news last year I did so because I was
angry
I mean who were these jerks who sullied
my craft but the more I read about it
and thought about it the more I realized
that the important thing about fake news
is not what it tells us about its
perpetrators but what it tells us about
ourselves I’m not here to make
journalists into heroes we are normal
people we have biases we have we make
mistakes but I am here to defend
journalism it’s the art of getting the
story right in spite of our flaws so
finding the facts and the truth I think
that’s very important and in the age of
social media we’re all journalists we’re
all part of the business of distributing
the news and commentating on the news at
a bare minimum so we rely on you and you
rely on us to get the story right and to
get the right story now it is debatable
how much effect any one particular piece
of fake news can sway public opinion for
instance but I think I really have come
to believe that the way we react to
corrosive behaviors like fake news are
is what is going to determine the course
of this nation are we going to split
into permanent red and blue nations that
cannot get a Greek cannot agree with
each other
at each other’s throats maybe even
become a permanent split or are we going
to maintain or recreate some kind of
common base of factual information from
which to operate so what is fake news
it’s very simple it’s it’s just made-up
stuff masquerading as news so it has
that authoritative voice and structure
of a news story but with no discernible
facts or sources or quotes that you can
actually track down but that’s really
just sort of the bottom of the barrel of
unreliable news that we face all the
time so that can range from amusing or
even instructive satire and parody all
the way down to vicious efforts to
destroy someone’s character or even to
what it’s not what fake news is not is
information that you disagree with or
that makes you look bad another thing
that it’s not is it’s not a new
phenomenon we’ve always had fake excuse
me but we’ve always had fake news it’s
only it’s only newly interesting because
of this election cycle so if you’ll bear
with me I’d like for you to think about
news and even information altogether at
the way you would your water supply so
it’s it’s a common thing that we all
need it’s a critical resource right so
instead of nourishing your body it
nurses your mind we use it to wash the
Civic dishes so to speak and flush away
the bad stuff sometimes but if it’s
contaminated you’re going to get sick if
you consume it too much
I think that this recent pandemic of
fake dudes especially 2015-2016
indicates that we have a sick and
information infrastructure it’s just and
why is that important if you can’t trust
the news you can’t trust information
that’s coming at you then how do you
know whether for instance your elected
leaders are doing good or doing evil
its global worrying real or should we
just go ahead and burn all the coal we
need a common point of reference based
on fact that from which we can all
operate we we need to know what’s going
how big of a deal is fake news its
experts disagree it is it’s hard to tell
how much effect any particular piece of
fake news has on you know public opinion
or on an individual person but I think
what that tells us is just how difficult
it is to pin down facts and the truth at
times sometimes it’s cut and dried but
many times it’s not and we need our
faculties in order to process
information a little bit more on that in
a minute
what are the motives of people who
produce fake news well as there are a
lot of different types of people who
produce fake news there there are a lot
of motive motivations as well you might
have shoddy journalism where somebody is
faking stuff in order to make a story
look better you might have political
partisanship where you’re just trying to
win an election and you can also have
you know at the worst you can have
Russia basically or us to other
countries trying to undermine their
governments or their democracies so you
think of it as sort of a range of
malevolence
so from the least worrisome to the oh my
god we’re in trouble worrisome so what’s
really interesting to me though is why
fake news is so freaking hard to resist
it’s so juicy right I mean I’ve caught
myself or I’ve been caught passing along
information that turned out to be have
no basis it’s just easy to do well
there’s a couple of a couple of major
reasons one our internal defenses are
kind of in trouble right now there’s
just too much information out there and
we can’t deal with it all we’re not
evolved to accept that much data coming
in so we tend to hunker down and become
more emotional thinkers than rational
thinkers and we’re more easily provoked
to anger so we become more and more
outraged all the time and we hunker down
even more and become more defensive and
we’re sort of peering at this this
dangerous world through these narrow
emotional filters well what gets through
those filters the best is fake news
because it can be tuned to fit the exact
emotional hole that you have left and
then of course it hits you right in your
emotions it creates this unvirtuous
cycle where you you get to where you can
only accept information that fits your
narrow worldview and of course it
provokes you to have more the same
reaction and you share share share share
share now this is not particularly any
political philosophy this or you know
team that you follow or anything else
anybody is susceptible to this like for
eight years conservatives were outraged
by Obama’s very existence and then by
Hillary’s campaign
and fake news that was marketed towards
those conservatives became it just
flourished it exploded like an algae
bloom in a pond
now that Trump is in office we see a
similar situation with liberals where
you you now have fake news that is
tailored for angry liberals to share so
anybody can can fall into that trap so
at the same time our external defenses
are also down in America we we don’t
trust our institutions very much and
that Trust is on the decline that is
also true for journalism as an
institution and believe me it’s a little
pompous but we journalists really like
to think that we are guardians of the
truth the thing is if you can’t trust
the news if you can’t trust journalists
who do you trust
well you trust people who are on your
team right in your tribe people who’ve
got your back
unfortunately frequently those people
are they may be more interested in
winning the fight than in getting the
story right at the same time the news
industry in particular is really on the
ropes our newspaper
revenues have plummeted staffs have been
cut the best journalists have been let
go so we put up thinner shoddier product
and when we make more errors it doesn’t
reflect well on us and finally since the
1950s when segregationists came up with
the term the liberal media to attack
mainstream journalism you know there’s
just been this constant drumbeat and you
see it on Fox News if you ever turn on
Fox News you are going to hear the
liberal media at some point in the next
twenty minutes probably
Rush Limbaugh so there’s an entire swath
of America now that simply cannot trust
journalists so what am i doing about to
fix all that
in our own very small local way we are
trying to nudge journalists and readers
a little closer together an tirage is
basically it’s an occasional outing
where we we bring together journalists
and non journalists to attend an event
together to talk about the news and then
to share that back hopefully to get some
kind of a conversation going online
while we’re doing it breaking down those
barriers between professional
journalists and all the rest of us who
are journalists by default and anthology
is our five day a week email newsletter
that I curate from 22 local sources some
of them are traditional conventional
journalists but some of them are not
they’re super citizens there are
bloggers there people who want to carry
on the torch of legitimate journalism in
these you know what seemed to us
especially if a journalist seemed like
really dark times the bottom line the
takeaway is we need each other to get the story right thank