Blogs to Brietbart: November 2016

From Blogs to Breitbart, Usenet to Alt-Right.

The challenge to journalism in a post-fact society

The Brexit campaign, which led to the referendum when 52% of the people in the UK voted to leave the European Union, and in parallel, events during the US presidential election campaign were notable for several reasons. Among them:

1. The degree to which both campaigns were played out on the web and social media.

2. The level of disinformation, manipulation of facts, distortion of reality and outright lying that took place leaving journalists confounded by lies and false equivocation. Combined with a failure by journalists at times to effectively challenge some politicians.

3. The divisions and difference in outlook in the US and the UK between the metropolitan, connected, middle class who felt everything was going well, who were positive about their place in the world and optimistic about the future. And the disconnected, provincial, working class who felt that the economy and politics were leaving them behind, were pessimistic about their future and rejected the traditional working class politics. [https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2016/sep/19/how-the-great-paradox-of-american-politics-holds-the-secret-to-trumps-success-podcast]

Some argue that we now have post truth politics in both countries. Forget the science, the proof, the facts. We don't need the experts.

[Slide: Michael Gove]

· “If it feels right – it must be true.”

· “My friend told me – I trust my friend – I don't trust the media or the politicians.”

· “I saw it on Facebook – that's where I get my news.”

· “Politicians are all liars and journalists are even worse. So I'm going to support "the one who says it like it is." I'm going to support the one who isn't the politician. And nothing is going to change my mind.

Two important changes are happening in the UK and in the US and for all I know in Slovenia and the region – You tell me.

First, we are experiencing a politics where information presented as "Fact" is blatantly not a fact. And in recent months the Fact Check which was something of a backwater in journalism – has come so far to the fore, Fact Checking is beginning to looks like a new industry.

The second is the rise of alternative media replacing traditional media that was once trusted, but often, is no longer. And how the public now get their news.

What do the changes which have been developing for the last 8 to 10 years and have erupted in the US and UK this year mean for the practice of journalism, particularly here in Europe?

I don't expect to answer that question nor the two that arise from it

1. How should journalists operate in a post-truth post-fact society?

2. How can journalists present factual, evidence based news, where much of the alternative media prefer to serve up exaggerations, manipulations and lies and tell people what they want to hear?

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Journalism and the news media have changed radically over the last 30 years – the last 20 years and more than ever in the last 10 years.

The places where the audience find their news is changing.

The public relationship with the news providers is changing – trust is diminishing.

But the core activity of journalism does not change. That is “To tell true facts to people and offer intellectually honest interpretations of them.”

I thought this is the time to look at how the web, social media, blogs and totally independent websites have changed how journalists do their jobs, And have challenged journalists to do their jobs differently.

And I think it's also important to ask: “Can a journalist remain objective when that very objectivity and fairness can lead to an imbalance – not between two views of the truth, but between the facts and what politicians, corporations, governments, activists, pressure groups and churches – even some news outlets – have invented as the Truth?”

Over this hour, I'm going to be using video and audio as well quotes from politicians, journalists and academics. And at least one comedian.

[Slide: Presidents Lie]

--------------------------------------------------------------------

PART 1 – WHY IS THAT LYING BASTARD LYING TO ME?

Most of the examples I will be giving are from Politicians – but much of what I am talking about can be applied more widely.

Politicians lie – Presidents lie –

Here are some:

Harry Truman

Richard Nixon.

Ronald Reagan

William Jefferson Clinton

-------

But let’s start this part of the story with a journalist.

Louis Heren (1919 - 1995) spent his entire career as a reporter with the Times newspaper in London. He rose to be deputy editor.

[Slide: Heren Quote]

Most of this is from Wikipedia – but I have checked the sources!

He was a fierce defender of the independence of the press, and was unafraid of authority. He once said "When a politician tells you something in confidence, always ask yourself Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

Many years later, a BBC television news journalist and noted interviewer Jeremy Paxman revived the phrase. It was often wrongly attributed to him. He told the Guardian Newspaper:

[Slide and audio: Paxman – carapace]

"Any spokesman for a vested interest is well schooled in how to say what it is they wish to say, which may bear no relation at all to what you've asked them. Because they're more practiced in the mechanics of interviews, it's perhaps slightly more difficult to get through the carapace." (The hard, upper shell of a tortoise.)

“I think you should approach any spokesman for a vested interest with a degree of skepticism, asking 'why are they saying this' and 'is it likely to be true'?"

Paxman was a noted interviewer, famous for being tenacious. Here is an example:

Points:

· On 13 May 1997 he interviewed Michael Howard, who had been Home Secretary until a week or so earlier. There was some controversy about a meeting he had had with Derek Lewis, head of Her Majesty's Prison Service, about the possible dismissal of the governor of Parkhurst Prison, John Marriott.

· The controversy was whether Howard had threatened to over rule Derek Lewis – something he had no authority to do.

· Howard was asked by Paxman the same question – "Did you threaten to overrule him [Lewis]?" – a total of twelve times in succession.

[VIDEO; Paxman/Howard]

Was Howard lying? He never really answered the question. You – and I – and any viewer can make a decision on whether he did threaten to overrule him. I'm left with the question, "So what if he did?"

The next part of our story concerns the EU Referendum.

[Slide: Leave Lies]

Also, both sides – the Leave and the Remain groups – lied. Both lied and there is no two ways around that statement.

Here is a list of some of the Leave claims – many were lies, some were manipulations some were wrong.

Here is a list of some of the Remain claims – there are fewer.

[Slide: Remain lies]

But the Leave claims were better. They had a better narrative. And I will explain why that is important later.

This is just to give a little balance, because I want to look in depth at a Leave claim.

Let's look at a lie in action – I will begin with a disclaimer:

I do not know whether UK Armed Forces Minister and Leave supporter Penny Mordaunt was

· lying intentionally,

· made a mistake and was not going to pull back

· was mis-informed

· Cleverly evading the question to make a different point

Here's the background.

On Sunday 22 May 2016 at least 2 newspapers – The Observer and the Express – ran a front page story that the Leave campaign were claiming that over 1 million people will be pouring into the UK from Turkey in the next 8 years.

Here are two reasons why the claim was wrong:

1. Turkey was on the way to joining the EU, but there were decades of work ahead to reach the qualifications needed

2. Greece and Cyprus would vote against mainly because of the Turkish presence in Northern Cyprus.

3. Should they want to use the veto, any country including the UK could veto Turkey – Albania, Montenegro, Serbia or any other country joining.

But a highly effective un-truth or mis-representation came here in this interview.

That the UK could not stop Turkey joining the EU. That there was no UK veto:

1 About the Veto --- Any country in the EU can veto membership. Now there are some who argue that the Veto is ineffective – that is a slightly different argument.

2 About Marr --- leading highly respected journalist and political interviewer with a Sunday morning political programme on BBC1 TV at 9:00 am.

3 About Sunday morning --- one of the two main programmes on Sunday morning. Peston is on ITV at 10:00 am

Watch out for

• PM: “I think that ...”

• How she ties Turkey joining the EU to the Migrant Crisis – which is irrelevant

• Leave and Remain agree on much on the Migrant crisis – true but that is not the discussion here.

• That the Referendum is the last chance for the UK to be consulted.

• AM: British Government has a veto

• PM “No.”

Then Marr apologizes for interrupting.

At that point he could have stopped her and said, Hold on, you are wrong.

[Video: Marr]

About 5 minutes later Marr returns to the point – where he is right and she is wrong.

Watch for her words are "I think", I think" and "I don't think". But no evidence.

Less than an hour later on the Peston TV programme the Prime Minister's was forced to respond and say it was wrong. This incidently about a member of his cabinet.

News through the rest of the day

It fed into the argument:

[Slide: Turkey]

There is loads of propaganda about Turkey joining the EU.

-------------------------

But you see, regardless of the facts, the rules for accession of new countries to the EU, it felt true.

At that time on our screens and in the newspapers was the march through Europe of

· Illegal Immigrants

· Migrants

· Refugees

All different words with different meanings, but politicians and press could choose which one they wanted depending on the reaction they wanted.

[Farage Slide]

And Turkey was part of the disinformation mix.

It looked true, it felt true, Turkey was on the verge of joining the EU and 1 million foreigners would arrive on the shores of the UK.

The actual facts were quite different

-------------------------------------------------------

Post Truth – Post Fact and "Truthiness"

Which brings us to the US Presidential Election.

[Slide: More lies]

· Barack Obama’s birth certificate was faked,

· the president founded Islamic State (IS),

· the Clintons are killers

· and the father of a rival [Ted Cruz] was with Lee Harvey Oswald on the day he shot President John F. Kennedy.

Truthiness – the invention of another comedian – Stephen Colbert: the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.

Here is another British comedian John Oliver with a sunday Night show on US TV

[VIDEO – John Oliver – 5 Things]

[Slide: Art of the lie]

The Economist published this cover on September 10 2016 - about a week after I had begun to write this lecture. It said:

“Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power.” Economist September 10 2016

I’m making several references to this edition of The Economist in this section.

This is from the Economist podcast – in the middle of the read, Ann McElvoy who leads Economist radio.

[Slide Audio]

[Slide: The Economist goes on to argue]

The Economist goes on to argue

[Audio Slide]

But post-truth politics is more than just an invention of whinging elites who have been outflanked. The term picks out the heart of what is new: that truth is not falsified, or contested, but of secondary importance. Once, the purpose of political lying was to create a false view of the world. The lies of men like Mr Trump do not work like that. They are not intended to convince the elites, whom their target voters neither trust nor like, but to reinforce prejudices.

Feelings, not facts, are what matter in this sort of campaigning. Their opponents’ disbelief validates the us-versus-them mindset that outsider candidates thrive on. And if your opponents focus on trying to show your facts are wrong, they have to fight on the ground you have chosen.”

[Me] The Economist said:

“The more Remain campaigners attacked the Leave campaign’s exaggerated claim that EU membership cost Britain £350m ($468m) a week, the longer they kept the magnitude of those costs in the spotlight.”

And that is the point. Lies, exaggeration, dis-information That is how the narrative is created and that is where the battle takes place. That’s why the Turkey argument was so effective.

It feels true – Truithiness – A word incidentally invested about 10 years ago by another comedian in the US – Stephen Colbert.

[Slide: Economics, money, news, politics and campaigns]

Journalism at the beginning of this century faces many pressures.

The first – the original – finding and reporting the facts – the truth. More difficult now as “The Truth” seems to have lost some meaning.

Then there is fairness and balance. In the UK the broadcast media must – by law be objective and provide balance. Newspapers and magazines and websites don't. Some newspapers do aim for objectivity – often from a political standpoint – the left leaning Guardian, the right leaning Telegraph for example. But what if that fairness and balance leads to false equivocation? Giving all sides of the argument equal voice – even if it is obvious they don’t deserve it?

The third pressure is Profit. The very survival of some of those services are at stake.

_______________

[Slide] Economics, money, news, politics and campaigns

Victor Pickard is an Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication in Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the history and political economy of media institutions, He argues that the news media's primary goal NOW is not to distribute information to the public but to garner ratings and revenues. In his article Media and Politics in the Age of Trump he traces the history of how profit undermined public service in the news media.

Professor Pickard reports that "A study on newsworthiness calculated that, during 2015, Trump received 327 minutes of nightly broadcast network news coverage, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 121 minutes and Bernie Sanders’ 20 minutes. The New York Times reported that Trump received nearly $2 billion in free media coverage during his primary campaign."

"The news media’s obsession with Trump", he says, "Is symptomatic of a highly commercialized system."

But let’s find out what a TV Executive thinks.

Leslie Moonves is CBS executive chairman and CEO. He said of the competing campaigns which were buying up more and more advertising time "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," quoted by the Hollywood Reporter. The Reporter went on to say "Moonves called the campaign for president a "circus" full of "bomb throwing," and he hopes it continues. "Most of the ads are not about issues. They're sort of like the debates," he said. "Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun," he said. "I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going," said Moonves.

For Moonves, the audience this is spectacle, entertainment, with all the thrills of reality TV – except it's really real.

While the TV channels have learned from their mistakes by treating – particularly the Trump campaign as reality TV, some of their mistakes were massive.

[Slide: The Enabler]

Margaret Sullivan is Media columnist at the Washington Post. She recently wrote about Jeff Zuker – a very prominent media executive. He was at NBC as the head of Entertainment then head of the network. He is now President of CNN Worldwide. Ken Lerrer who is mentioned is co-founder of Huffington Post.

This from Slate’s podcast Trumpcast.

The Enabler - Nobody is more to blame than Jeff Zucker for the rise of Donald Trump.: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/trumpcast/2016/10/how_cnn_s_jeff_zucker_became_donald_trump_s_no_1_enabler.html

Cue In

Cue Out

News as entertainment … This is a challenge to journalism

[Slide: Blank]

Making money from reporting the news does not need to be complex. On one side of the wall sit the journalists and editors. They write the stuff that people want to read or produce the pictures or audio people want to see or hear.

On the other side of the wall are the people who look at the statistics for viewers, listeners and readers and make up the packages of space to sell to the advertisers and sponsors.

Occasionally, one will try to influence the other and a smart Chief Executive will resist too much of that.

The problems come when the people who sell the advertising space exert too much influence. Or if people who have non-news, vested interests; like politicians, businesses and banks for example, exert influence.

If trust is between reporter and audience is broken, it can be difficult to repair.

And in the end – trust is the most important professional relationship we have.

In September this year - the polling and research company Gallup said

"Americans' confidence in the media has slowly eroded from a high of 55% in 1998 and 1999. Since 2007, the majority of Americans have had little or no trust in the mass media. Trust has typically dipped in election years, including 2004, 2008, 2012 and last year. However, 2015 is not a major election year."

"Four in 10 Americans say they have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.

In Europe

The European Commission in September 2015 reported in the Standard Eurobarometer

After rising between autumn 2013 and autumn 2014, trust in the media has declined again slightly in the autumn 2015 survey.

Radio remains most trusted, but it has lost three percentage points since autumn 2014

A narrow majority of respondents continue to trust television, but it too has lost ground

An unchanged minority of respondents trust the written press gained two points in autumn 2014.

Just over a third of Europeans say they trust the Internet, two in ten Europeans say they trust online social networks.

I suppose I don't find it all that surprising that 20 percent of people trust social media. It is all too often an echo-chamber telling people what they want to hear. You “like” a story, your friends “like” a story, you post a meme and your friends comment on that meme, you will get similar stories and similar memes. What you read will be duplicated and repeated. You are in a social media bubble.

[Slide: Edgerank]

We are reading what Edge Rank – that’s the name of the Facebook algorithm – we are reading what it has decided because of what we have read and “liked” before, what our friends have read and “liked” and our choice narrows. We enter our own echo chamber.

Maybe we were always in an echo chamber – we bought the same newspaper, spoke to the same people.

Maybe social media has exaggerated this. Or is it something different?

While only 2 in 10 people in Europe trust Online Social Media for news, that is still an important figure. One person in 5 trusts … shall we say Facebook.

Both Facebook and Twitter have become providers of news to their users. Let's leave Twitter aside for today – it is worth looking at in depth another time.

Because of the pressures on newspapers in particular, Facebook is involved in deals and partnerships with leading publishers to help them find new readers and markets.

Facebook argues that it is not a media company – it is a platform. So other media companies use the platform to distribute their content.

It is important and popular.

Pew Research and News on Social Media

[Slide; Pew1]

Where do people get their news? And what news do they get?

In May this year, the Pew Research Center for Journalism and Media reported that a majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey.

News plays a varying role across the social networking sites studied. Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) get news on the site, nearly six-in-ten Twitter users (59%) get news on Twitter.

[Slide Pew 2]

The two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population. YouTube has the next greatest reach in terms of general usage, at 48% of U.S. adults. But only about a fifth of its users get news there, which amounts to 10% of the adult population.

We all have our reliable sources. For me BBC, Channel 4, Guardian, Telegraph and so on. Brands I trust even if I don’t always agree with them.

If you go into a shop to buy a newspaper, choose a TV channel to watch, you are relying on your knowledge of your brand.

If you trust Facebook as a brand – then you are likely to trust what you read there.

And Facebook will choose what you read. Their highly sophisticated Edge Rank algorithm will fill your news feed.

Not only with real actual verifiable news. But with Memes - The Internet's own truthiness.

Has anyone seen this? [Slide: Original Meme … read it out, theatrically]

UK Journalist Francis Wheen took it apart Spectator September 2016

"It's a safe bet that any post starting "What the mainstream media won't tell you", or words to that effect, will refer to something that has in fact been extensively reported in the MSM.

[Slide: Google search]

" I'm reproducing this Anonymous meme because a lovely Facebook friend of mine posted it, and it struck me that this is how many lies are spread on social media: scheming ratbags taking advantage of decent people's better natures. After all, from what Anonymous say about William Kamkwamba he sounds great, so let's sabotage the media conspiracy of silence by sharing.”

[Slide 3 – his MSM successes]

Time magazine named him in December 2013 as one of "the 30 People Under 30 Changing The World" story."

· Profiled in The Wall St Journal

· His autobiography was a New York Times best-seller in 2010 still Amazon UK's No 1 best-seller in Energy & Engineering six years after publication

· He has given TED talks

· Been interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show,

· A prize-winning TV documentary was made about him,

· Time magazine named him in December 2013 as one of "the 30 People Under 30 Changing The World"

· And the book was published by Harper Collins owned by the most mainstream of mainstream media moguls, Rupert Murdoch.

[Slide: Did you check?]

But what is the point of such a meme? That one? I'm not sure, probably just a little undermining of the mainstream media. Does it do any harm? That one? I don't know. There are meme busting websites and pages on Facebook. Memes Debunked is one.

The problem with Memes – often they are true, sometimes they are half true. The problem sometimes is telling the difference. Or worse – even caring.

Four weeks ago I read a new word - never seen it before:

[Slide: Hyperpartisan: ]

hyperpartisan. Extremely partisan; extremely biased in favor of a political party. Sharply polarized by political parties in fierce disagreement with each other.

And more recently in the current political climate we Facebook and Social Media users have witnessed the rise of Hyperpartisan political Facebook pages who publish many of these memes.

In October 2016 – about three or four weeks ago, BuzzFeed reported:

[Slide: Buzzfeed]

"Hyperpartisan political Facebook pages and websites are consistently feeding their millions of followers false or misleading information, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. The review of more than 1,000 posts from six large hyperpartisan Facebook pages selected from the right and from the left also found that the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.

"The rapid growth of these pages combines with BuzzFeed News’ findings to suggest a troubling conclusion: The best way to attract and grow an audience for political content on the world’s biggest social network is to eschew factual reporting and instead play to partisan biases using false or misleading information that simply tells people what they want to hear.

"During the period analyzed, right-wing pages,

· pushed a conspiracy theory about a Hillary Clinton body double,

· recirculated an old and false story about a Canadian mayor lecturing Muslim immigrants about integration,

· wrongly claimed that Obama’s last address at the UN saw him tell Americans they needed to give up their freedom for a “New World Government,”

· and falsely claimed that a football player had been told not to pray by the NFL.

Left-wing pages

· wrongly claimed Putin’s “online troll factory” was responsible for rigging online polls to show Trump won the first debate,

· falsely said that Trump wants to expel all Muslims from the US and

· said US women in the military should expect to be raped,

· claimed that TV networks would “not be fact-checking Donald Trump in any way” at the first debate,

· and completely misrepresented a quote from the Pope to claim that he “flat out called Fox News type journalism ‘terrorism.’

The New York Times in August 2016 published an article:

[Slide: NYT Magazine]

Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine

One of the people mentioned is 36 year old Mark Provost who helps run US Uncut, a left-leaning Facebook page and website with more than 1.5 million followers, about as many as MSNBC has. He frequently contributes to another popular page, The Other 98%, which has more than 2.7 million followers.

True – False – Exaggeration - misleading? It doesn’t matter. No balance is required, objectivity is rejected, getting the message out is the only criteria.

It is on Facebook with the BBC the New York Times and other legitimate news organisations.

What is your job, the journalists job in these circumstances?

Using the internet in this way is nothing new …

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From Usenet to Alt-Right

Usenet News

Way before every home had a computer. Way before there was a Web or Facebook people connected on Usenet; a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. Usenet News was established 1980. Users read and post messages (news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups.

Groups were organised into topic hierarchy:

[Slide] First level:

comp.*

humanities.*

misc.*

news.*

rec.*

soc.*

talk.*

Which were then divided into sub categories such as

[Slide}

rec.music,

rec.arts.movies,

rec.arts.poetry

These newsgroups are organised – a group of people approved any changes. Some were moderated.

And some people thought they were too constrained for the free-wheeling Internet.

Then came the Great Renaming of 1987. Alt.* [Slide] was created. It did not have the constraints of the other newsgroups and anyone with expertise could set up a new newsgroup – the first was alt.gourmand. The joke was ALT stood for Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists. It was the Alternative newsgroup.

Alt Newsgroups became a lot more freewheeling. Alt was usually not moderated and open to more controversial topics.

I'm only mentioning them in passing. Almost 40 years on Usenet News Groups are still alive and well.

They were a precursor to Web. Distant ancestor of Facebook and Twitter – but not necessarily of the same family. It’s nearest relative is probably 4Chan.

That is sort of around about way to get us to Alt-

We begin that story with another journalist

The American journalist, satirist and cynic H. L. Mencken was born 1880 and died 1956.

He admired German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche He was not a supporter of religion, populism (ironically) and representative democracy, which he believed was a system in which inferior men dominated their superior.

He said “I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.”

He was a freethinking American conservative. But only plays this bit part in our story.

He is the inspiration for the H. L. Mencken club. According to the club’s website, it was established in 208 “as an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right.” http://hlmenckenclub.org/about/

The president is Paul Gottfried who in November 2008 – just 8 years ago – addressed the club about what he called "the alternative right". “Our group is also full of young thinkers and activists, and if there is to be an independent Right, our group will have to become its leaders.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-decline-and-rise-of-the-alternative-right/

Alt Right is not a Usenet Newsgroup – there is no direct relationship – but it is a handy connection. As we will discover, the habitat of the Alt-Right until recently has largely been The Internet – 4Chan, 8Chan and Twitter in particular.

The WebSite Breitbart News is said to be one of the main outlets for Alt-Right thinking and opinion.

These excerpts are from an article on Breitbart is called An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right. It is written by Milo Yiannopoulos and Milo Yiannopoulos and Allum Bokhari

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/

[Slide and Audio]

"The alternative right, more commonly known as the alt-right, is an amorphous movement. Some — mostly Establishment types — insist it’s little more than a vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set. They’re wrong.

"Previously an obscure subculture, the alt-right burst onto the national political scene in 2015. Although initially small in number, the alt-right has a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric that have boosted its membership and made it impossible to ignore.

"The alt-right is a movement born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet. 4chan and 8chan are hubs of alt-right activity. For years, members of these forums – political and non-political – have delighted in attention-grabbing, juvenile pranks. Long before the alt-right, 4channers turned trolling the national media into an in-house sport.

"There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads .. one thing stands out above all else: intelligence … The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright."

===== –----- ===

Luke O’Brien writing in the Huffington Post this month reported [http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/alt-right/]:

“Mainstream observers blasted him for penning an apologia for a deeply racist movement. And alt-righters were angry at being portrayed as unserious.”

++++++++++

2016 description in the Columbia Journalism Review: "First, it’s unclear that the alt-right “movement” even qualifies as one. Because of the nebulous nature of anonymous online communities, nobody’s entirely sure who the alt-righters are and what motivates them. It’s also unclear which among them are true believers and which are smart-ass troublemakers trying to ruffle feathers."

Even Milo says that one of their reasons for existing is to prompt outrage – Just for the Lolz ...

---

For years the Alt Right was a fringe mostly Online subculture and more recently interest has grown – at least in parallel with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Perhaps even as a result of his presidential prospects.

It is no longer an American phenomenon. It is an “international nationalist movement”

[Slide:

Ian Davis from England runs an Alt-Right Twitter feed. Davis told the BBC the sorts of groups who form the Alt Right according to Davis include:

National Socialists

Neo Pagens and Pagen Traditionalists

Christian traditionalists

Conservative Nationalists

Libertarians

Men’s Rights movement

Women’s movements where women want to live traditional lives looking after the family and men work

The Human Biodiversity Movement – people interested in the differences between races … who think that homogeneous societies work better together.”

Oliver Lee Bateman is a freelance journalist. He wrote about the Alt Right for Vice magazine. He has got to know more than 20 activists

The people he met were

· College students – more likely those who feel they don’t fit in or feel they are being put upon.

· People in their 30s who feel they are losing their country or the country is losing its identity

· Working boring dreary jobs in computers

Commentators have said that Alt-Right lacks leadership in the shape of a single figure, a coherent strategy and very likely will have competing objectives, except for this. By and large they reject the “Establishment ” The aim their anger at the “Elites”. They also oppose immigration.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a British journalist, entrepreneur and technology editor for Breitbart News Using the name @Nero he had 500,000 followers on Twitter before being kicked off for activities relating to the harassment of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/20/milo-yiannopoulos-nero-permanently-banned-twitter

He appeared on BBC Radio 4's programme The Briefing Room to discuss the Alt-Right. He says that see the media as the Bad Guys, and that there is a huge overlap between the AltRight and Trump Supporters.

The second voice you will hear is critic Cathy Young who describes herself as "moderate libertarian" She says she sees a strain of ugliness and bigotry being legitimized in the Alt-Right. It’s really not people having fun.

[Slide: Milo and Cathy]

The 'Alt-Right' - Trump's Shock Troops http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pjb9y

---

Why is it important to talk about the Alt Right now?

This is not a political lecture – it's not intended to provide a critique of the Alt-Right and I am not placed to do that anyway.

But the Alt Right is a fantastic example of the challenge that faces journalism in the near and long term future.

In a movement like the Alt-Right … even if it’s really not a movement, as some people say ... what you see is the rejection by a small but significant number of people of the traditional, legacy or mainstream media. They are replacing what they see as the Elite by creating their own content on available platforms; blogs, twitter, 4Chan, Usenet Newsgroups and of course Facebook.

They reject the Establishment and go in search for their own Echo Chamber. Their own bubble. The create their messages on hyperpartisan political Facebook pages. They share memes and believe without checking.

[Slide: Breitbart]

But let's return for a moment to Briebart – I have mentioned it in passing. Here’s some detail

Most of this section is taken from Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart]

The Breitbart website began as a news aggregator in 2007. It was not much more than a list of links to other news sources. It got a significant boost when the Drudge report linked to it. Around the same time Andrew Breitbart – it’s founder - launched a video blog.

There was a further boost when in 2009 with some financial investment from family. He launched the Big Government website and began to expand operations. Big Journalism was next – January 2010. Andrew Breitbart said in an interview with Mediaite.com http://www.mediaite.com/online/andrew-breitbart-launching-new-sites/ "Our goal is to hold the mainstream media's feet to the fire. There are a lot of stories that they simply don't cover either because it doesn't fit their world view, or because they are literally innocent of any knowledge that the story even exists. or because they are a dying organization, short-staffed, and thus can't cover stuff like they did before.

Big Peace, Breitbart Tech and Breitbart Sports followed as did regional editions London, Jerusalem, Texas and California

In a column after Mr. Breitbart’s death, titled “The Provocateur” [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/business/media/the-life-and-death-of-andrew-breitbart.html] David Carr of The New York Times wrote that he “understood in a fundamental way how discourse could be profoundly shaped by the pixels generated far outside the mainstream media he held in such low regard.”

Breitbart died in March 2012. During his time at the website certainly used some unacceptable video editing and some had questionable journalistic ethics. But he shook up the media and in particular gave a populist voice voice to the American Right.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich attended his funeral.

The history of Breitbart is well covered and easy to access, and I don't have time to cover it all here – it is worth learning more about it.

Some stalwarts and former employees of Breitbart News consider that the death of Breitbart, the succession of Steve Bannon and the relationship with Donald Trump is when things really changed.

In July 2015, Politico reported that Ted Cruz "likely has the Republican presidential field's deepest relationship with the Breitbart machine."[http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/04/hedge-fund-magnate-backing-cruz-is-major-investor-in-breitbart-news-network-205434#ixzz3vDkfDhjm

In August 2015, an article in BuzzFeed reported that several anonymous Breitbart staffers claimed that Donald Trump had paid for favorable coverage on the site. The site's management strongly denied the charge.[https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/breitbart-staffers-believe-trump-has-given-money-to-site-for#.uwY6gZYVW]

What is indisputable is that the site became more Trump friendly.

On March 11, 2016, Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields filed a battery complaint against Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, alleging that Lewandowski had grabbed her and bruised her while she was attempting to ask a question at an event. After claiming that Breitbart's management was not sufficiently supportive of Fields, Breitbart's editor-at-large Ben Shapiro and Fields resigned from Breitbart.[https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/michelle-fields-ben-shapiro-resign-from-breitbart?utm_term=.uaNrnDdRA#.iix35dzxB]

By March 14 several top executives and journalists at Breitbart had resigned complaining that "...Breitbart's unabashed embrace of Mr. Trump, particularly at the seeming expense of its own reporter, struck them as a betrayal of its mission."[http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/03/breitbart-mocking-ben-shapiro-220712]

Former employers accused Breitbart executive chairman Stephen Bannon of having "turned a website founded on anti-authoritarian grounds into a de facto propaganda outlet for Mr. Trump."

STEVE BANNON

After Breitbart’s death, Bannon became chair of the company. His vision for Breitbart.com would end up defining Breitbart News’s ethos

Jumping now to August 17 this year. In an article in the DailyWire.com former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro wrote an article: I know Trump’s new campaign manager Steve Bannon. Here’s what you need to know. [http://www.dailywire.com/news/8441/i-know-trumps-new-campaign-chairman-steve-bannon-ben-shapiro]

Shapiro paints a very dark picture of Bannon including “Under Bannon’s Leadership, Breitbart Openly Embraced The White Supremacist Alt-Right. Andrew Breitbart despised racism. Truly despised it. With Bannon embracing Trump, all that changed. Now Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website …”

Also on August 17, 2016, Steve Bannon was appointed Chief Executive of Donald Trump's campaign to become President of the United States of America.[3] He left Breitbart in order to take the new job.

Even in traditional media it is not unusual for journalists to become directly involved in a political party. What is unusual is that particular path.

WRAP-UP

I have talked about being neutral, and being impartial. But does that mean that a journalist cannot have a point of view?

Let me say as clearly as I possibly can – of course a journalist can have a point of view. I would go so far as to say often a journalist must have a point of view.

[Slide: Spotlight] Actors and real journalists from the film Spotlight

There is a long list of things that are wrong in the world and when covering those stories, neutrality goes out the window.

We need more crusading journalists. We need more journalists who will uncover what is wrong and corrupt with the world. We need more journalists who will tell a story and question people in power … constantly.

We need skepticism in journalism.

We don't need cynicism – there is enough of that everywhere.

When does a story turn into a campaign?

Can a campaign kick off a story?

[Slide: Dakota]

One story that has been running over the last few months in the protest against the Dakota Oil Pipeline.

This story is the result of the work of one campaigning journalist – Amy Goodman. This is a real story that the mainstream media was not all that concerned about at the beginning. But is now giving proper coverage to.

Balance, fairness, impartiality are not about giving equal weight to all the arguments, ideas, opinions and theories.

Because some of those arguments are just plain wrong.

If you are a journalist and see a wrong doing, it is your responsibility to report it – to tell the story. That does not mean giving the abuser and the victim equal time.

If there is a lie – call it out.

But that has always been the job.

Most of the time a journalist’s job is much more hum-drum and dull.

In those times,

· Hone your skills – get better at telling the story

· Learn to identify the bogus and the reality

· Build trust between you and your audience

· Learn new skills like understanding Big Data or learn to code.

· Find better stories and understand the narrative.

Journalists and the audience already face to plague of fake news. We all need to be better at fact checking. One of the victories for journalism in both the UK Referendum and the US Election was the rise of demand in fact Checking.

WaPo said that this is the election where fact checking became the journalistic norm.

And yet, in this election cycle, readers are turning to fact-checking in droves. Unique visitors to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker were up 477 percent year-over-year in July, and up again in August. NPR recorded the highest traffic in the history of its website thanks to its live fact-checking of the first presidential debate. At least 6 million people had checked out the annotated transcript by the next morning. PolitiFact racked up 3.5 million page views in the 24 hours after that debate, drawing more traffic in one day than it did in entire months during the 2012 presidential campaign." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fact-check-this-is-not-really-a-post-fact-election/2016/10/07/7ef5f8fa-85c0-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

And you might want to look out for a book published about 6 weeks ago by Columbia University Press Deciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism Lucas Graves

Journalists already face a plague of Fake News. And it is surprising how many fall for fake Twitter accounts.

I don’t have time to include Info Wars here – but check it out. [infowars.com]

Yes, the future of journalism is about reporting from and iPad and using social media.

But in reality, the challenge for the future of journalism is ethics.

The emergence of digital tools has revived the question about who a journalist is, what journalism is and how we interact with the audience.

Actually there is even a question about what the audience is.

Jay Rosen (Journalism Professor and NYU) said 10 years ago:

The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about." http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

Maybe there is a truth and you will find it.

In the article I mentioned earlier, the Washington Post said that while journalists wrote of a post-truth election – it was no such thing. Politicians always lied the only difference was this time voters didn't care.

I don't entirely agree, but I see what they mean.

Contrary to popular belief, Journalism is not dead and journalists are not liars on behalf of powerful forces. Some organisations are. But journalists hold power to account, not speak on its behalf. The people that do are not journalists.

I strongly believe that there will be a time soon, it might be even now, that an independent digital news start-up will be established serving the people – particularly the younger people of this region.

A few months ago Emily Bell of the Tow Institute in New York asked Twitter

[Slide]

“asking students to think of a journalism start-up business they think would be successful: who would you point to as an example for them?”

[Slide] These are just 10 of the suggestions.

Where will you get your news in the future? Where will you break news in the future?

To finish I leave you with a quot from a journalist you have never heard of. Belfast’s Liam Clarke died last year. He was probably the most respectred journalist in Northern Ireland which was at times a difficult place to report from and about.

[Slide]

Liam Clarke: "I don’t really go along with this idea that there are several truths and everyone has a truth. Something happens, and I think it’s the job of the press to tell you what happened."

[Slide: Credits]

Blogs to Brietbart

Monday, 21 November 2016

How Facebook can cut down on fake news without relying on thousands of humans to decide what is true

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth

Monday, 14 November 2016

Breitbart headlines show how Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees the world

Breitbart headlines show how Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees the world

Bannon appointed Trump’s campaign manager, as his “chief strategist and senior counselor

Friday, 11 November 2016

Lecture