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The Lying Mouth Slays the Soul · Question Everything

0:07
Speaker 1: I began this festival asking the question of how we
0:11
Speaker 1: are to get along in this new media landscape. The
0:17
Speaker 1: other week, I was asked to give a speech to
0:19
Speaker 1: close out a three-day audio festival in Richmond, Virginia, called Resonate.
0:24
Speaker 1: The organizer of the conference is a philosopher named Chioki Ianson.
0:28
Speaker 1: He and I chat now and again about the nature
0:30
Speaker 1: of truth and facts, and as I guess philosophers tend
0:34
Speaker 1: to do, other big epistemological questions. The theme of the
0:40
Speaker 1: festival this year was press, and it was filled with
0:43
Speaker 1: people from the podcasting and public radio worlds offering their
0:47
Speaker 1: diagnoses for what has gone wrong with our media and
0:50
Speaker 1: ideas for how we might fix it. And Chioki asked
0:53
Speaker 1: me if I'd deliver a treatise at the festival. That
0:57
Speaker 1: was his assignment for me. What have I learned reporting
1:00
Speaker 1: on the press and on truth for Question Everything over
1:03
Speaker 1: two years? And could I tell the audience of journalists
1:07
Speaker 1: what I thought we should all be doing? So I
1:09
Speaker 1: gave it a go. And as I put this together,
1:12
Speaker 1: I found myself heading down paths that I hadn't expected,
1:17
Speaker 1: reading old texts on the subject of dishonesty and, as
1:20
Speaker 1: you'll hear, studying one of journalism's most divisive words. I
1:25
Speaker 1: hadn't been sure we'd run this talk I thought maybe
1:28
Speaker 1: it would be too inside baseball. But afterwards, people kept
1:31
Speaker 1: coming up to me saying, you have to share this
1:33
Speaker 1: on Question Everything. Maybe part of the reason it landed
1:36
Speaker 1: with the audience is that the midterm elections are here.
1:39
Speaker 1: We're about to get a sense of what direction the
1:41
Speaker 1: country wants to head in for the final years of
1:43
Speaker 1: the Trump era. And it feels like an apt moment
1:46
Speaker 1: as journalists to reflect, how has our work risen to
1:50
Speaker 1: the moment? When has it fallen short? And how can
1:53
Speaker 1: we best serve the public moving forward? So here it is.
1:57
Speaker 1: my keynote speech from the Resonate Podcast Festival just a
2:00
Speaker 1: couple weeks ago in Richmond. Earlier this year, my daughter,
2:09
Speaker 1: who was five then, she just turned six a few
2:11
Speaker 1: weeks ago, came home from the playground and she asked
2:15
Speaker 1: me a question. She said, Daddy, is Zoran Mamdani evil?
2:22
Speaker 1: Where'd you hear that, baby? She said that her friend...
2:27
Speaker 1: had told her on the playground I started thinking about
2:30
Speaker 1: parents and kind of what I might be learning about
2:31
Speaker 1: their politics you know via one of these playground games
2:35
Speaker 1: of telephone via our kids my daughter then said I
2:39
Speaker 1: heard if you look at Zoramamdani your eyes will fall
2:42
Speaker 1: out oh I said his skin is also poison she
2:50
Speaker 1: said also Zoramamdani is orange why is he orange she
2:55
Speaker 1: asked And then I realized what might be going on,
2:58
Speaker 1: and I said, wait, do you mean Donald Trump? And
3:03
Speaker 1: she was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one
3:04
Speaker 1: I mean. Donald Trump, is he evil? And I thought
3:14
Speaker 1: about this for a second, and I told her, it
3:16
Speaker 1: depends how you define evil, but Donald Trump does lie
3:20
Speaker 1: a lot. Why does he lie a lot, she asked.
3:24
Speaker 1: Because it helps him get what he wants, I told her.
3:27
Speaker 1: And she thought about that for a moment. And then
3:28
Speaker 1: she asked, if you look Donald Trump in the eyes,
3:32
Speaker 1: will your eyes fall out? And I told her, I
3:36
Speaker 1: don't know. I've never met him in person. We'd have
3:38
Speaker 1: to test it. And then just to kind of clarify things,
3:46
Speaker 1: I told her, you know, Zohra Mamdani is the mayor
3:49
Speaker 1: of New York, our city. Donald Trump is the president.
3:53
Speaker 1: He's the president, she said? Who made him the president?
4:00
Speaker 1: I said the majority of people in America voted him president.
4:03
Speaker 1: They chose him. Her mouth was agape. Why did they
4:08
Speaker 1: choose a liar to be president? Pretty good question. One
4:12
Speaker 1: of those good incisive ones that can only come from
4:14
Speaker 1: a kid. Why did we elect a liar as president?
4:19
Speaker 1: When Chioki asked me to do this talk, his instruction
4:23
Speaker 1: to me was, be occupationally self-reflective. And this conversation I
4:29
Speaker 1: recently had with my kid, it got me focused on
4:31
Speaker 1: lying in ways that I normally wouldn't think about it.
4:35
Speaker 1: The act of it, the history of it, the etymology
4:38
Speaker 1: of the word, the psychology of lying, the experience of it,
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Speaker 1: the experience of doing it and having it done to
4:44
Speaker 1: you and about you, and the way journalists have dealt
4:48
Speaker 1: with it and failed to deal with it. Lying is
4:50
Speaker 1: the force that is most diametrically opposed to journalism, and
4:54
Speaker 1: yet we have done an awful job combating it. Why
4:58
Speaker 1: has this been so hard for us, and how can
5:00
Speaker 1: we do better? And that's what I want to talk
5:02
Speaker 1: about and consider here with you all, because the issues
5:06
Speaker 1: plaguing the press that have been discussed these last few days,
5:09
Speaker 1: from the decimation of local journalism, to the power bias,
5:12
Speaker 1: to how to deliver truth in different ways that lands
5:14
Speaker 1: with people, what shot through all of it and what
5:17
Speaker 1: we have to contend with is the proliferation and power
5:20
Speaker 1: and lack of accountability for lying that is so toxic
5:23
Speaker 1: right now. And yet, it is still really rare to
5:27
Speaker 1: hear the word lie in regular mainstream news coverage. When
5:31
Speaker 1: I was coming up in public radio at NPR and
5:34
Speaker 1: member stations and later at This American Life, I don't
5:37
Speaker 1: think I was ever taught explicitly not to use the
5:39
Speaker 1: word lie, but I certainly picked up the message or
5:42
Speaker 1: the gist somehow that you weren't supposed to. And I
5:45
Speaker 1: didn't really question it. There were other words you were
5:47
Speaker 1: supposed to use instead, journalist-y words. So for instance, before
5:51
Speaker 1: he was even running for president, when Donald Trump would
5:54
Speaker 1: lie over many years about Barack Obama not being born
5:57
Speaker 1: in America, NPR would not say Trump was lying. Instead,
6:02
Speaker 1: NPR's reporters said Trump was stirring the pot. Or he had.
6:09
Speaker 2: Revived questions about the president's place of birth.
6:12
Speaker 1: Birtherism was a conspiracy, a claim, a controversy, a falsehood,
6:16
Speaker 1: an issue, but never a lie. Even after Trump admitted
6:21
Speaker 1: in 2016, despite years of pushing this claim, that Obama
6:24
Speaker 1: was born in the United States, and the New York
6:27
Speaker 1: Times even finally referred to Trump's claim as a lie
6:29
Speaker 1: for the first time, NPR would not. What they opted
6:33
Speaker 1: for at that moment instead was the most preposterous falsehood
6:37
Speaker 1: anyone has attempted to peddle in our political life, which
6:40
Speaker 1: is a whole lot of words to avoid saying the
6:42
Speaker 1: word lie. Compare that to how we used to treat liars.
6:50
Speaker 1: We used to stone them, give them leprosy, cast them
6:55
Speaker 1: into a lake of fire, throw them off a rock
6:58
Speaker 1: in Rome, even pull their tongues out. Trump got called preposterous,
7:05
Speaker 1: got a bunch of attention, and was elected president. Looking
7:09
Speaker 1: back on it, I think the birther lie was a
7:11
Speaker 1: trial balloon for Trump. He saw what level of bullshit
7:14
Speaker 1: he was able to get away with and how meekly
7:16
Speaker 1: the press would respond. NPR, aside from being the spiritual
7:21
Speaker 1: forebear to many of us in here, if not some
7:24
Speaker 1: of your current employer, was emblematic of this approach. In fact,
7:28
Speaker 1: as Trump was running for president in 2016, NPR went
7:31
Speaker 1: so far as to publish a policy in writing about
7:34
Speaker 1: how they would not use the word lie. They were
7:38
Speaker 1: proud of it. They wore it as a badge of
7:40
Speaker 1: their journalism. In order to use the word lie, an
7:44
Speaker 1: NPR journalist would have to get special approval from a
7:46
Speaker 1: small group of top editors, I don't know if Trump
7:50
Speaker 1: read this policy, but the message was certainly out there
7:52
Speaker 1: that he would not be easily called a liar in
7:54
Speaker 1: the press or face consequences for it. On his first
7:57
Speaker 1: full day in office, January 21st, 2017, Trump went to
8:00
Speaker 1: CIA headquarters and told three lies in the same appearance.
8:05
Speaker 1: He claimed his beef with the intelligence community at that
8:07
Speaker 1: time was the media's fault, not his. According to NPR's
8:11
Speaker 1: then national security correspondent, Mary Louise Kelly, that was.
8:20
Speaker 1: He said there were upwards of a million and a
8:21
Speaker 1: half people at his inauguration when there were more like 250,000.
8:25
Speaker 2: Mary Louise reported, Trump falsely inflated the size of the
8:29
Speaker 2: crowd at his inauguration.
8:31
Speaker 1: And Trump told the CIA employees that when he'd begun
8:34
Speaker 1: to speak at his inauguration, the rain had stopped immediately.
8:39
Speaker 2: Mary Louise reported, In fact, you could see water beating
8:42
Speaker 2: on the lapel of his coat.
8:44
Speaker 1: But she never said he was lying. And at this point,
8:47
Speaker 1: listeners were furious. Hundreds of people wrote the public editor
8:50
Speaker 1: after Mary Louise Kelly's report saying they were shocked, appalled,
8:54
Speaker 1: horrified by NPR's cowardice. Those are all words from listeners.
8:59
Speaker 1: So NPR went on the air and did a segment
9:01
Speaker 1: to explain their reasoning.
9:02
Speaker 4: President Trump made a string of statements at the CIA
9:04
Speaker 4: over the weekend, but Mary Louise did not use the
9:07
Speaker 4: word lie. And many listeners asked why.
9:10
Speaker 1: Mary Louise, what exactly did people ask you?
9:13
Speaker 2: Why are you pussyfooting around? Why not just say he lied?
9:16
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, pussyfooting was a phrase that someone used.
9:18
Speaker 2: A direct quote that I think a couple of people
9:20
Speaker 2: tweeted at me.
9:21
Speaker 1: Okay, why not say he lied?
9:22
Speaker 2: So this has prompted me to go actually look up
9:24
Speaker 2: the word lie in the Oxford English Dictionary. And here's
9:27
Speaker 2: the definition.
9:28
Speaker 1: I'll read it.
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Speaker 2: A false statement made with intent to deceive. Intent being
9:34
Speaker 2: the key word there. Without the ability to peer into
9:38
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was.
9:42
Speaker 2: I can tell you what he said and how that
9:44
Speaker 2: squares or doesn't with facts.
9:47
Speaker 1: This rationale is not new. I'm sure most of you
9:50
Speaker 1: have heard it before. It's not only at NPR. It's
9:53
Speaker 1: the rationale I internalized early on. And it has some logic.
9:58
Speaker 1: Lying is normal. done on purpose, so we have to
10:02
Speaker 1: have evidence that the person knew what they said was
10:05
Speaker 1: false and said it anyway in order to factually call
10:08
Speaker 1: it a lie. But sometimes in an effort to be precise,
10:13
Speaker 1: you can end up going all the way back around
10:16
Speaker 1: to being not precise at all. Like, sure, you don't
10:18
Speaker 1: technically know if Trump remembered that it was him who
10:22
Speaker 1: started the beef with the CIA. So instead of saying
10:25
Speaker 1: he's telling a lie, you end up saying something like this.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk about what to call a fact that is
10:31
Speaker 4: not a fact.
10:37
Speaker 1: That is something NPR actually said in that segment about
10:40
Speaker 1: the CIA appearance. I find it incredible. A fact that
10:44
Speaker 1: is not a fact. I love you, NPR. but that
10:48
Speaker 1: is not a paragon of clarity, which is one of
10:51
Speaker 1: the standards of NPR's journalism. If it's not a fact,
10:54
Speaker 1: why are we introducing it as one to say it's not?
10:57
Speaker 1: There is an element of farce when you listen back
10:59
Speaker 1: to NPR's coverage from this time. And it's not just NPR,
11:01
Speaker 1: but here we are at an audio conference. In Trump's
11:05
Speaker 1: first term, I picture a bunch of characters from like
11:07
Speaker 1: an Armando Iannucci episode tripping over each other, trying to
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Speaker 1: come up with every euphemism they can to avoid saying
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Speaker 1: the word lie.
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Speaker 5: Call it a deception, an evasion, a technical nicety. NPR
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Speaker 5: will not call it a lie.
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Speaker 1: So this is the first produced segment in which an
11:24
Speaker 1: NPR journalist used the word lie with official top brass
11:28
Speaker 1: approval to refer to the Trump administration. It was media
11:31
Speaker 1: correspondent David Folkenflik who filed a piece about Homeland Security
11:35
Speaker 1: Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denying the existence of a policy to
11:40
Speaker 1: separate immigrant kids from their families. David believed there was
11:43
Speaker 1: evidence that Nielsen intended to speak an untruth, so he
11:47
Speaker 1: wanted to use the word lie. And he told me
11:49
Speaker 1: this kicked off a heated debate at the highest levels
11:52
Speaker 1: of the NPR newsroom. The piece was held for 48
11:55
Speaker 1: hours over this, while they hashed out whether he should
11:58
Speaker 1: be allowed to say lie. Ultimately, he got approval to
12:01
Speaker 1: do it, but there were some conditions. He had to
12:03
Speaker 1: make clear he wasn't speaking for NPR when he used
12:06
Speaker 1: the word, and he couldn't sign off the normal way,
12:09
Speaker 1: you know, like David Folkenflik, NPR News. Here's what he
12:12
Speaker 1: ultimately said.
12:13
Speaker 5: Call it a deception, an evasion, a technical nicety. NPR
12:17
Speaker 5: will not call it a lie because it cannot gauge
12:19
Speaker 5: Nielsen's intent. I don't set NPR policy, but I'd say
12:23
Speaker 5: the word lie fits. But what you call it almost
12:26
Speaker 5: doesn't matter. It's that the media and the public register
12:29
Speaker 5: a fundamental fact. Top people speaking for the United States
12:34
Speaker 5: aren't telling the truth, starting with the president.
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Speaker 1: I'm David Folkenflik. I'm sorry, but I don't know how
12:45
Speaker 1: it almost doesn't matter what you call it. What he
12:48
Speaker 1: wanted to call the statement launched a massive controversy in
12:51
Speaker 1: the newsroom. He was forced to strip his NPR affiliation
12:54
Speaker 1: from his sign-off because he used the word lie. What
12:56
Speaker 1: he called it clearly mattered. I also just want to
12:59
Speaker 1: note here that this question of whether a lie remains
13:02
Speaker 1: a lie if the teller believes it, which apparently is
13:06
Speaker 1: the subject of that Nathan Fielder documentary, which I've not
13:09
Speaker 1: been able to see because I've been at this... Haven't
13:13
Speaker 1: been able to see it because I've been at this
13:14
Speaker 1: fucking conference, but anyway. I think there is latitude in
13:26
Speaker 1: various definitions of the word lie where intent to deceive
13:29
Speaker 1: is not always strictly necessary, if you look at the definitions.
13:32
Speaker 1: I think, for instance, of someone who says that a
13:35
Speaker 1: certain race is inferior. They may believe that, but it's
13:38
Speaker 1: still a fucking lie. As a kicker to all this.
13:43
Speaker 1: When my fact checker reached out to NPR to confirm
13:46
Speaker 1: that David's story was indeed the first time an NPR
13:49
Speaker 1: journalist said that the Trump administration had lied, this is
13:52
Speaker 1: what the PR person responded. What David is saying is
13:57
Speaker 1: somewhat true, but perhaps not literally. That came from a
14:04
Speaker 1: news organization PR person on the record. I think what
14:09
Speaker 1: all this means is that this is evidence this was
14:11
Speaker 1: not a coherent policy. It was a policy driven by fear,
14:15
Speaker 1: which I do get. Calling somebody a liar, through much
14:19
Speaker 1: of history, that kind of shit would land you in
14:20
Speaker 1: a duel. These days, it'll land you in a lawsuit sometimes.
14:25
Speaker 1: The 1908 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary includes a
14:30
Speaker 1: special note under the definition of lie. It says, the
14:33
Speaker 1: word is normally a violent expression of moral reprobation, which
14:37
Speaker 1: in polite conversation tends to be avoided. The synonyms falsehood
14:40
Speaker 1: and untruth being often substituted as relatively euphemistic. So I've
14:45
Speaker 1: been part of plenty of editorial conversations where you're worried
14:48
Speaker 1: about the blowback if you call someone out for lying.
14:51
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say I've always decided to use
14:53
Speaker 1: the word. And even when we do use the word
14:57
Speaker 1: and decide to go through with it, I think our medium, audio,
14:59
Speaker 1: allows you to hear that fearfulness or at least cautiousness
15:03
Speaker 1: that we're pushing through to do it. So this is
15:05
Speaker 1: just another little moment from 2017 in a two-way Lulu
15:08
Speaker 1: Garcia Navarro was talking about Trump's claim about his inauguration
15:11
Speaker 1: being the biggest ever. And she said off the cuff,
15:14
Speaker 1: I think.
15:15
Speaker 6: We should say here, Mara, that that was a.
15:18
Speaker 1: Lie, essentially. You can hear her hesitate there before saying
15:22
Speaker 1: the word. And then she adds the qualifier, a lie, essentially. And,
15:26
Speaker 1: you know, I noticed myself doing something similar in a
15:28
Speaker 1: live onstage interview just a few months ago. I was
15:31
Speaker 1: asking former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair about her old tweets.
15:37
Speaker 1: In 2024, you posted kind of pushing the lie that
15:42
Speaker 1: the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. I said
15:45
Speaker 1: the word. It was accurate. But I can hear myself
15:47
Speaker 1: wavering there, kind of stammering a bit. Am I really
15:50
Speaker 1: going to say this violent expression of moral reprobation to
15:54
Speaker 1: this person's face? What will she do? How will the
15:57
Speaker 1: audience react? Chioki opened the conference by saying our current
16:03
Speaker 1: challenge with the truth feels biblical, and he's right. There's
16:07
Speaker 1: something old and primal at play here with lying. Even
16:10
Speaker 1: my five-year-old has an instinctive reaction to it. Why did
16:13
Speaker 1: we elect a liar? And that's what makes it fraught
16:16
Speaker 1: to accuse somebody of lying, but it's also what makes
16:20
Speaker 1: it fraught to not accuse somebody when it's pretty clear
16:23
Speaker 1: they're doing it. Not lying is one of the Ten Commandments,
16:26
Speaker 1: for Christ's sakes. In the Bible, the devil is the
16:29
Speaker 1: father of lies. In Islam, if you lie, you're condemned
16:32
Speaker 1: to hellfire. In Judaism, lying lips are an abomination. In Zoroastrianism,
16:36
Speaker 1: the word for lie encompasses the entire concept of evil,
16:40
Speaker 1: the word for lie. Humans have recognized from really early
16:44
Speaker 1: on that lying is incredibly corrosive and threatening to the
16:47
Speaker 1: social fabric and have really tried to discourage people from
16:51
Speaker 1: doing it. And modern studies back this up. They show
16:56
Speaker 1: that lies can decreased people's willingness to vaccinate. They've driven
17:00
Speaker 1: people to participate in genocide. They've degraded trust in institutions
17:03
Speaker 1: like ours, journalism and governments and health authorities. They've led
17:07
Speaker 1: to an insurrection. And all of that is not to
17:10
Speaker 1: mention the toll that lies take on our spirit as individuals.
17:18
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to take a quick break here
17:21
Speaker 1: and then continue with the speech in a minute. Before
17:33
Speaker 1: we pick back up with my treatise on lying, I
17:36
Speaker 1: do want to say I was speaking to a room
17:38
Speaker 1: with a lot of current and former NPR journalists, myself included.
17:43
Speaker 1: My work has been shaped heavily by NPR. So to
17:45
Speaker 1: be occupationally self-reflective, I used NPR as my case study.
17:50
Speaker 1: But my critique could have been about any number of
17:52
Speaker 1: major U.S. news outlets, from The New York Times to
17:54
Speaker 1: The Post to The Journal. all of whom made similar
17:57
Speaker 1: choices about using the word lie, particularly in the first
18:01
Speaker 1: Trump term. The reluctance to use it persists. Just the
18:04
Speaker 1: other day, the Times ran a fact-check article I saw
18:07
Speaker 1: all about Trump's false claims regarding the upcoming elections that
18:11
Speaker 1: used the word falsehoods in the headline instead of lies.
18:14
Speaker 1: NPR did start using the word lie more over the years,
18:18
Speaker 1: specifically in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, when
18:22
Speaker 1: Trump began lying that it was stolen from him, and
18:25
Speaker 1: also during the 2024 election when Trump, J.D. Vance, and
18:28
Speaker 1: others were spreading lies about Haitians in Ohio eating pets
18:32
Speaker 1: and also about FEMA disaster relief after Hurricane Helene. In
18:37
Speaker 1: speaking to NPR journalists after my talk, some people said
18:40
Speaker 1: they still have the sense that they're supposed to steer
18:42
Speaker 1: clear of the word lie and do. Others told me
18:45
Speaker 1: they've used the word without getting special approval and without incident.
18:49
Speaker 1: As NPR's public editor said to me in an email,
18:51
Speaker 1: NPR is very much a group of individual products that
18:54
Speaker 1: do not move in unison on an issue like this.
18:57
Speaker 1: A longtime former NPR staffer who was involved in enforcing
19:00
Speaker 1: the lie policy said that they still feel, as they
19:03
Speaker 1: did back in 2016, that the word lie is divisive,
19:06
Speaker 1: and they would look for more thorough ways to describe
19:08
Speaker 1: someone's actions that didn't speak to intent, let the listeners
19:12
Speaker 1: draw their own conclusions, and that any editor or reporter
19:15
Speaker 1: covering politics and D.C. was aware to not use the
19:18
Speaker 1: word lie except on very rare occasions. To their knowledge,
19:21
Speaker 1: the policy was never updated after 2017. I asked NPR
19:25
Speaker 1: if there's been a formal change in the policy since then,
19:27
Speaker 1: but they didn't respond. Okay, here's the rest of my talk.
19:33
Speaker 1: If you start digging into the history of lying, you're
19:35
Speaker 1: going to end up spending some time with this guy,
19:37
Speaker 1: one of the OG thinkers about it, St. Augustine. Augustine
19:42
Speaker 1: was haunted by lying. He spent years studying it. He
19:45
Speaker 1: wrote two treatises on it in the fourth and fifth centuries.
19:48
Speaker 1: To him, lying was so troubling because the lying mouth
19:52
Speaker 1: slays the soul. There's a serious moral injury that results
19:58
Speaker 1: from lying that you don't have to be religious to recognize,
20:01
Speaker 1: I think. I have this kind of, I don't know,
20:04
Speaker 1: I guess I'd say like a journalistic pet topic. I'm
20:07
Speaker 1: really interested in people who believed political lies, but then
20:11
Speaker 1: changed their minds to accept the truth. They're not easy
20:14
Speaker 1: to find, these people, but when we do, we try
20:16
Speaker 1: to tell their stories on our show, question everything. And
20:19
Speaker 1: it's in talking to them and hearing from them that's
20:22
Speaker 1: given me more of an appreciation, I think, for the destructive,
20:25
Speaker 1: but often internal and unspoken and hard-to-put-your-finger-on ways that lies
20:30
Speaker 1: affect us. So just... One example, this woman my producer
20:35
Speaker 1: and I met at the Iowa State Fair last year
20:37
Speaker 1: named Kate. Kate grew up believing that the Sandy Hook
20:41
Speaker 1: school shooting was a hoax. Her dad was a big
20:44
Speaker 1: Alex Jones listener who pushed that and right after the
20:47
Speaker 1: shooting happened, he told her it wasn't real, that it
20:50
Speaker 1: was a staged event with actors meant to justify gun control.
20:54
Speaker 1: Kate was 14 and she believed this for years until
20:59
Speaker 1: one day during a seminar in college when her professor
21:02
Speaker 1: had their class do an exercise about Sandy Hook on
21:05
Speaker 1: the anniversary.
21:06
Speaker 3: That day was just like, Hey, today's the anniversary of,
21:08
Speaker 3: of Sandy Hook. And I think we had probably a
21:11
Speaker 3: journal prompt of like, what are your thoughts on this?
21:16
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, wow, everyone around
21:20
Speaker 3: me is, you know, profusely writing and like some are
21:24
Speaker 3: even getting teary eyed. And then we talk about it
21:28
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I've written nothing down. I don't, know
21:33
Speaker 3: what to feel. And then we all spoke about it
21:36
Speaker 3: and I had to share like with my partner. I
21:38
Speaker 3: was like, I am realizing right now.
21:41
Speaker 7: That this is real.
21:44
Speaker 3: I like very scaredly shared that to my class. I
21:47
Speaker 3: was like, you guys, like, I don't feel anything right now.
21:51
Speaker 3: Like as you're all like very emotional, like I feel nothing.
21:58
Speaker 2: That night for sure.
22:00
Speaker 3: I felt really distracted with it. I looked up like
22:03
Speaker 3: Sandy Hook stuff and tried to see videos again in
22:07
Speaker 3: a new light from the news of like, you know,
22:11
Speaker 3: did this look like it was fake in any sort
22:13
Speaker 3: of way that I would have thought, you know, these
22:16
Speaker 3: people are acting funny and these are actors. And it
22:20
Speaker 3: was like, no, these people are clearly grieving their children
22:25
Speaker 3: and like loved ones and still just like feeling guilty
22:28
Speaker 3: that I didn't feel anything while reading about it, and
22:32
Speaker 3: even to this day. I mean, I have to, like,
22:34
Speaker 3: force myself to feel something for this day. No other
22:37
Speaker 3: school shootings do I feel that way, you know. But still,
22:40
Speaker 3: Sandy Hook, in my brain, I have to actively be like,
22:43
Speaker 3: this was real.
22:45
Speaker 1: People died.
22:46
Speaker 7: It was bad.
22:50
Speaker 1: Like, feel something.
22:51
Speaker 5: Feel something.
22:52
Speaker 1: You're poking your head right now.
22:55
Speaker 7: Yeah.
22:56
Speaker 1: Feel something, brain.
22:57
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
22:59
Speaker 3: Because, I mean, I'm a very emotional person, and every
23:02
Speaker 3: time I hear about a school shooting now, especially when it's,
23:06
Speaker 3: you know, little kids like that, it's heartbreaking.
23:09
Speaker 1: It's gut-wrenching.
23:10
Speaker 3: It has me, you know, posting on my social media and, like,
23:13
Speaker 3: calling for gun reform and has me wondering, when will
23:20
Speaker 3: it be enough? Yet that one, you know, was so terrible,
23:26
Speaker 3: but I didn't feel that way yet. and that.
23:31
Speaker 1: It still is just this like hole.
23:36
Speaker 3: I felt so ashamed.
23:40
Speaker 1: Alex Jones's lie about the Sandy Hook families had lots
23:43
Speaker 1: of very tangible dark effects. People who believe this harassed
23:48
Speaker 1: the families of the kids who were killed for years,
23:50
Speaker 1: tortured them online, threatened to kill them, accosted them in
23:53
Speaker 1: person on the street. Some of these families had to
23:55
Speaker 1: go into hiding. This is while they were grieving the
23:58
Speaker 1: worst tragedy imaginable. One father said the lie made his
24:01
Speaker 1: life a living hell. In Kate's case, she didn't do
24:05
Speaker 1: anything outwardly harmful because she believed this lie, but she
24:10
Speaker 1: was harmed by it. It cauterized her ability to care
24:13
Speaker 1: about other people, which she feels is an essential part
24:16
Speaker 1: of her. The lie robbed her of part of her humanity.
24:20
Speaker 1: This is what lies do, lies about immigrants being dangerous
24:24
Speaker 1: or Jews infiltrating or all Palestinians being terrorists. They at
24:28
Speaker 1: best erode empathy and at worst stir hate. And it
24:31
Speaker 1: has real political effects. With Kate, it prevented her from
24:35
Speaker 1: taking action in favor of gun control that she believes
24:38
Speaker 1: she would have otherwise taken had she known the truth.
24:41
Speaker 1: I think by avoiding the word lie and putting it
24:44
Speaker 1: behind this break only in case of emergency glass, journalists,
24:48
Speaker 1: we've allowed ourselves to avoid truly engaging with the moral
24:52
Speaker 1: and emotional dimensions of being lied to or lied about
24:56
Speaker 1: or lied in front of. And when we do that,
24:59
Speaker 1: it's like a signal to people that we just aren't
25:01
Speaker 1: in touch with reality. So many of us are living
25:03
Speaker 1: with the experience of feeling manipulated if we believed a
25:07
Speaker 1: lie or feeling disrespected if we were lied to but
25:10
Speaker 1: knew it was happening or living with the implications of
25:13
Speaker 1: being lied about, like being deported or attacked or having
25:16
Speaker 1: your rights stripped away. I don't think a falsehood achieves
25:20
Speaker 1: those ends, or an unfounded claim, or a baseless conspiracy,
25:24
Speaker 1: which are the terms news outlets like NPR use to
25:26
Speaker 1: describe Jones's poisonous bullshit for a decade. A lie does that.
25:33
Speaker 1: And what gives the lie its unique power is exactly
25:36
Speaker 1: the thing that a lot of us as journalists say
25:39
Speaker 1: stops us from using the word, intent. This wasn't some
25:43
Speaker 1: passive fiction floating on the breeze like a spore that
25:46
Speaker 1: landed on Kate. It was a story created and given
25:49
Speaker 1: velocity and power by human beings, people like Alex Jones
25:52
Speaker 1: who knew it wasn't true and were wielding it to
25:55
Speaker 1: gain something. St. Augustine had a name for what we're
26:00
Speaker 1: referring to as intent behind a lie. He called it
26:03
Speaker 1: valentis falendi, the will to deceive. For Augustine, this is
26:11
Speaker 1: what makes a lie so wicked, not the falsity of
26:14
Speaker 1: the statement, but the human will to deceive another human
26:18
Speaker 1: that drives the false statement. And if you read Augustine's
26:21
Speaker 1: essay on lying, it's really interesting. You see him wrestling
26:25
Speaker 1: through every different possible permutation there might be of the
26:30
Speaker 1: reason for a lie and the impact the lie had.
26:33
Speaker 1: And he's kind of wondering, are any of these justified?
26:35
Speaker 1: And then ranking them from worst to bad. So there's
26:38
Speaker 1: lies against God, a lie meant to hurt somebody but
26:41
Speaker 1: with no clear benefit to the liar, a lie that
26:44
Speaker 1: hurts somebody that does benefit the liar, A lie somebody
26:47
Speaker 1: just tells because they get a kick out of lying,
26:49
Speaker 1: I guess. A lie somebody tells at a party to
26:52
Speaker 1: flatter somebody with small talk, that's one. And then a
26:54
Speaker 1: so-called noble lie, a lie that's intended to help somebody
26:57
Speaker 1: with little harm. And these are all still sins to Augustine.
27:01
Speaker 1: After kind of really thinking through it, he decides that
27:03
Speaker 1: lying is never OK. But what I got from this,
27:06
Speaker 1: like the point, is that he cares about the why
27:10
Speaker 1: behind the lie. He wants to understand the liar's intent
27:13
Speaker 1: and their motive. It's an essential part of understanding the lie.
27:17
Speaker 1: And I think that's just a natural thing to wonder about.
27:19
Speaker 1: Why is somebody lying to me? Why is somebody lying
27:22
Speaker 1: about me? I hear from people a lot when I
27:25
Speaker 1: talk to them. Kate brought it up about the Sandy
27:27
Speaker 1: Hook lie.
27:28
Speaker 3: Why would Alex Jones make that whole thing up?
27:32
Speaker 1: Why would he do that? Well, he was making a
27:35
Speaker 1: lot of money off of it.
27:36
Speaker 7: Right.
27:38
Speaker 1: It's such a simple thing actually when you think about it.
27:41
Speaker 1: Like it was the first thing my kid asked when
27:43
Speaker 1: I told her the president lies a lot, why? That's
27:46
Speaker 1: the human part of this that I think we leave
27:49
Speaker 1: out when we pussyfoot around a lie. And it gets
27:52
Speaker 1: to something bigger than a word choice. I think it
27:53
Speaker 1: points towards maybe a way, and I'll just put it
27:56
Speaker 1: out there for you guys who see what you think,
27:58
Speaker 1: that we can start reconceiving of our jobs. So in
28:01
Speaker 1: that 2017 NPR segment where Mary Louise Kelly outlined her
28:05
Speaker 1: reasoning for not saying that Donald Trump had lied to
28:08
Speaker 1: the CIA, She was joined by Michael Oreskes, who was
28:11
Speaker 1: the senior VP of News. And on the air, he
28:17
Speaker 1: laid out a vision of what journalists do. It's worth
28:20
Speaker 1: noting that several years after this, Michael Oreskes was asked
28:23
Speaker 1: to resign after repeated allegations that he'd sexually harassed women.
28:27
Speaker 1: And in speaking to NPR's investigators, depending on your definition
28:30
Speaker 1: of the word, he arguably lied about the extent of
28:33
Speaker 1: his misconduct. But here on NPR's air, he talked about
28:36
Speaker 1: how using the word lie, in his view, was actually
28:39
Speaker 1: antithetical to our job as journalists. And what he said
28:43
Speaker 1: here was also written down in NPR's formal guidance.
28:46
Speaker 6: Our job as journalists is to report, to find facts,
28:51
Speaker 6: establish their authenticity, and share them with everybody. And I
28:55
Speaker 6: think that when you use words like lie, it gets
28:57
Speaker 6: in the way of that. And it's really important that
29:00
Speaker 6: people understand that these aren't our opinions. These aren't just
29:04
Speaker 6: thoughts we happen to have. These are things we've established
29:08
Speaker 6: through our journalism, through our reporting. And I don't want
29:11
Speaker 6: to do anything that gets in the way of people
29:13
Speaker 6: seeing that reporting. And I think the minute you start
29:15
Speaker 6: branding things with a word like lie, you push people
29:19
Speaker 6: away from you.
29:21
Speaker 1: It's ironic that in a statement where Oreskes is saying
29:23
Speaker 1: he wants people to know that journalists aren't just spewing
29:25
Speaker 1: our opinions and thoughts, as far as I can tell,
29:28
Speaker 1: This is a pure opinion about the effect of the
29:30
Speaker 1: word lie. I found no research to back this assertion up,
29:33
Speaker 1: that the word lie pushes people away. I asked NPR
29:36
Speaker 1: if they know of any research that does. They didn't
29:38
Speaker 1: point me to anything. I think this is more a
29:41
Speaker 1: reflection of fear than anything of alienating hypothetical listeners. When
29:46
Speaker 1: in reality, there is research showing that if you know
29:49
Speaker 1: somebody is trying to deceive you, that can be really
29:52
Speaker 1: impactful information. That knowledge plays a role in how you
29:55
Speaker 1: think about the source and whether to trust them. There
29:58
Speaker 1: was this experiment from scientists at Boston College, researchers told
30:04
Speaker 1: participants a fact. So in this case, the fact was
30:08
Speaker 1: a journalist learned that 463 people attended a local politician's
30:13
Speaker 1: campaign rally. And the people who were told that the
30:17
Speaker 1: journalist's intent was to deceive them were three times more
30:21
Speaker 1: likely to consider the report false. Which is telling, but
30:24
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a duh finding. It doesn't feel
30:27
Speaker 1: like rocket science that being told that someone is trying
30:29
Speaker 1: to deceive you and why they're trying to deceive you
30:32
Speaker 1: will probably make you trust them less. People care about this.
30:36
Speaker 1: They care about intent. They care about the why. So
30:39
Speaker 1: what if we reoriented and refocused our journalism around that?
30:45
Speaker 1: I know that NPR and probably others have said that
30:48
Speaker 1: they can't know Donald Trump or any subject's intent because
30:51
Speaker 1: they can't peer inside their head. But I disagree. Intent
30:56
Speaker 1: and motive are reportable. They're part of legal cases all
30:59
Speaker 1: the time, and this can be a more regular part
31:01
Speaker 1: of journalism. Decades before he was president, Trump explained his
31:06
Speaker 1: philosophy about lying in The Art of the Deal. He
31:09
Speaker 1: said this. He said, I call it truthful hyperbole. It's
31:13
Speaker 1: an innocent form of exaggeration and a very effective form
31:16
Speaker 1: of promotion. And people reported on this passage in his
31:19
Speaker 1: first presidency. But just imagine, what if it was mentioned
31:23
Speaker 1: every time NPR was covering Trump's claim that the inauguration
31:27
Speaker 1: crowd was five times the size it was. You'd report
31:30
Speaker 1: that the number was wrong, sure, but the report could
31:33
Speaker 1: be more tuned to this, reminding listeners every time of
31:37
Speaker 1: his stated intent to deceive them. Or here, in 2018,
31:42
Speaker 1: Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes explained to a room of
31:45
Speaker 1: journalists at a conference kind of like this one that
31:48
Speaker 1: Trump told her directly why he bashed the media so
31:51
Speaker 1: much and spread lies Like we're the enemy of the people.
31:54
Speaker 8: And it's just me and my boss and him. He
31:57
Speaker 8: has a huge office. And he's attacking the press. And
32:00
Speaker 8: there were no cameras. There was nothing going on. And
32:02
Speaker 8: I said, you know, that is getting tired. Why are
32:06
Speaker 8: you doing this? You're doing it over and over, and
32:08
Speaker 8: it's boring, and it's time to end that. You've won
32:12
Speaker 8: the nomination. And why do you keep hammering at this?
32:18
Speaker 8: And he said, you know why I do it? I
32:21
Speaker 8: do it to discredit you all and demean you all
32:23
Speaker 8: so when you write negative stories about me, no one
32:26
Speaker 8: will believe you. Is that that? So put that in
32:31
Speaker 8: your head for a minute.
32:33
Speaker 7: Yeah.
32:34
Speaker 8: Now are we ready for questions?
32:36
Speaker 2: We're all absorbing what you just said.
32:41
Speaker 1: Tons of respect for Leslie Stahl, but I do find
32:43
Speaker 1: it frustrating that she's sharing that two years after the
32:45
Speaker 1: fact at a conference of just journalists. It's something only
32:49
Speaker 1: we would care about. What if she, just imagine this,
32:52
Speaker 1: leaned into that admission from Trump at the time and
32:54
Speaker 1: treated it like a scoop, reported it right then, big story,
32:58
Speaker 1: 60-minute style, Trump admits he trashes the press to trick
33:01
Speaker 1: you into not believing the truth. She could have pushed
33:05
Speaker 1: Trump to address it on camera, made it a regular
33:07
Speaker 1: part of 60 minutes coverage of him every time he
33:10
Speaker 1: lied about the press, explained this is why he was
33:12
Speaker 1: doing it. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the expert on authoritarianism, has a
33:18
Speaker 1: phrase she uses to describe something I think similar to
33:21
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here. It's a tactic for journalists
33:24
Speaker 1: to use with authoritarian liars. She calls it expose the device.
33:30
Speaker 1: She advises journalists not to get in too much of
33:33
Speaker 1: a back and forth with a liar over facts. You
33:35
Speaker 1: should state the facts, obviously, but then focus on drawing
33:39
Speaker 1: out and articulating clearly the reason for the lie. What
33:43
Speaker 1: purpose does the lie serve? And what are the mechanics
33:45
Speaker 1: behind how the lie is being manufactured and spread. An
33:50
Speaker 1: example of this happened when Dana Bash was interviewing JD
33:53
Speaker 1: Vance on CNN a few days after he spread the
33:56
Speaker 1: lie on TV that Haitians in Ohio were eating domestic pets.
34:00
Speaker 1: For more than 10 minutes, Dana Bash and JD Vance
34:03
Speaker 1: play fact tennis over whether or not those claims are real.
34:06
Speaker 1: And JD Vance, as he does, kind of very smoothly
34:08
Speaker 1: dips and dodges and bats her fact checks away until
34:12
Speaker 1: finally he lets this slip.
34:15
Speaker 9: Kamala Harris let criminal migrants into this country who then
34:18
Speaker 9: murdered their children. The American media totally ignored this stuff
34:22
Speaker 9: until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.
34:25
Speaker 1: If I have to, if I have to.
34:27
Speaker 9: Create stories so that the American media actually pays attention
34:31
Speaker 9: to the suffering of the American people, then that's what
34:34
Speaker 9: I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely
34:37
Speaker 9: letting Kamala Harris coast.
34:40
Speaker 1: That's the device exposed. He reveals the purpose of the lie.
34:44
Speaker 1: He says he makes up stories and, to get the
34:46
Speaker 1: media to pay attention to what he wants them to
34:48
Speaker 1: pay attention to. And to think there's a problem in
34:51
Speaker 1: Ohio with Haitians. You can feel how that moment lands
34:54
Speaker 1: differently than the straight up fact checking. Interestingly, Dana never
34:59
Speaker 1: used the word lie in this segment, which was like 15,
35:02
Speaker 1: 20 minutes. And I think that's kind of instructive. I
35:05
Speaker 1: personally think we should use the word lie more when
35:07
Speaker 1: it's accurate. But being real, I don't think news organizations
35:11
Speaker 1: are really gonna start doing this in any meaningful way soon.
35:14
Speaker 1: And even if they did, That change alone wouldn't be enough.
35:18
Speaker 1: I think reporting on the intent and motives of the
35:21
Speaker 1: people using lies and deception to benefit themselves and hurt others,
35:25
Speaker 1: that's what's most important. So I think if we were
35:28
Speaker 1: to make that one of our core missions as journalists,
35:31
Speaker 1: it could make a real difference without requiring us to
35:34
Speaker 1: use the word lie all the time. Exposing the device,
35:37
Speaker 1: I think, is a helpful way to think about this
35:38
Speaker 1: bigger thing that I'm pushing for, which is report rigorously, clearly, relentlessly,
35:44
Speaker 1: creatively about the human intent behind the lies, whatever you
35:48
Speaker 1: ultimately call them. And so I've started trying to collect
35:51
Speaker 1: little examples of this whenever I notice it. I'll just
35:53
Speaker 1: run through a few so you can keep in your
35:55
Speaker 1: head and think about how you might incorporate this in
35:57
Speaker 1: your work. This one's from Isaac Saul, who publishes a
36:01
Speaker 1: newsletter called Tangle. He wrote a very long newsletter about
36:06
Speaker 1: the propaganda film 2000 Mules by Dinesh D'Souza when it
36:10
Speaker 1: came out, which pushed a ton of lies about the
36:12
Speaker 1: 2020 election being rigged. And this is all the fact check.
36:15
Speaker 1: This is a very, very, very, very, very long fact
36:17
Speaker 1: check of all the claims in the movie. But at
36:20
Speaker 1: the end of it, Isaac really interestingly includes this section.
36:24
Speaker 1: He writes, I've learned over the years that identifying motives
36:26
Speaker 1: is often the best way to accurately suss out what
36:28
Speaker 1: is going on. And then he outlines for his readers
36:31
Speaker 1: what D'Souza and others involved in the film stood to
36:34
Speaker 1: gain from pushing the election lies. Millions of dollars, maybe
36:37
Speaker 1: a pardon. And I think this is a good example
36:40
Speaker 1: because my team and I actually know it worked. Our producer,
36:43
Speaker 1: Zach St. Louis, who's here, interviewed multiple conservative readers of
36:46
Speaker 1: Tangle who believed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,
36:50
Speaker 1: who then read Isaac's reporting and came to realize it
36:53
Speaker 1: wasn't true. One of them specifically said he believed the
36:56
Speaker 1: claims in this movie, 2000 Mules, until he read this
37:00
Speaker 1: newsletter post and realized the filmmakers were lying to him.
37:04
Speaker 1: And just one more that I kind of find creatively inspiring.
37:06
Speaker 1: This is from one of the most legendary investigative reporters
37:10
Speaker 1: of our era, I'd say, Barton Gelman, who brought us
37:13
Speaker 1: the Edward Snowden leaks. In the fall of 2020, as
37:17
Speaker 1: the presidential election approached, Barton saw what a lot of
37:20
Speaker 1: us were seeing. Trump was lying repeatedly about the integrity
37:24
Speaker 1: of the election system, saying that mail-in voting was rigged.
37:28
Speaker 1: And Barton published a cover story in The Atlantic where
37:31
Speaker 1: he reported out the future. He reported... that Donald Trump's
37:36
Speaker 1: intent in spewing these lies was so that he could
37:39
Speaker 1: refuse to give out power. And it's an incredible story.
37:42
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've read it. He talks to
37:44
Speaker 1: election officials and experts around the country, and he reports
37:48
Speaker 1: out in the future what will happen as a result
37:51
Speaker 1: of the election lies. He even in that story predicts
37:55
Speaker 1: January 6th as a day that would likely explode in
37:58
Speaker 1: chaos and threaten the transfer of power. And the story
38:01
Speaker 1: may have my favorite nut graph ever, Let us not
38:05
Speaker 1: hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose,
38:07
Speaker 1: but he will never concede, not under any circumstance. If
38:11
Speaker 1: compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will
38:13
Speaker 1: insist from exile as long as he draws breath that
38:16
Speaker 1: the contest was rigged. Maybe you hesitate. Is it a
38:20
Speaker 1: fact that if Trump loses, he will reject defeat come
38:23
Speaker 1: what may? Do we know that? Technically, you feel obliged
38:26
Speaker 1: to point out the proposition is framed in the future
38:28
Speaker 1: conditional and prophecy is no man's gift and so forth.
38:32
Speaker 1: With all due respect, that is pedophagy. We know this man.
38:36
Speaker 1: We can't afford to pretend. He got the word pedophagy
38:40
Speaker 1: into that nut graph, among everything else. I asked Barton
38:46
Speaker 1: what it felt like to write this. He wrote this,
38:48
Speaker 1: I believe it was like September before the election in November,
38:51
Speaker 1: before January 6th. How did it feel at that point
38:55
Speaker 1: to report that statement as fact?
38:58
Speaker 7: So, of course, my editors interrogated that. They did?
39:03
Speaker 1: Okay, I was wondering, yeah. Tell me about the reaction
39:06
Speaker 1: of your editors.
39:10
Speaker 7: Don't we want to say unlikely to?
39:14
Speaker 1: He's unlikely to concede.
39:15
Speaker 7: Yes. Or there's a risk. And I said, no, it's
39:19
Speaker 7: actually really central to this story. I want to make
39:22
Speaker 7: this a flatly stated premise. This is going to happen.
39:29
Speaker 7: I make a prediction. I believe it is bulletproof. But obviously,
39:36
Speaker 7: it's not literally possible for me to know this now.
39:40
Speaker 7: But let's just suppose this is true. Then what?
39:43
Speaker 1: Did it feel like you were kind of innovating a bit?
39:46
Speaker 1: Or did it feel like a moment in your career
39:48
Speaker 1: where you were taking a bit of a leap?
39:51
Speaker 7: It did. I'd never done something like this before. It
39:54
Speaker 7: was not, strictly speaking, traditional kind of evidence-based journalism. But
40:01
Speaker 7: I thought as a story device, it was essential to
40:08
Speaker 7: raise the alarm the way I thought it needed to
40:11
Speaker 7: be raised.
40:14
Speaker 1: We have to be creative like this. And I think
40:17
Speaker 1: all of us can do this. That's what I find
40:20
Speaker 1: energizing about this approach. It's nimble and expansive. It's really
40:25
Speaker 1: a way that you can start thinking about every aspect
40:27
Speaker 1: of how we do our work, from story choice to
40:29
Speaker 1: interview questions to writing to business strategy of a media outlet.
40:35
Speaker 1: Whether we work in an old school newsroom or independent
40:38
Speaker 1: or if you're a student or if you're doing yaps
40:41
Speaker 1: on TikTok, you can find ways, big and small, to
40:44
Speaker 1: focus on the human intent. And if you work in
40:46
Speaker 1: an outlet that's tough and they won't let you call
40:48
Speaker 1: a lie a lie, that's okay. I think you can
40:51
Speaker 1: still get these moves past your editors. All right, before
40:55
Speaker 1: we go, I know I'm the last one speaking here
40:57
Speaker 1: and everyone's tired, but as the final presenter at this
41:00
Speaker 1: conference about the many threats that face the press and
41:03
Speaker 1: democracy and truth itself right now, I feel a bit
41:07
Speaker 1: of an obligation to say this. None of what I
41:09
Speaker 1: just mentioned will be enough to save us. New interview tactics,
41:14
Speaker 1: crafty nut graphs, the most aggressive investigative reporting in the
41:17
Speaker 1: world even will not be enough. I don't think anything
41:20
Speaker 1: I've heard these three days alone will be enough from
41:23
Speaker 1: every amazing presenter who's thinking hard about this. If we
41:26
Speaker 1: want to preserve a free press and a free society,
41:30
Speaker 1: I'm convinced we're going to have to like really reconceive
41:33
Speaker 1: of our jobs in like the biggest sense possible. We're
41:37
Speaker 1: going to have to do things that many of us
41:39
Speaker 1: are not used to doing as journalists, things that make
41:41
Speaker 1: us uncomfortable. We should, for instance, be advocating for tech
41:45
Speaker 1: policy and regulation. Tech platforms are the fields where battles
41:56
Speaker 1: over truth and lies are won and lost. And right
41:59
Speaker 1: now the incentives driving virality on these platforms are totally
42:02
Speaker 1: fucked and the accountability is absent. But there are humans
42:06
Speaker 1: who are designing these things. They have motives to accrete
42:09
Speaker 1: money and power. And they can be pushed to make
42:12
Speaker 1: different design choices that incentivize more reliable information and fewer lies.
42:17
Speaker 1: But it's going to take advocacy for legislation and policy change.
42:21
Speaker 1: And that is not at odds with our role as journalists.
42:25
Speaker 1: One of the journalistic icons of our time, Maria Ressa,
42:27
Speaker 1: who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her journalism in
42:30
Speaker 1: the Philippines, has been banging on this drum for years
42:33
Speaker 1: trying to warn the US and other countries that unregulated
42:36
Speaker 1: tech platforms are misinforming the public driving a rise in authoritarianism,
42:40
Speaker 1: and we need to be following her lead. Also, I
42:43
Speaker 1: think as an industry, we should be working on large-scale
42:46
Speaker 1: litigation strategies. Defamation law is being used against us to
42:51
Speaker 1: suppress public interest reporting, but defamation law can also be
42:55
Speaker 1: used for good to punish lying and incentivize truth-telling, and
42:59
Speaker 1: I think there are creative ways we could be a
43:00
Speaker 1: part of that. There are some very novel Cases right now,
43:04
Speaker 1: for instance, where people are suing AI companies for their
43:07
Speaker 1: chatbots lying about them. And the companies are claiming that
43:10
Speaker 1: the chatbots can't defame them because there's no human intent.
43:15
Speaker 1: But humans control this technology. I don't think we can
43:19
Speaker 1: afford to sit on the sidelines and just document these cases.
43:22
Speaker 1: We should figure out ways to get involved. Maybe we
43:24
Speaker 1: scout plaintiffs. Maybe we raise legal funds. Maybe some of
43:27
Speaker 1: us who are defamed on these platforms become plaintiffs ourselves.
43:30
Speaker 1: We need to make these companies liable for their defamatory lies.
43:34
Speaker 1: And that, hopefully, can do some part to force them
43:36
Speaker 1: to be designed to prioritize facts. We also need to
43:40
Speaker 1: be inventing new products and technology ourselves. Our show just
43:45
Speaker 1: got pitched a partnership with NewsGuard, which has created a
43:47
Speaker 1: news-based AI chat bot that relies on vetted sources. And
43:51
Speaker 1: it pays those sources when their information is used by
43:53
Speaker 1: the bot. This is DebunkBot, which we've reported on, which
43:56
Speaker 1: was created by researchers at Cornell, psychology researchers, to convince
44:00
Speaker 1: people out of conspiracy theories. There are also a bunch
44:03
Speaker 1: of journalists doing interesting things who are trying to make
44:06
Speaker 1: entirely new social media platforms based not around rage and engagement,
44:10
Speaker 1: but discourse and reliable news. If you have skills like this,
44:14
Speaker 1: I don't, but entrepreneurship, engineering, a psych background, really consider
44:19
Speaker 1: how you might use those and apply them to support
44:21
Speaker 1: the truth. And then lastly, we need to be thinking
44:24
Speaker 1: as creatively about the media business as we are about
44:28
Speaker 1: the editorial, and I think raising capital to make meaningful moves. Um,
44:33
Speaker 1: what I find most inspiring kind of in that realm
44:35
Speaker 1: right now is the onion. Um, lots of, you know, this,
44:46
Speaker 1: I'm sure, you know, the onion came up with this
44:47
Speaker 1: ingenious way to buy Alex Jones's Infowars media company out
44:52
Speaker 1: of bankruptcy, which it was in because the Sandy hook
44:55
Speaker 1: families he defamed had sued him for over a billion dollars. Um,
44:59
Speaker 1: the onion raised money from a gun control nonprofit. got
45:02
Speaker 1: the buy-in of the affected Sandy Hook families, bought InfoWars
45:06
Speaker 1: at auction, making sure the money would go to the
45:08
Speaker 1: families because Alex Jones is not paying them currently, hasn't
45:11
Speaker 1: paid them a dime. And it's not always been smooth.
45:14
Speaker 1: They've had to fight lots of legal shenanigans. There's been delays.
45:17
Speaker 1: You know, Jones has delayed things. But they've just started
45:21
Speaker 1: to use the channels to undermine and satirize one of
45:23
Speaker 1: the most gruesome liars out there. And their business is
45:26
Speaker 1: thriving doing it. So I think we've got to find
45:28
Speaker 1: and create more opportunities like this. You know, oligarchs aligned
45:32
Speaker 1: with the administration, are consolidating big media companies before our eyes.
45:36
Speaker 1: There are creative maneuvers out there like this that we
45:38
Speaker 1: can do as journalists, independent outlets, nonprofits. Who can we
45:42
Speaker 1: buy up? Who can we partner with? Whatever a lie
45:47
Speaker 1: might be, whatever way we define it, whatever its metaphysics,
45:51
Speaker 1: we can say things very confidently about what a lie does.
45:55
Speaker 1: A road's trust pits neighbor against neighbor, abets corruption and
45:59
Speaker 1: fascism and violence, and existentially threatens our jobs as journalists.
46:05
Speaker 1: So let's start fucking acting like it. Give it up
46:13
Speaker 1: for Brian Reed. Hey, yo, Brian.
46:20
Speaker 7: Hey, yo, Brian, for real, for real? Yeah.
46:23
Speaker 4: That's what I'm talking about.
46:26
Speaker 1: Hell yeah.
46:26
Speaker 7: Yeah.
46:38
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to my treatise on the nature
46:40
Speaker 1: of lies. I'm very curious to hear what you all
46:43
Speaker 1: think of this. Please let me know on Instagram at
46:46
Speaker 1: questioneverything.podcast or on Substack, questioneverything.substack.com or you can always hit
46:52
Speaker 1: me up on Signal, brihreed. 45, B-R-I-H-R-E-E-D.45. If you like this show,
47:01
Speaker 1: please rate and review us on your podcast app of
47:04
Speaker 1: choice and share it with a friend. Like right now,
47:07
Speaker 1: while I'm telling you, text it to them. My speech
47:11
Speaker 1: was edited by Neil Drumming and Ted Scheinman. Robin Semien
47:14
Speaker 1: and I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our
47:17
Speaker 1: team also includes executive editor Kevin Sullivan, producers Zach St. Louis,
47:20
Speaker 1: Sam Egan, and Tracy Hunt, contributing editor Jen Kinney, associate
47:24
Speaker 1: producer Kevin Shepard, and contributing producer Sean Cole. This episode
47:27
Speaker 1: was fact-checked by Annika Robbins. Mixing and sound design by
47:30
Speaker 1: Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Abby Kwong
47:33
Speaker 1: runs our social media. Special thanks to everyone at the
47:36
Speaker 1: Resonate Podcast Festival, which was so great this year. including
47:39
Speaker 1: Andre Medina, Hannah McHugh, Hala Al-Tanawi, and of course, Chioki Ianson.
47:45
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Mark and Alicia Smith, and our partners
47:48
Speaker 1: at KCRW, who include Arnie Seipel, Tejla Jamera, Natalie Hill,
47:52
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. We will see you on the other
47:55
Speaker 1: side of the midterms.