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Reporting on Disinformation

Justin Hendrix / Jul 6, 2022

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

At this year’s Collision, a tech conference that took place in June in Toronto, I had the opportunity to interview two editors about how they think about the problem of disinformation, and how they direct their publications' coverage of it as an issue.

This short podcast installment is audio of the live stage discussion with Betsy Reed, editor in chief of The Intercept, and Matt Kaminski, editor in chief of Politico.

Many thanks to Stephen Twomey and the other organizers of the Collision conference for including this panel in a series of discussions on the role of the fourth estate.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Justin Hendrix:

Good morning. We're going to solve a very big problem today, the problem of disinformation. It's going to be sorted by the time we leave this room. We're planning to take it piece by piece, one by one. I have joining me today Betsy Reed, who is editor-in-chief– since 2015– of The Intercept. So if you're into topics like war, surveillance, tech, media, and perhaps the worst of them all, US politics, check out The Intercept. And then I think you'll all know Politico; Matt Kaminski is its editor-in-chief. He is formerly of the Wall Street Journal, and was Kyiv correspondent for the FT early in his career. So when it comes to disinformation, perhaps an early education that you had there.

I'm going to just start things off by asking you a little bit about the beat of disinformation, how your publications cover this phenomenon, which as we mentioned is huge. Over the last five years, there's been more of a focus on it, an enormous amount of research, an enormous amount of focus on the bad actors and the use of disinformation in politics and the industry of disinformation, the rest of it. How do you think about it as editors? How do you grapple with this huge topic? Betsy, perhaps we'll start with you.

Betsy Reed:

One of the things I think we've learned in the past few years is that while it's necessary for journalism to serve a sort of fact checking function of those in power, powerful institutions and politicians, it's not sufficient, because we have seen the rise of politicians who are simply impervious. They don't care. They're lying on purpose, and they won't respond. And their followers, which include also other media institutions, will simply justify the lies.

So simply correcting isn't enough. We've taken a kind of more investigative approach to look at exactly how those lies are constructed, to expose the larger system that profits from the lies. And I think it's been very interesting, the series of lawsuits we've seen recently, Dominion suing Fox and OAN, and there have been some big losses for those institutions. And I think as journalists, that gives us a window into some of the dynamics and what is actually known at the top levels and how these institutions are profiting from the spreading of lies.

So I feel like we definitely have to go deeper than just simply serving as fact checkers. It's all about information warfare these days. All parties do it. All people across the spectrum do it. And in some ways, I think journalists need to think of ourselves as playing a certain kind of information warfare, but for the truth, really trying to reach audiences with truthful stories. And that's a big challenge in today's media landscape.

Matt Kaminski:

I think, as you were saying, it is a huge topic, and I think you can get easily disoriented by it. So at Politico– but I think it probably applies to a lot of places– we are only 15 years old, but we do think of ourselves as being very old fashioned in our approach to journalism. It's really about the reporting. It's about sort of trying to make sense of the world as you see it, unfiltered through a partisan lens. And we're also ... it's in our name. We're obsessed with politics, but really we’re obsessed with power.

And what I think had really emerged by 2015, 2016 is that this world, the world of this conference, was also a major player in our world. Tech companies weren't just doing good out there. They were sort of reshaping our world, and they were reshaping our politics. And we had to think about covering them the way that we cover Nancy Pelosi or Kevin McCarthy, other powerful institutions and players. So in 2016, it started off actually in the UK with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, then the Russian efforts to sow confusion in the US election. We said, okay, we have to cover primarily these platforms, and we have to understand how that is reshaping the way people are voting, the way that our politics works.

So we have, mostly through our tech teams, but reporters ... We have Mark Scott in London primarily, but other reporters there, and as well in the US, who basically try and really look at what the platforms are doing. It's not always easy. The platforms aren't very good at sharing information. But we've done, I think, a lot of interesting stories by pairing up, even with academics, trying to get data sets that we can mine to do interesting stories, and generally really kind of bring the same– I would say– both ferocity and velocity to covering this space that we do to any other story out there.

Justin Hendrix:

In the broader conversation about disinformation, clearly, there have been a lot of efforts to address the problem, governments addressing the problem, the platforms addressing the problem, journalists standing up-

Matt Kaminski:

Saying they are.

Justin Hendrix:

Saying they're addressing the problem. And we could probably have an hour long conversation about just where to situate the problem mostly. But there have been political ramifications of those efforts to combat disinformation, a kind of loss of trust in certain factions, different parties feeling as if they're targeted as the disinformers for expressing their points of view. Are there downsides to this frame of disinformation, of thinking about some political speech in some cases as disinformation?

Matt Kaminski:

Maybe I can start. I think you raise a very good point that the danger of let's say, if you are fighting disinformation, you actually could contribute to disinformation in the sense that you're sort of trying to compensate. Well, there has always been disinformation. It's a Russian word, going back to the Soviet period of how the Soviets tried to manipulate the information space in the pre-internet era. But then as you're now sort of trying to kind of grapple with it, at least we try ... And I really talk to my journalists quite a lot about this. You try and be very wary of, remember what you're doing. You're sort of seeing things with clear eyes. And be very careful about not making partisan judgements, because whether it's through virtue signaling in the way that you frame the story, or it's in stories you refuse to cover, you basically can paint yourself as being a disinformer.

You all know the outrage on the right over the way that Twitter decided the Hunter Biden computer story was disinformation, where it actually ended up to be mostly true. So I do think there's a danger of trying to sort of push back. And really, I always tell reporters, let's just keep the adjectives out of our stories as much as we can. Just report what we know and what we see. And really don't let the other side, whether it's the left or the right, paint you into a corner as carrying water for one of the other sides.

Betsy Reed:

The thing about that example, though, is that I do think it was a mistake to call it disinformation because it turned out to be real information. But the entire narrative and frame built around it was misinformation. It was wrong. So I think that is a good instance of when it was a mistake to use the disinformation word, which really refers to a deliberate attempt, usually by a state actor, to deceive.

In terms of your question about efforts to combat this phenomenon by either government or big tech, I think there's a huge risk that we face in having either of those major entities engage in a kind of censorship in an unaccountable and nontransparent manner because government, that has huge negative implications for free speech. We really need to be able to have a robust press reporting about government secrets that they don't want to have out there. So that is an inherently fraught dynamic. And then big tech has been notoriously secretive in the algorithms it uses and in its approach to content moderation.

So a lot of what we've done at The Intercept is exposés actually about that very process of content moderation, like who's making these judgements, why, and revealing in particular how those judgements are often quite parochial and really reflect US national security priorities and interests, when in fact, these are global platforms. They're affecting politics and lives throughout the world. So I think there is a real problem of transparency and accountability in the efforts to tackle this information. And I think it's an important role of the press to force that transparency and accountability by doing reporting on those things.

Justin Hendrix:

It does seem like in the kind of day to day politics, it's almost like sort of trying to stick your thumb in the dike when you're addressing disinformation in particular contexts. Clearly the January 6th committee is going on now and talking about the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, whereas we know we have now, what, 100 GOP candidates across the country who are going to be in positions potentially of import over the election's outcome, who also are invested in that particular narrative. We've got similar things going on in Brazil at the moment. When it comes to where the rubber meets the road, elections and how democracy expresses itself, do you feel like that's a particular vulnerability that you have to address disinformation differently around elections?

Matt Kaminski:

It reminds me of that line that if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it. And that's what Donald Trump has sort of managed to do. I just think that as journalists, I think the only thing we can do is fight with the tools that we have, which is our ability to report and our ability to kind of get information that is framed in a way that we think reflects the reality of the situation and again, is not filtered through any kind of agenda. I think we're always going to fight for truth. This is where we do have an agenda as journalists and probably should. But it is truth in the service of truth, not of some other end.

I guess ultimately, obviously the press has got a very essential role in a democracy. I cannot imagine being able to run a publication in a system which is not democratic. But it's ultimately up to the citizens to fight for their democracy. And our role is clear, but I think it should be circumscribed around doing our job, which is journalism.

Justin Hendrix:

Push out the good and hope that it counters the bad.

Matt Kaminski:

Exactly. And make sure people see that you are a credible source of information. And for us, it's part of our business model. But it's very important to me that both Republicans and Democrats read a story in Politico, they may hate it, but they will believe that it's true, even if they go on Twitter and say that it's fake news.

Justin Hendrix:

Maybe Betsy, I'll amp the question slightly to you. Despite our efforts, we know around the world, democracy is in a hopefully not terminal, but certainly a decades long decline at the moment. Are there enough thumbs in the dikes? Can we meet the challenge?

Betsy Reed:

It's a very perilous and worrisome moment across the world. There are a number of democracies that are vulnerable. We just saw it happen in the Philippines, which deeply connected to the spread of disinformation and it's amplification on social media networks. In Brazil, Bolsonaro has had a significant amount of success in manipulating people through spreading misinformation through the vast media networks, some of which are online. Others are more conventional television broadcasts. But I don't know if it's going to work for him. I don't think he's poised to be successful. So I think what's likely to happen there actually is maybe fairly similar to what happened here in 2020, is that he will lose and he will claim that it's fraud, and they'll be mired in something quite similar that we just experienced.

Matt Kaminski:

And then you can see whether the institutions hold up, which they did in the US without much of a strain, to be frank. Let's not overstate things. In Brazil, is the military going to launch a coup to keep Bolsonaro in power? It will be a test of institutions, and it actually will not be a question whether there is disinformation out there about what happened.

Justin Hendrix:

My last question, Betsy. You mentioned the underlying economic incentives and the industry that's been built to supply disinformation and in many cases to service these politicians, often work done in parts of the world that don't get a lot of scrutiny from journalists. There may be tech executives or startups here that are working in ad tech or working in other parts of the information ecosystem. What would you say to them? What should they do to help make certain that they are not contributing to this problem, if even obliquely?

Betsy Reed:

Well, I think it's a very tough problem for the tech industry and media organizations ourselves, because we do depend on engagement. And a certain type of content that generates that engagement is not necessarily the type of content that is good for democracy. But part of that reason that's true for media is because of the algorithms that are determining the distribution of our news, who sees it, who gets to respond to it, and what rises to the top and what gets the biggest audience. So I think if there's any progress that could be made in changing those incentives, changing that incentive structure to get more people to see news that is real, but that also might contradict their prior beliefs and get them to a place where they can openly consider that, I think that would be hugely beneficial. But it does feel like the dominant assumption of the entire industry is that's not what is going to generate profits, and that is a pretty fundamental problem that we have.

Justin Hendrix:

Capitalism is the problem. Is that where we're going to end, Matt?

Matt Kaminski:

Capitalism is the answer. I mean, democracy is the answer. In a free society– not to be glib about it– if you have this quaint belief in a liberal order, then these are challenges to a liberal order, but a liberal order that is strong enough will be able to withstand them. As an immigrant from the Soviet system, I'd probably look around and conclude, yes, these are all challenging times, but it's still better than what I grew up with the first 10 years of my life. And I think this is a testing moment for our system, but I think being clear about what our role as media is in this system and then having some degree of faith that it's ultimately up to people who are voters and active citizens to make choices and fight for certain rights. And the US system has been around for 200 and almost 50 years, so I would hope that it would take more than a charlatan realtor from New York City to sort of bring it down. That would be a sad statement on what we have.

Justin Hendrix:

30 second shout outs to journalists that are covering this beat at your respective organizations that folks should follow? Matt, you mentioned Mark Scott.

Betsy Reed:

I have Sam Biddle, who is doing an amazing job covering Facebook, and Rob Mackey, who has done a lot of great work sort of taking apart the propaganda that's emanating constantly from Fox News, and Peter Moss, who has kept the focus where it really ultimately belongs, which is on the Murdochs and how they are ultimately responsible for what Tucker Carlson does.

Justin Hendrix:

And Mark Scott’s Politico newsletter is in particular a must read in tech policy space if you care about these issues. I think we will stop there. Let's thank our two panelists, and I hope that all of you will help us solve the disinformation problem. Thank you all.

Authors

Justin Hendrix
Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a new nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. He spent over a decade at The Economist in roles including Vice President, Business Development & ...

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