[Applause]
have you heard about the Hungarian
construction workers who found a barrel
of unusually tasty rum in a house they
were renovating they sampled it they
drank their way to the bottom of the
barrel overtime and they found out why
it tasted so good there was a corpse
inside while I was working on the
Washington editing desk of Reuters in
2006 when I saw that story come in it
didn’t ring true it turns out the corpse
in the rum barrel is a classic urban
legend it has roots going back as far as
the 13th century well we killed that
story but that wasn’t the first time I’d
seen fake stories in my work there was a
story from Central America about organs
being harvested from babies for
transplants to benefit rich American
parents well that was a Soviet
propaganda plant I dealt with rumors of
sharks in the flooded streets of New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so fast
forward to 2017 I’m here in New
Hampshire I’m speaking about fake news
at a small-town library and I cited a
story a hoax story involving Hillary
Clinton an audience members stood up and
challenged me have you heard about pizza
gate she said she was referring to a
conspiracy theory about a pedophile ring
linked to get Democratic officials it
was supposedly run out of a Washington
DC pizza restaurant called comet
ping-pong well I told her it had been
disproven but she wouldn’t have it I
think it’s very real she said and I
think everyone needs to look it up she
shot back with that she picked up and
left so there’s two hoaxes the rum
Barrel corpse and comet ping pong
they’re just 10 years apart but there’s
a huge difference in impact the rum
Barrel story left just a faint trace you
can see it on snopes.com but comic pizza
story endured for months amid the
disinformation that we now understand
flooded the 2016 election campaign what
was once the realm of urban legends and
supermarket tabloids is now called fake
news
it affects society politics and our
understanding of the whole world well
this this is a new environment even
though fake news has always been around
internet economics technology the media
industry political rhetoric and
superpower competition all challenge us
news consumers in unprecedented ways
even 11 years ago the news media still
played a dominant gatekeeper role news
organizations could bring secrets to
light and keep bad information from
spreading but that role is no longer so
dominant information doesn’t just flow
through gates it gushes in torrents and
around the gates and we can each amplify
it
in short fake news has been weaponized I
want to run a few numbers past you 2500
that’s how many dollars the fake news
producer in Macedonia said he can earn
in a day these commercial fake news
sites make money by feeding stories into
social media that deliver mainstream
advertisements when we click on a story
18 that’s the number of countries where
online manipulation and disinformation
have played a role in elections this
that includes the United States 126
million that is how many people saw
content from a Facebook page associated
with Russian propaganda 5,000 that’s how
many piece individual pieces of
information that the digital politics
consultancy Cambridge analytic said it
had on 230 million American voters 62
that’s the percentage of Americans
surveyed who say fake news has eroded
their trust in traditional media these
numbers show how deeply rooted
disinformation has become within our
culture like an invasive species it has
spread quickly so what does that mean
for us we now have to assume more
responsibility over the information
reach that we receive and the
information we give out we each have to
be our own gatekeepers I’ve got some
ideas on ways to do that but first an
understanding on how we got here
News has always been an early adopter of
technology and technology has influenced
its content the Telegraph’s invention
made it possible to send news instantly
over long distances wire services like
The Associated Press and Reuters arose
and to serve the wide range of political
voices represented by their clients
their news had to be objective in the
United States standards of objectivity
came to be adopted widely this lasted
through the broadcast era when
frequencies were allocated as a public
resource democratic governments held
licence holders to standards of fairness
and public interest such standards were
loosened with cable television which was
considered a private pipeline then came
the internet the World Wide Web
anyone could reach a global audience
attention flowed to the most strident
voices and new advertising technology
allowed any website to reap payments
from major advertisers whenever we click
on a page but as we see are determined
by the information the Internet
companies have about us and now social
media billions of users interact within
self defying networks each of us gives
up thousands of pieces of information
about ourselves that give a little clue
about what information we might most
hungrily take up and amplify so in a
mass communication environment with
limited outlets each outlet acted as a
powerful gatekeeper journalists grounded
in professional standards had unique
access and could decide what was
important to convey yes some news
organizations abuse their power but
there was a familiarity and respect
between the news media and the public
that is no longer assumed so here’s a
small example of how US journalists
could perform as gatekeepers as a White
House reporter I was part of the small
press pool that accompanied the
president whenever he left the grounds
or made a public appearance in the
building most days we had a chance to
ask him a few questions the pool
distributed reports and images to the
rest of the press corps well twenty
years ago before social media a video
artist named Nam June Paik attended a
State
at the White House Pike had a disability
and used a wheelchair but he wanted to
stand for President Clinton in the
receiving line as he struggled to his
feet the artist pants and his underwear
fell to his shoes well this is right in
front of me and the rest of the startled
press pool but we quickly resolved that
the incident not be sensationalized we
noticed the mishap on our reports and we
filed a few images we did our jobs but
in general the coverage was minimized
and the incident had little impact well
12 years later the video has made it to
YouTube and it’s been watched 160,000
times nowadays such an incident would be
worldwide on social media before I got
home that night
now journalists today still act as
gatekeepers and still make decisions
based on their professional assessments
of news worthiness and public importance
but those decisions are now often driven
by click rates the instant feedback on
what’s grabbing a reader’s attention and
there are now many ways to reach us
outside of traditional news channels
that’s how even breaking stories can
become overwhelmed by fake news if you
happen to Google the Las Vegas shooter
when police released his name you would
have seen instant phony stories claiming
he was linked to Islamic state or that
he was an anti-trump liberal the Florida
shootings at Putnam parkland the high
school shootings the same thing arose
well if producers of such disinformation
have access to thousands of bits of data
about you each one of us you’ve got a
recipe for laser-guided political
propaganda Russian propagandists have
set up Facebook pages on topics such as
immigration and race relations that
inflame divisions among voters they’ve
organized us political rallies via
social media and purchased political ads
targeted to individual voters based on
their predicted sympathies so when the
walls are besieged how can we be our own
information gatekeepers well as news
consumers we have to set limits and be
selective in our media diets we have to
control our social media feeds and be
responsible in our
during Hamlet’s and importantly we have
to balance an openness to fresh in
different perspectives with a need to
void to avoid subjecting ourselves to
the chore of doubting and verifying a
story every time we open it so first we
have to decide how much news do we want
to let in do we need 24/7 news most of
us don’t I once felt responsibly
informed subscribing to my local
newspaper reading a few magazines and
listening to National Public Radio cable
news was exciting for a while when it
ejective ly covered live events around
the globe but those outlets have largely
pulled out of the field and trading
their cameras on paid Talking Heads well
if we’re on social media we end up
getting news 24/7 anyway but we can
still set limits managing a social media
account is like tending a garden and
that’s a chore and I won’t be technical
but we can prune away sources that have
proven unreliable or unproductive we can
welcome reliable outlets in through the
gates that includes paying for quality
journalism and don’t forget local news
the Washington Post’s new slogan
democracy dies in darkness is especially
relevant at the local level where the
ranks of journalists are being slashed
and local institutions are left
unwatched
we can also maintain an open mind we can
favour information that supports our
values and enriches our worldview but we
also need to subject that view to tests
of reasoning and new information and to
understand that arguments the arguments
of those who differ much like eyesight
knowledge requires multiple perspectives
to be seen in three dimensions by now
there are a lot of good guides to
evaluating news stories and spotting
fake news they tend to focus on three
big themes the first is knowing who’s
who is publishing or broadcasting the
story the second is evaluating the story
for internal logic in credible evidence
and the third is understanding the
context our other outlets portraying the
same information watch out for emotion
strong emotion is both a huge barrier to
critical analysis and
huge motivation to spread a story
further over social media without
evaluating it we can share carefully I’d
say don’t overstate the story or offer a
strident opinion my own style and when
sharing a news article is to select a
quote with the most important
information that I see in the story and
use that to draw a reader in the readers
can draw their own conclusions and have
their own debates after that we also
need to decide what it is we want to
share about ourselves what we like what
we follow what we share what we by all
heart help target messages to us the
platforms have begun trying to make it
easier for us to know and control what
we’re sharing and we have a duty to
understand what it is we’re turning over
about ourselves and how to limit it
there are also technological solutions
the company I work for has developed a
tool that can spot emergent stories on
Twitter it uses algorithms to evaluate
whether they come from credible sources
other services have sprouted up to rate
the credibility of news organizations
fact-checking sites verify individual
articles his regulation and answer
without ideas gaining currency see Sir
Tim berners-lee who created the world
wide web in 1989 has endorsed regulation
he urges limits to what he calls a
dangerous concentration of power over
opinion and ideas the European Union has
implemented strict new rules that give
people more control over the information
about themselves Congress started
wrestling with the issue when Facebook’s
Mark Zuckerberg testified and
acknowledged that regulation was
inevitable well most of the talk has
been about privacy rules and there’s
been less about fighting fake news
Americans are split down the middle over
whether to regulate how websites provide
news now China has shown that it’s
technologically and administrative leap
ossible to strictly regulate the
internet but that’s a hard concept for
me I helped organize a free expression
protest in middle school and since then
I’ve been a near absolutist on the First
Amendment I say
flowers bloom and then sunlight is the
best disinfectant another response is to
support the work of real journalists
these are the eyewitnesses gathering
facts in the field and the ones who
expose hidden information a denver
lawyer named Vanessa Otero has compiled
a popular graphic ranking news
organizations by credibility and bias
she put this this active journalism this
original fact reporting as the highest
value and I agree with her I think about
people I’ve known like Warren Strobel
and Jonathan Landay whose work reporting
for knight-ridder exposed the Bush
administration’s false claims of iraqi
weapons programs that work was
overshadowed before the war by the
erroneous reporting of the more powerful
New York Times but it stands as a record
of how truth can be found out I think of
Andrew Lehren of NBC he’s a wizard using
a computer to analyze data and he’s
taught his skills to a whole generation
of journalists I think if David Rohde
who was twice held hostage once in
Bosnia and again years later in
Afghanistan for for a year countless
outlets rewrite or interpret the work of
journalists who gather facts commentary
is an important function but our
consumption of commentary needs to be
grounded in the fact basic fact-based
journalism that underlies it I’ve been
speaking about fake news for a year and
a half now the most common question I
get is how can individuals cope with it
all once a questioner once asked me if I
saw any reason for hope well after the
election there was a surge of people
paying for subscriptions to quality
newspapers people realized what they
were letting slip away I saw Tim
berners-lee speak last October he
despaired that the web was not the
unifying force he had envisioned but he
said it was too early to give up we
should look at the individual problems
and just tackle them he said but solving
fake news has to be a personal and an
individual effort we could we could once
rely on our news gatekeepers now we have
to take on
job ourselves we have to be our own
gatekeepers thank you [Applause]
have you heard about the Hungarian
construction workers who found a barrel
of unusually tasty rum in a house they
were renovating they sampled it they
drank their way to the bottom of the
barrel overtime and they found out why
it tasted so good there was a corpse
inside while I was working on the
Washington editing desk of Reuters in
2006 when I saw that story come in it
didn’t ring true it turns out the corpse
in the rum barrel is a classic urban
legend it has roots going back as far as
the 13th century well we killed that
story but that wasn’t the first time I’d
seen fake stories in my work there was a
story from Central America about organs
being harvested from babies for
transplants to benefit rich American
parents well that was a Soviet
propaganda plant I dealt with rumors of
sharks in the flooded streets of New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so fast
forward to 2017 I’m here in New
Hampshire I’m speaking about fake news
at a small-town library and I cited a
story a hoax story involving Hillary
Clinton an audience members stood up and
challenged me have you heard about pizza
gate she said she was referring to a
conspiracy theory about a pedophile ring
linked to get Democratic officials it
was supposedly run out of a Washington
DC pizza restaurant called comet
ping-pong well I told her it had been
disproven but she wouldn’t have it I
think it’s very real she said and I
think everyone needs to look it up she
shot back with that she picked up and
left so there’s two hoaxes the rum
Barrel corpse and comet ping pong
they’re just 10 years apart but there’s
a huge difference in impact the rum
Barrel story left just a faint trace you
can see it on snopes.com but comic pizza
story endured for months amid the
disinformation that we now understand
flooded the 2016 election campaign what
was once the realm of urban legends and
supermarket tabloids is now called fake
news
it affects society politics and our
understanding of the whole world well
this this is a new environment even
though fake news has always been around
internet economics technology the media
industry political rhetoric and
superpower competition all challenge us
news consumers in unprecedented ways
even 11 years ago the news media still
played a dominant gatekeeper role news
organizations could bring secrets to
light and keep bad information from
spreading but that role is no longer so
dominant information doesn’t just flow
through gates it gushes in torrents and
around the gates and we can each amplify
it
in short fake news has been weaponized I
want to run a few numbers past you 2500
that’s how many dollars the fake news
producer in Macedonia said he can earn
in a day these commercial fake news
sites make money by feeding stories into
social media that deliver mainstream
advertisements when we click on a story
18 that’s the number of countries where
online manipulation and disinformation
have played a role in elections this
that includes the United States 126
million that is how many people saw
content from a Facebook page associated
with Russian propaganda 5,000 that’s how
many piece individual pieces of
information that the digital politics
consultancy Cambridge analytic said it
had on 230 million American voters 62
that’s the percentage of Americans
surveyed who say fake news has eroded
their trust in traditional media these
numbers show how deeply rooted
disinformation has become within our
culture like an invasive species it has
spread quickly so what does that mean
for us we now have to assume more
responsibility over the information
reach that we receive and the
information we give out we each have to
be our own gatekeepers I’ve got some
ideas on ways to do that but first an
understanding on how we got here
News has always been an early adopter of
technology and technology has influenced
its content the Telegraph’s invention
made it possible to send news instantly
over long distances wire services like
The Associated Press and Reuters arose
and to serve the wide range of political
voices represented by their clients
their news had to be objective in the
United States standards of objectivity
came to be adopted widely this lasted
through the broadcast era when
frequencies were allocated as a public
resource democratic governments held
licence holders to standards of fairness
and public interest such standards were
loosened with cable television which was
considered a private pipeline then came
the internet the World Wide Web
anyone could reach a global audience
attention flowed to the most strident
voices and new advertising technology
allowed any website to reap payments
from major advertisers whenever we click
on a page but as we see are determined
by the information the Internet
companies have about us and now social
media billions of users interact within
self defying networks each of us gives
up thousands of pieces of information
about ourselves that give a little clue
about what information we might most
hungrily take up and amplify so in a
mass communication environment with
limited outlets each outlet acted as a
powerful gatekeeper journalists grounded
in professional standards had unique
access and could decide what was
important to convey yes some news
organizations abuse their power but
there was a familiarity and respect
between the news media and the public
that is no longer assumed so here’s a
small example of how US journalists
could perform as gatekeepers as a White
House reporter I was part of the small
press pool that accompanied the
president whenever he left the grounds
or made a public appearance in the
building most days we had a chance to
ask him a few questions the pool
distributed reports and images to the
rest of the press corps well twenty
years ago before social media a video
artist named Nam June Paik attended a
State
at the White House Pike had a disability
and used a wheelchair but he wanted to
stand for President Clinton in the
receiving line as he struggled to his
feet the artist pants and his underwear
fell to his shoes well this is right in
front of me and the rest of the startled
press pool but we quickly resolved that
the incident not be sensationalized we
noticed the mishap on our reports and we
filed a few images we did our jobs but
in general the coverage was minimized
and the incident had little impact well
12 years later the video has made it to
YouTube and it’s been watched 160,000
times nowadays such an incident would be
worldwide on social media before I got
home that night
now journalists today still act as
gatekeepers and still make decisions
based on their professional assessments
of news worthiness and public importance
but those decisions are now often driven
by click rates the instant feedback on
what’s grabbing a reader’s attention and
there are now many ways to reach us
outside of traditional news channels
that’s how even breaking stories can
become overwhelmed by fake news if you
happen to Google the Las Vegas shooter
when police released his name you would
have seen instant phony stories claiming
he was linked to Islamic state or that
he was an anti-trump liberal the Florida
shootings at Putnam parkland the high
school shootings the same thing arose
well if producers of such disinformation
have access to thousands of bits of data
about you each one of us you’ve got a
recipe for laser-guided political
propaganda Russian propagandists have
set up Facebook pages on topics such as
immigration and race relations that
inflame divisions among voters they’ve
organized us political rallies via
social media and purchased political ads
targeted to individual voters based on
their predicted sympathies so when the
walls are besieged how can we be our own
information gatekeepers well as news
consumers we have to set limits and be
selective in our media diets we have to
control our social media feeds and be
responsible in our
during Hamlet’s and importantly we have
to balance an openness to fresh in
different perspectives with a need to
void to avoid subjecting ourselves to
the chore of doubting and verifying a
story every time we open it so first we
have to decide how much news do we want
to let in do we need 24/7 news most of
us don’t I once felt responsibly
informed subscribing to my local
newspaper reading a few magazines and
listening to National Public Radio cable
news was exciting for a while when it
ejective ly covered live events around
the globe but those outlets have largely
pulled out of the field and trading
their cameras on paid Talking Heads well
if we’re on social media we end up
getting news 24/7 anyway but we can
still set limits managing a social media
account is like tending a garden and
that’s a chore and I won’t be technical
but we can prune away sources that have
proven unreliable or unproductive we can
welcome reliable outlets in through the
gates that includes paying for quality
journalism and don’t forget local news
the Washington Post’s new slogan
democracy dies in darkness is especially
relevant at the local level where the
ranks of journalists are being slashed
and local institutions are left
unwatched
we can also maintain an open mind we can
favour information that supports our
values and enriches our worldview but we
also need to subject that view to tests
of reasoning and new information and to
understand that arguments the arguments
of those who differ much like eyesight
knowledge requires multiple perspectives
to be seen in three dimensions by now
there are a lot of good guides to
evaluating news stories and spotting
fake news they tend to focus on three
big themes the first is knowing who’s
who is publishing or broadcasting the
story the second is evaluating the story
for internal logic in credible evidence
and the third is understanding the
context our other outlets portraying the
same information watch out for emotion
strong emotion is both a huge barrier to
critical analysis and
huge motivation to spread a story
further over social media without
evaluating it we can share carefully I’d
say don’t overstate the story or offer a
strident opinion my own style and when
sharing a news article is to select a
quote with the most important
information that I see in the story and
use that to draw a reader in the readers
can draw their own conclusions and have
their own debates after that we also
need to decide what it is we want to
share about ourselves what we like what
we follow what we share what we by all
heart help target messages to us the
platforms have begun trying to make it
easier for us to know and control what
we’re sharing and we have a duty to
understand what it is we’re turning over
about ourselves and how to limit it
there are also technological solutions
the company I work for has developed a
tool that can spot emergent stories on
Twitter it uses algorithms to evaluate
whether they come from credible sources
other services have sprouted up to rate
the credibility of news organizations
fact-checking sites verify individual
articles his regulation and answer
without ideas gaining currency see Sir
Tim berners-lee who created the world
wide web in 1989 has endorsed regulation
he urges limits to what he calls a
dangerous concentration of power over
opinion and ideas the European Union has
implemented strict new rules that give
people more control over the information
about themselves Congress started
wrestling with the issue when Facebook’s
Mark Zuckerberg testified and
acknowledged that regulation was
inevitable well most of the talk has
been about privacy rules and there’s
been less about fighting fake news
Americans are split down the middle over
whether to regulate how websites provide
news now China has shown that it’s
technologically and administrative leap
ossible to strictly regulate the
internet but that’s a hard concept for
me I helped organize a free expression
protest in middle school and since then
I’ve been a near absolutist on the First
Amendment I say
flowers bloom and then sunlight is the
best disinfectant another response is to
support the work of real journalists
these are the eyewitnesses gathering
facts in the field and the ones who
expose hidden information a denver
lawyer named Vanessa Otero has compiled
a popular graphic ranking news
organizations by credibility and bias
she put this this active journalism this
original fact reporting as the highest
value and I agree with her I think about
people I’ve known like Warren Strobel
and Jonathan Landay whose work reporting
for knight-ridder exposed the Bush
administration’s false claims of iraqi
weapons programs that work was
overshadowed before the war by the
erroneous reporting of the more powerful
New York Times but it stands as a record
of how truth can be found out I think of
Andrew Lehren of NBC he’s a wizard using
a computer to analyze data and he’s
taught his skills to a whole generation
of journalists I think if David Rohde
who was twice held hostage once in
Bosnia and again years later in
Afghanistan for for a year countless
outlets rewrite or interpret the work of
journalists who gather facts commentary
is an important function but our
consumption of commentary needs to be
grounded in the fact basic fact-based
journalism that underlies it I’ve been
speaking about fake news for a year and
a half now the most common question I
get is how can individuals cope with it
all once a questioner once asked me if I
saw any reason for hope well after the
election there was a surge of people
paying for subscriptions to quality
newspapers people realized what they
were letting slip away I saw Tim
berners-lee speak last October he
despaired that the web was not the
unifying force he had envisioned but he
said it was too early to give up we
should look at the individual problems
and just tackle them he said but solving
fake news has to be a personal and an
individual effort we could we could once
rely on our news gatekeepers now we have
to take on
job ourselves we have to be our own
gatekeepers thank you [Applause]
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