Award Winning Investigative Journalist, Dr. Thomas Grant
We are excited to welcome our good friend and former ABAC colleague, Dr. Tom Grant onto the Huddle. He shines light into how exactly social media is shifting the cost of finding the truth onto the shoulders of the consumers.
Tune in below:
Questions Asked During the Live Chat are Answered Below:
Twig McGlynn: Can you rank current national news services as far as % of fake news? Example NPR?
Mainstream US national news outlets tend to follow traditional news standards, meaning they verify the news before they publish it. That means they generally have at least two sources for a fact, and they check that documents and/or images are real. Of course, everyone makes mistakes. However, you can generally rely on network news products (as distinguished from analysis and speculation by talking heads), national and regional newspapers and national magazines.
A Forbes writer ranks these as the most reasonable and reliable: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC, The Economist, The New Yorker, Wire Services (such as The Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News), Foreign Affairs magazine, The Atlantic, and Politico. The writer also names NPR, TIME magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, USA Today, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Forbes magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, Fortune magazine, and The Financial Times newspaper. For reporting on the right, he suggests National Review and The Weekly Standard, and for reporting the left, The New Republic and the Nation.
If you find sources offering things that “the mainstream media won’t tell you,” I suggest you investigate the source. And while Fox News and PBS are not on the above list, they probably should be. Fox has a conservative ideology and does slant its national coverage news, but I worked for a local Fox affiliate long ago and found that on the local level it truly was fair. And its national news feeds to those affiliates were complete and accurate. PBS is also extremely cautious about its approach to news and is extremely reliable.
Jennifer McCollum: How did they determine who exhibited the dark triad traits?
Cambridge Analytica hired skilled psychologists and researchers to develop their methods. They used an Amazon product to hire tens of thousands of people to take a psychological profile test with more than 100 questions. That test was accurate enough to determine those dark triad traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. But the company also asked the test takers to sign into Facebook and give them access to their Facebook profiles. At the time, that allowed Cambridge Analytica to also scrape up all the Facebook data from each person’s friends, so they could get hundreds of profiles of the friends of each test taker. They then created large data sets around each individual based on their Facebook likes, and built an algorithm that could determine personality traits based on their dataset of likes. If you liked NBC and Bambi (and hundreds of other benign things), you ended up with one assessment. But if you liked a bunch of conspiracy theories and hate groups, you might end up with a quite different assessment. Chapter seven of the book about Cambridge Analytica called “Mindf*ck” by Christopher Wylie details how it used the dark triad idea to manipulate people.
It really is a great read about the use of data to manipulate people.
Tim McGhee: Are there any mainstream media outlets that display traits of a propagandist rather than journalism?
Any time a mainstream media labels something “analysis” or “opinion,” you know they have moved away from giving you verified news content. Propaganda is defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” Both Fox News and MSNBC have admitted biases in their approach to discussion of the news. However, neither intentionally tries to mislead people. Still, individuals on the news may try to work your emotions, particularly during their talking head analysis, to point you toward the point of view that they support.
I don’t think we would even be having a discussion about mainstream media being “fake news” unless there was a concerted effort to discredit mainstream media. That effort is now coming from the president, who cries “fake news” often. However, the president is also accused of making more than 18,000 false or misleading claims in his three-plus years in the White House. Yes, mainstream media sometimes makes mistakes in its reporting, but it also has clear policies for correcting those mistakes. “Fake news” is fabricated information intended to fool you. Consider the intent.
Mainstream media does not intend to fool you. It may intend to cater to your predispositions. Certainly, Fox caters to conservatives. But mainstream media also cater to the general worldview of their geographical base of readers. I grew up in the rural West, and I thought I was liberal when I arrived in New York. I was quickly schooled. In the city, my conservative roots were showing, so I had to read my way to understanding my new peers. Rather than worry that some entity in mainstream media “intends” to fool you into taking a different political view, consider instead the geographical predispositions of their audience. Then, as I have suggested, pay for news from a news source that fits you better – The Wall Street Journal instead of the New York Times, for instance. Or the Christian Science Monitor instead of the Washington Times (both founded by religious organizations). But understand that your choice of news media may have biases that reflect your own, and, as an intelligent person, work to recognize those biases.
On the other hand, avoid those media outlets that try to fool you, and avoid the people on the news who try to work your emotions. News should be reasoned. I worked in TV for years, and I understand that TV is an emotional medium. That is why I prefer to read my news. That way it enters my brain through the part that reasons. That’s why I mentioned PBS in the list above of reliable news sources, even though Forbes didn’t. PBS News Hour sometimes bores me, but, in part, that’s because it appeals to my reason not my emotions. That’s a good thing.
Twig McGlynn: What is 'Epoch Times’?
Epoch Times is another news organization created by a religious organization, in this case the Falun Gong, a religion born relatively recently in China. The Chinese government calls it a “heretical” institution and have banned it. The religious is said to be based in principles of truth and compassion. In the West, the Epoch Times generally promotes right wing politics and conspiracy theories.
As I mentioned, just because a news organization is affiliated with a religious organization does not mean that the news is carries is fake, but you do need to understand that it may not have the same purpose as traditional news organizations. The Christian Science Monitor, for instance, says it only “rarely” allows church leaders to make changes in editorial content. However, the church routinely edits opinions and cartoons. Do not expect the Monitor to report on medical issues, for instance, in the same way as other news outlets would.
Matthew Spaur: Social media has a profitable business model but doesn't invest in truth or fairness. Print media currently has a broken business model. How can or do they invest in truth or fairness?
A good question. I think a lot of this has to do with restoring the notion that truth and fairness are worth paying for. In the early ‘90s, every news organization in the world tried to jump on the internet, so they started giving their news away for free. However, people developed the idea that news had no monetary value. Remember, there was a time when many consumers began to think that music was free and movies could be downloaded off some pirate site for nothing. Now we routinely pay for our entertainment online, either by accepting advertising or using subscription fees. Over time, we are seeing many more news outlets move behind paywalls, too. I pay for news from two national news organizations, and one local news organization. If people rely on free news, they risk getting what they pay for – information designed to promote views of the purveyor of those news items. Be willing to pay for news. Ask yourself how much you pay for the pipelines of entertainment now coming to your home. If you’re paying $200 per month for cable and phone pipelines, why aren’t you willing to pay $20 per month for truth and fairness?