“Media in the Age of New Technology: Fake News, Information Overload & Media Literacy”

Schieffer

(Panelists Tim Wu (originator of “net neutrality”); Franklin Foer; Maria Hinojosa; David Goodman. Moderator: news legend Bob Schieffer)

“Satan has come back to Earth disguised as a smart phone.” The communications revolution has profoundly affected our culture, especially how we get our news. Most now get some or all from social media — but it’s not vetted.

Facebook and Google until recently saw themselves as tech companies, but they’ve really become media gatekeepers (the most powerful in history).

They profit from attracting eyeballs. And having a ton of data which clues them in to what’s in your head, their algorithms try to show you things you’re apt to click on.

In the 2016 campaign, Trump seemed to understand it was similarly a battle for attention. His campaign was tailored to getting it, and the media played along, giving him around $5 billion worth of free air time, far more than other candidates.

It made the election into a circus; but people like circuses. (Clinton in contrast didn’t even try playing that game, instead being wary of any unscripted TV moments.)

In the past, mainstream TV and print media spoke with authority, but the internet has “democratized” the news landscape, and sources of news no longer seem to matter much. Thus we now lack a common basis of facts in our political discourse.

Indeed, it’s a golden age of propaganda, whose essence is the “big lie” and creating a seamless version of truth. Facebook is a hothouse where such own-realities can flourish. Its content, moreover, is vulnerable to cynical manipulation, as the Russians apparently exploited. But the problem is how to combat that without a kind of censorship that impedes political discourse and violates our norms of free expression.

David Goodman is the brother of Amy Goodman (of Radio’s Democracy Now), who was on the next panel. Both trotted out the old canard that the Iraq war was based on lies, and whined that the anti-war side wasn’t given enough press coverage.

Amy Goodman harped on the same claim regarding the Bernie Sanders campaign; climate change; and the Dakota pipeline protests. Such complaints are a staple of lefty grievance polemics. In fact all four stories received ample coverage. And the “Bush lied” trope is itself a lie; almost everyone believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
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