember you know part of the
struggle here is that news organizations are trying really hard to stay afloat
and make money and so edit you know I keep coming back to money because it
drives it drives a lot and so in this case those news organizations still have
to make money and they yes it needs to be you know so you can be in new york
times and be rooted and i want to we want to do credible well source
reporting but it also knows it's base and it's base is going to be a little
bit probably center and center left and so that drives the kinds of stories that
they're probably going to have their reporters pursue to a certain extent it
doesn't mean they're going to ignore stories that are don't fall within that
range but to the extent that they are deciding on how they're going to shape
the story that there's a there's a there is a financial truth to the news
organizations that sometimes isn't always talked about I think
that that there's a difference between the new story that's reporting facts and
the analysis that comes along with that story that interprets the story for the
reader that said that tells the reader what the facts what the events mean why
are they important what are the consequences and lots of times I think
it's not that the dispute over the simple facts present president not an
excluded but the idea is that we given a certain set of facts so what and where
you see ideology comes into play is it's in the so what angles to the stories the
framing of the stories the the talking about the consequences of the stories I
think that's where you end up with ideology driving things so it's not
going back to your original question I think it's not so much that there's
there are multiple truths being told if that the meaning of the basic facts is
is in dispute and why it's important there's a there's a notion of difference
between fake news and and a columnist or maybe a journalist who has a certain
bias that they bring to a story that's been thick given everybody's got some
bias and object you know in the sole idea of objective reporting as a whole
or conversation but I think it is a huge disservice to the New York Times NPR CNN
to just label them fake news because you don't like a story and and and so and I
think it's how the news consumer to understand the difference between a news
story and an opinion piece and to understand you know and be discerning
and be a critical reader and a critical thinker when you're consuming that that
information I think it's really helpful the New York Times actually have gotten
much more specific about when you see a story about labeling it as op IDI
analysis or some or news or something like that they've been more specific
about their labeling I would just go push back a little bit on one thing that
you did say and that is that Donald some Donald Trump is planting seeds of doubt
and in the confidence of journalism I think that when you look at the politics
of the right they've been doubting mainstream
journalism for 30 years and and so he's not he's not he's not laying low he's
not but he's not planting the seeds he's just cultivating what has already
been a $1 weapon well watered wasn't you you're not coming on you know I want to
make this argument applaud military students where are some of the other
writing online Facebook feeds strictly about property really important to that
but now
I just want to make sure that I'm clear - in response to her question that I
don't mean to complain at all that the ideological bias is somehow fake news so
if that came across that's not what I meant at all and pologize it so I I
agree with you Margaret that that the journalism is facing an unprecedented
challenge here and the the importance of pursuing fact and not pursuing the the
fake balloons that are being elected the trial balloons that he puts up or that
the tweets and pursuing sort of the misleading
yeah social media posts that that everyone chases after as opposed to I
really feel like they the folks I know in DC they're exhausted already and I
think they're trying to figure out what do we really need to follow and what do
we what do we just say we're gonna ignore that one it's not worth our time
and I think that's part of what everyone's trying to get up to speed on
from the the colleagues that I have who are are covering the White House it's
definitely not chasing down every story but keeping it's like a long distance
run here so keeping their energy to run for the long distance and also pursuing
the stories that are truly important to 2-tier point to democracy to - how are
how is the lawmaking happening Howard checks and balance is happening and if
there's an obnoxious tweet or if he throws down with the media for
20 minutes really do we need to cover that I would argue let let's rise above
it and go and and serve the public with really great reporting this fact-based
not that that's not happening but I think it's hard to cover at all and then
one of the tweets happen it's easy to follow again for the attention Academy
second about the propagate your propaganda comment you know I think that
our pro the trouble that people are having with Donald Trump is not that
he's about propaganda because I think in America we've been pretty we've grown
accustomed to pretty sophisticated propaganda campaigns from politicians
for many many years and I think what's stunning Americans about Donald Trump is
how amateurish his propaganda is he I I was having this argue with the friend
online and the kind just make stuff up and and my friend who's a different
ideological persuasion you know all he could say was yeah but look at what
President Obama did you know all of his selling about Obamacare keep your doctor
insurance rates Benghazi's and on the IRS all this and his every response that
he gave to my saying Donald Trump just make stuff up was going back to
justifying it because of what he'd receive Donald Trump is doing so I think
we've gotten accustomed to sophisticated propaganda and focus-group propaganda
instead of kind of seeing at its core which is just making stuff up and see
what see what works is that Donald Trump does that on the fly at at 3 o'clock in
the morning I'm on tweet on Twitter
Zoomers become such a microwave nation that meat is need everything right now
that we're feeding into the state news coming in and get drove us that we're
not taking this we don't have a clue in the powers of allah therefore we're just
see anything really started like a statement that I agree right did I agree
with no I mean it in many ways we've gotten lazy and and I
guess one of my takeaways are one of my points on is I think this is a really
critical time not just for journalists but it's a critical time for citizens we
need to reevaluate where we get our information where we get our news and
and be critical thinkers be fact seekers and and and get up off of our couches in
some way and go out and be intentional and look for fact-based news and you
know maybe we've gotten a little complacent in that regard in the last 20
years or so my 10 second tip is to read beyond the headline and I would just say
about two and a half hours it was a subject that I really cared
about but I felt like my credibility was on the line because I had shared this
story and said look at what this guy does and so I needed to go back and
double-check my sourcing to make sure that I had accurately communicated it
right so I was invested in not just getting the story right as a prototype
phase book but in terms of you know making sure that I as an opinion leader
in my community had done my job correctly because people trust me to
give them correct information and eventually most of us are going to be
opinion leaders in our communities that gives us responsibility to make sure
that we are not just throwing stuff out that sounds good it makes us feel good
but that we're actually doing our job because we're providing information look
this is a huge massive information environment and people are always
looking for a way to funnel information to find shortcuts and if we become the
credible sources because in our particular Lane our particular area of
the world our circle of friends people say I can trust what that guy says I can
trust what she says that's important but it brings responsibility
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