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?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
"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
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]
"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.
[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]
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 …
----------------------------
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.
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
[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]
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