Fake News In The Age Of Brexit & Trump

Versha Sharma
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

At the 2017 Edinburgh International TV Festival, I was part of a panel Channel 4 News assembled on fake news. It was a good group, made up of senior execs from CNN and BBC as well as a British Conservative Member of Parliament—we talked about everything from how CNN handles Trump’s direct assaults to how governments might help or hinder regulations on fake news, and how digital disruptors like NowThis fit into the media landscape. Here are the highlights:

Moderator: Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy; panelists from left to right: Tony Maddox, executive vice president managing director CNN International; me, managing editor & senior correspondent NowThis; Jamie Angus, deputy director BBC World Service Group; Damian Collins, British MP and chair Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee.

-opening: the chilling effect Trump’s anti-media rhetoric can have in other countries, dictators or corrupt leaders taking their cues from him

-8:01 — EVP Managing Director of CNN International talking about how it felt when Trump started attacking Jim Acosta directly — “Everything changed from that moment onward.” (9:11)

-9:20 — is Trump good for business, like CBS’s Les Moonves said?

-11:25 — Maddox: “it’s a glib thing to say he’s good for business….We do not see [Trump] as the enemy.”

-13:05 Maddox: there are a lot of abnormal things about the Trump presidency, and how CNN anchors and journalists should feel empowered to call that out.

-16:28 me on why NowThis has grown such a huge, young audience: “young people in America are tired of the false equivalences that cable news networks provide —there aren’t two sides to every story or issue, especially when we’re talking about bigotry and racism.” (leads to some ribbing on NowThis vs. CNN)

-20:20 MP Damian Collins’s take on whether Facebook’s most recent announcement on putting logos in newsfeed articles will work

-22:59 Q: could you see legislation as a way to combat fake news? UK gov’t + others are starting inquiries —Collins says “what we don’t want are gov’t officials rubberstamping articles and saying they’re true.” But are sanctions for ‘failure to act’ against Facebook and Google an option?

-25:50 Jamie Angus reflecting on BBC’s role during Brexit coverage

-30:54 Audience member: “I think there’s a real danger in us being very British and very complacent about this.” (BBC response at 32:35: “I’m not complacent and neither is the BBC. We’re shifting millions of pounds to news operations” providing more clear fact-checking etc.)

-33:18 More CNN-NowThis ribbing: Who was it that was recently fired from CNN for a Sieg Heil tweet? Me: “Jeffrey Lord.” Maddox: “Thank you.” We followed that closely. :)

-33:58 Guru-Murthy presses Maddox on the commentators CNN hires: “So you hire liars [to talk on behalf of Trump and his supporters]?”

-34:37 Maddox says “we should certainly fire them if they send stupid tweets,” but we need pro-Trump commentators to understand pro-Trump support in America. (My take: you can still do a lot better than frequent apologist Jeffrey Lord. Any other voter would do.)

-34:43 I asked: “What is the purpose of continuing to bring Kellyanne Conway on TV, someone who denies reality and denies truth?’ Maddox’s response: refusal to answer questions are very revealing

-36:10 Collins brings up the next stage of fake news: direct contact through social media, companies making money through Snapchat, WhatsApp

-37:20 Are we asking Facebook and Google to be arbiters of free speech?

-48:20 audience member presses Maddox on whether Trump has had a negative affect on Americans’ trust in the media

-52:49 summary question for all panelists: what’s one thing you would do to make fake news less of a problem?

  • One final note: I could go on about this topic for hours, but the one specific point I wish I had pressed in this panel was when Guru-Murthy asked what the difference is between Breitbart readers trusting their chosen publication and NowThis fans doing the same. We shifted to BBC talk after that, but there’s a world of difference: NowThis’s stated mission is providing news for young people, through a young person’s lens, and Breitbart’s Steve Bannon has said himself that he built it as a “platform for the alt-right.” Two very different things, though there’s certainly more all of us can do to break through the filter bubble problem in social media. To be continued!

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Versha Sharma

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