Facts, Fake News, How to Fix the Problem: Nathan Bomey

Broadcast 5/25/2018 at 5:10 PM EDT (7 Listens, 6 Downloads, 3013 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

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Nathan Bomey is an award-winning business reporter for USA Today.

He's the author of a new book, After the Fact; The Erosion of Truth and the Inevitable Rise of Donald Trump

AfterTheFactBook.com

A mix of prep-notes and actual notes from the interview:

Tell us about the basic message of the book and what you hope to accomplish with it.

Talk about Post truth society

Google monopolizes aggregation

Monetizing misinformation

You say that within social media are the building blocks of mistrust, even hate.

Epidemic of envy and jealousy

Howard Rheingold's story of researching Martin Luther King--finding white supremacist

Tracking reader activity has led to problematic editorial policies.

Assault on science

fake news often resonates with readers because it's reassuring. Many people would simply prefer not to face the facts, said Neil McGinness, editor in chief of the Weekly World News, a tabloid that has long trafficked in fake news. He says, ""Reality is inconvenient on a lot of different levels for people -- the reality of economic decline, the reality of uncertainty of where you're headed and what it might bring."

In the digital revolution, technology has made memory obsolete.

This wholesale shift in how we encounter information has also made it unnecessary to remember certain important facts. We can just search for them on Google.

Memory researcher: the sleeper effect.

Institute for non-profit News--one solution to saving journalism is to have it supported as non-profit.

Propublica, News Media Alliance

Need training in assessing facts, even journalism, in primary school.

Most of us were never taught how to vet facts in the same way we were taught basic multiplication, sentence structure, or state capitals.

DigitalAI will allow creation of fake images, videos and audios. We will need artificial intelligence that detects fake media.

You cite psychologist Leonard Saxe, an expert on lying, who says, "One problem in detecting lies is that liars may believe in the lie. They have constructed a reality in which the lie makes sense. . . . And the more they repeat it, the more they believe it,"

Fearing rejection among their peers for embracing the facts, people instead reject the truth.

A plague of distrust

Crisis of disconnectness.

From 2006 to 2016, trust in ten of fourteen key American institutions fell, with several suffering double-digit percentage declines, according to polling firm Gallup.

In government, increased transparency often bolsters trust. In a study designed to gauge how the release of government records affects the public's perception of the truth, a group of researchers led by Dartmouth's Brendan Nyhan found that documents with redacted information fostered conspiracy theories. That might not surprise you. But the study also concluded that un-redacted documents "consistently lowered conspiracy beliefs."

In other words, when people encountered the whole truth, they were more trusting of the government

The public's positive response to authenticity and transparency in social media, business, politics, and journalism is an encouraging sign because it suggests that many people still want to distinguish between fact and fiction. But the problem is that identifying genuine authenticity is extremely difficult in the misinformation age.

Rejecting the prevailing belief among our friends and family brands us with an enduring mark of disloyalty.

Solutions:

Finding common ground

Storytelling, shared language, relationships, fact checking

Healthy connectivity.

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