Bylines and Bipartisanship
Armon Owlia: Coming up on “This American Divide…”
Frances Haugen: Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits.
Owlia: Arguably the most prominent recurring theme so far is that of trust.
David Barstow: These are the perfect delivery devices for false information, for disinformation.
Owlia: There is a deep distrust by the public against the nation’s last line of defense…
Owlia: Do you like what you see?
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Michael Smerconish: Is social media harmful? That’s the question being raised and debated.
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Joe Fryer: We’ve got families all over the country who are dealing with this.
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Tom Costello: As anti-Semitic content has surged on Twitter after Elon Musk, who emphasized free speech, took full control. Use of the N-word also jumped 500 percent.
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Jo Ling Kent: After close reviews of the President’s recent tweets, it banned him, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
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President Joe Biden: It was an enraged mob that had been whipped up into a frenzy.
Alisyn Camerota: The alleged attacker posted conspiracy theories on Facebook.
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Brian Latimer: The social media business is evolving a lot these days.
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Alisyn Camerota: “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland announcing he’s taking a break from social media for the sake of his mental health.
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Jake Tapper: Cherished ideals of free speech are in the hands of erratic billionaires.
Owlia: It’s time to examine “This American Divide.”
Owlia: As we enter the halfway point of our journey, it's clear that many themes are presenting themselves, which I guarantee will blossom further as we continue. However, arguably the most prominent recurring theme so far is that of trust, particularly a lack of it or giving it away blindly. We’ve seen it through the eyes of QAnon survivor Ceally Smith, whose trust was established through the death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. If QAnon was right about him, what other things could they be right about?
Ceally Smith: “Wait a minute. I have been hearing so much through my partner that I was with at the time and seeing his posts or other people comment about this Epstein character, and now he's being arrested. So now there's some validity to what this movement is saying.” And I decided to do my own research, and that is when it started for me.
Owlia: We've seen it throughout the annals of history when the Republicans created a strategy to take the Solid South away from the Democrats in the late 1960s. Richard Nixon and his campaign declared they would fix all the problems they claimed existed. The only complication– those problems didn't exist…and they knew it. The Nixon campaign had to change the laws to fit their narrative.
John Ehrlichman (recreation): Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Owlia: Then came the birth of the social media age. The one that, through manipulation and evolution, reinforced a false, blinding trust. Additionally, through influential members of society and an algorithm designed to keep people on board, social media created a "narrative" that people trusted because they either didn't know better, or it fit their personal and political narrative. Even if it was not true.
Sharon McMahon: So, when you place your trust in an individual who then begins to abuse your trust, it is very difficult to believe that they are abusing your trust. It can be very difficult to disavow yourself of the notion that this person is, is good and believable and has your best interest at heart. We've seen this happen multiple times in the United States where somebody was trusted by the masses, when, in fact, they were lying to people. They were saying one thing, but they knew it was not true.
Owlia: We've talked a lot about trust, particularly those you can't trust. So, let's flip the script a bit. Who can we trust to set the record straight? Who can we trust, instinctually, to tell the truth? More specifically, and importantly, who do you trust? The answer to the first two questions is the same– journalists. However, on the third, statistically speaking, it's clear that the public does not trust the media, at least not as much as they used to. According to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, widely regarded as a measure of integrity worldwide, 56% of Americans agreed with the statement, “Journalists and reporters and purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.” Additionally, 59% of Americans believed “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” Finally, 61% of Americans stated, “The media is not doing well at being objective and non-partisan.” However, according to data from Pew, 71% of American adults trust local news organizations, and 61% trust national news. This means that, overall, more people have a distrust in the general concept of the media, rather than individual pieces. Nevertheless, on the conceptual level, there is a deep distrust by the public against what can arguably be seen as the nation's last line of defense against misinformation.
David Barstow: My name is David Barstow. I teach investigative reporting at Berkeley Journalism. Before that, I spent 20 years working for The New York Times, almost all of that in the investigative unit.
Owlia: On top of winning four Pulitzer Prizes for individual reporting, Barstow has made a career out of holding prominent political figures, including former President Donald Trump, accountable. Notably, he co-authored the Times' investigative piece looking into the tax schemes made by the Trump and his family.
Barstow: As political polarization has spiked, especially in recent years, it's become increasingly difficult for reporters to just do their jobs and, and in going out and interviewing people without being subjected to sometimes really angry responses from people who, if depending on how they perceive you as the journalist, if they perceive you as being from the opposite tribe, their, you know, willingness to, to, to engage at all really has plummeted.
Owlia: Historically, journalists have been the record keepers and accountability bringers who have stopped lies, misconceptions, and innuendo in their tracks. The saying goes, “Bad headlines have ended more political careers than bullets,” and it shows. The Pentagon Papers released by the New York Times, the coverage of Watergate by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Vanity Fair through whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand exposing the tobacco industry, the list is extensive.
Barstow: Journalists, we, we like to go out and we like to knock on doors and we like to ask questions and interview people. That's critical, right? To the basic act of reporting.
Owlia: However, much has changed in journalism and news media during the Digital Age. Newspapers are folding down and closing; some do not embrace digital. Thus, we have seen a decrease in the accountability that can be given. Social media, too, not only cut into the classifieds, but it has also become a platform now where more Americans get their news, making it difficult for mainstream media to compete.
Barstow: It has shortened attention spans dramatically which makes it harder for us to tell really complex, nuanced, long stories.
Owlia: That isn't to say, though, that social media has always been bad. It can become a research tool unlike many others due to its broad reach and accessibility. Sometimes, it can provide major positives for journalists and stories.
Barstow: It has allowed us to, to spread our stories and, and have viral moments with our stories.
Owlia: A great example is a video taken by then-17-year-old Darnella Frazier outside a Cup Foods store in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Frazier would not only win a Pulitzer for her work, but the footage she captured would stir the nation and the world into a conversation that has persisted to this day.
Jake Tapper: Breaking news in our national lead now– moments ago, the Chief of Police in Minneapolis announced that he had fired four police officers involved in the arrest and subsequent death of a Black man in police custody. George Floyd repeatedly told the officers that he could not breathe after an officer knelt on his neck, pinning him to the ground during an arrest. A bystander captured yesterday’s incident on a cell phone camera.
Owlia: However, moments such as the murder of George Floyd have proven to be, in the grand scheme of things, an exception rather than the rule. Ordinarily, what you find on social media isn't produced for truth or accuracy. Instead, it's built for clicks and getting your eyes on the product. The algorithm, as stated previously, focuses on what will attract attention rather than what the truth is, so it favors misinformation. It becomes easier to push clickbait disguised as journalism, which results in not only misinforming the public due to intentional targeting based on worldview but, additionally and more importantly, creates fear.
Barstow: I think it's much more difficult for facts to break through when, when we're in an environment where this, the social media platforms that we have all embraced are kind of the perfect delivery device for misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Owlia: Remember, across the board, social media platforms do not have the same professional fact-checking systems that top-tier journalism has. So, when posts and stories are written and shared, there is virtually no way to tell, through the platform, what is truth and what is fiction.
Barstow: These are the perfect delivery devices for false information, for disinformation. You know, the lies, or just swapping facts and truth in issue after issues, after issues. It is, yeah, it's catastrophic. It's been catastrophic.
Owlia: On top of that, there is no incentive for social media companies to add such systems to their platforms due to the misinformation benefiting them monetarily. The more they allow the misinformation to live and grow, the more money they can make to live another day, regardless of the social consequences. This is Congressional testimony from Frances Haugen, former Product Manager at Facebook, who in 2021 would blow the whistle and leak The Facebook Files to the Wall Street Journal, revealing Facebook's complicity in the misinformation crisis.
Frances Haugen: During my time at Facebook, first working as the lead product manager for Civic Misinformation and later on Counter-Espionage, I saw that Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat.
Owlia: This is not contained to one part of the political spectrum or one party. This happens throughout the whole system. For example, when discussing the then-recently passed Bipartisan Background Checks Act in 2019, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota stated, in part, "Every day on average 500 people die from gun violence. How many more lives will we let gun violence claim?" The actual figure at the time was 109 deaths per day, on average. On March 14, 2021, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted, “Nancy Pelosi’s Bay Area Bailout included $600 million for San Francisco, part of which goes to cover the tab for free alcohol and marijuana for the homeless.” However, San Francisco only spent about $1,500 per month on physician-prescribed alcohol for those with severe alcoholism and in isolation during COVID, with absolutely no tax dollars ever spent on marijuana. Finally, on January 27, 2017, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that Rex Tillerson, then-Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State and the former CEO of ExxonMobil wouldn’t "divest from Exxon.” However, not only did Tillerson retire from Exxon on New Years’ Eve the previous year, but within a week, he laid out a divestment plan that was cited as a “clean break” by the director of the Office of Government Ethics. It also doesn't help that, mainly due to the echo chamber system we live in, apparent favoritism is established from platform to platform, depending on the affiliation. One side will become more heavily questioned than the other to help reinforce the political point of view of the platform.
Todd Washburn: My name is Todd Washburn. I teach a course called "The Polarization of American Politics" that I've taught since the fall of 2019.
Owlia: Washburn teaches the course at the Harvard Extension School.
Washburn: When we live in closed information environments, it’s easy for misinformation to spread. And that problem is severely exacerbated by the fact that we are, we have so little in common with our political opponents outside of politics. That as individual people, we never get any countervailing information.
Owlia: On top of that, politicians understand this fact very well, using such platforms and creating distrust of the other side, undermining any form of proper reporting, and turning news platforms into mini propaganda machines. Once again, David Barstow.
Barstow: It makes it much easier, this polarization that we're in, for politicians to simply ignore us. And to say, we'll, like to admit, it doesn't matter what we report, like, I mean, they don't, like, what they know they're going to be able to tell their followers, “Oh, well, this is this is a story from Fox News. You just disregard it because no one believes that they're journalists anyway.” Right? If you're on the left. Or, “Oh, yeah, it's The New York Times reporting it. You know, they're, they're, you know, what do you expect? And they can't be trusted either.” And, so I think it makes it easier for, top politicians and political figures on both sides to just ignore what we're reporting and simply like, just to, just call it “fake news.”
Owlia: For example, we have Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who, while Independent, primaries as a Democrat. During a February 18, 2018, appearance on "Meet The Press," Sanders made the following claim in an interview with host Chuck Todd…
Bernie Sanders: Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks.
Owlia: A shocking statistic, to be sure. Or at least, it would be if it were true. Two days after the interview, a Washington Post fact check revealed that Sanders had stated what is known as a “zombie claim,” or, as the Post put it, “false facts that keep getting repeated, no matter how often we fact-check them.” It was first used by President Barack Obama in the wake of Sandy Hook in 2013, based on a small then-20-year-old telephone study after the passage of the Brady Law. However, a Harvard study in 2017, cited by The Post, concluded that the actual number was 22%. 22% of gun owners who had obtained a firearm between 2015 and 2017 had done so without a background check, with the number even lower amongst purchased firearms, approximately 13%. Obama did not have the luxury of that study. However, Sanders did. Now those numbers, while high, are not as high as the 40% stated by Sanders, for whom issues such as gun control are a significant part of his platform and his far-left credentials. While experts may say such a correction is a success because the zombie claim was caught and corrected by another news platform and was not repeated afterward, there is another school of thought– misinformation can travel instantaneously. A lack of correction or not getting the facts right on the spot could light the misinformation fuse. Politicians are already given a massive platform through their social standing in the government and how they are positioned in the media, depending on their political affiliation. There is immediate credibility there, and so, when spoken, the information is seen as gospel. A fact-check two days after the statement is too slow in a world of real-time information. As I said, politicians and social media companies now have complete control of the narrative, so when claims aren't fact-checked on the spot, then shared to platforms that do not have fact-checking systems of their own, the consequences are immediate and devastating. The industry needs to change to combat the problem, including the method of creating and delivering the stories you see, hear, and experience. It's something Ceally Smith understands very well.
Smith: It was never to the point where, like, I, I didn't believe in the radical parts of QAnon it was more of what is true in front of me. Like, ‘What can I, what can I connect the dots for? Connect to?’ And the other stuff I just left. So, I think what I was getting from the content, from what I was seeking was the people that were very middle pathing it, where they were balanced in their belief, but they were also balanced in what they were fighting for. And it wasn't radical for them. So, for me, the reflection that I felt was, I'm not getting that in regular news.
Owlia: The way the news is covered, too, needs to come into question, especially considering the level of conviction that QAnon has, which can sway even the most non-political people their way.
Smith: They had passion and they were really fighting for something that they felt needed to be corrected. So, I think if anybody believes in something to their core, they're willing to fight for it, to have it for themselves. And sometimes, it can be very radical in the sense where they push their beliefs onto others, and it can become very overwhelming for people.
Owlia: It's not an endorsement of QAnon or even saying we must duplicate their methods. However, we must know how it's done to counteract the effect. So, not only do we focus on greater accountability in calling public figures out, no matter their affiliation, but we also acknowledge that the process is not infallible, and we can do better. Once again, David Barstow.
Barstow: It's about intellectual honesty. It's about being fair. It's about a reverence for the facts. But like, yeah, you can, you can report on the world from a conservative point of view and ask, you know, do all kinds of good journalism asking questions and probing the efficacy of like COVID vaccinations. Right? And there's plenty of good work to be, to be done there.
Owlia: It's not difficult at all. It's not complex and, believe it or not, something everyone, not just journalists, can practice. You may even consider it to be a way we can…regulate.
