To our program
Brooke Gladstone is the senior editor of the NPR radio shows all things considered and
Weekend edition and co-host and editor of the Peabody award-winning radio show and podcast on the media
In 1991 she received a night fellowship to study Russian language in history a year later. She was reporting from Moscow for NPR
Covering such stories as the bloody at 1993 power struggle
In 1995 Gladstone returned to the United States and was hired as NPR's first media reporter based in New York City
She's the author of the 2011 nonfiction graphic novel the influencing machine
Which I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in public radio?
she'll be joined on stage tonight by Jennifer Stratton Jennifer is Kate abuse chief content officer and
supervises all content creation and community community engagement teams at the station
She is a 25-year veteran of the media industry with experience in television and radio news
long-form documentary and series production
She is an Emmy award-winning executive producer who has worked in commercial and public media organizations large and small including kqd
KQED in San Francisco and
NPR in Washington, DC, and we are so happy to have her here in Seattle at ko W
So please join me in offering a warm Town Hall welcome to Brooke Gladstone and Jennifer Stratton
All right welcome everybody, thanks for coming out tonight and
Welcome to Seattle Brooke. We're so excited to have you to be here. I was flying in from Portland
I thought this is the most beautiful place. I've ever seen
We have that on record ever seen yes exactly
Well, it's a perfect time to have this conversation and for those of you
Who've read the book and even if you have have an opportunity here later?
To get it, but one of the things that's interesting about this particular book so very short little tiny book
You'll see here
You can get one later the trouble with reality so this is where we find ourselves
And I think it's probably why most of you are here tonight
Is this is this is a very important question in our time, but there's something very?
Empowering about your approach
And I'm hoping you can talk with us a little bit about that and that's that reality is personal
Tell us a little bit about its
Although the process I describe of how we craft it. It's almost
Disembowelling because it's we have to build our own realities the world is too complicated. It's too vast for us to
pull II comprehend so we have to build a facsimile of version and
That's where we live, and it is within that world that we understand
Why things happen the way they do there are certain principles on which we build our reality webs of beliefs?
One thing hinging on another hinging on another you start tugging at one thread
You could mess up the whole thing and that is deeply
disquieting and
The reason what I wanted to explore and then the pamphlet as I call it is
Why for so many people the results of this election was so much worse
So much more agonizing
Anguishing than other elections when presidents we might not have liked or trusted or
countenance in any way
Found themselves to the White House this was more than just the election of a president this was
Something that shook the foundations of our reality
We didn't see it really coming even if we said we did this isn't how the world
Works not the world that we created not the world that functions under the rules that we believe that functions under which means
We have to start over again. It's a big smash up and
What I did in the book, which maybe is empowering is
Is talk about how and why we craft those?
realities and
What were some of the foundational principles that turned out
Not work and
It's a starting point for reconstruction. Maybe is that kind of yeah, well you use it. There's a couple of?
Terms you use in the book that I'm dying to get a little bit deeper into you talk about
fake reality begins in our own head Ryan you use a couple of terms the Umwelt in the
Begun oh, my god. Tell us about that
well
It's a term that is used in
The natural world you know basically it is
Your own belt is the world that you experience it it basically?
shows how
Different creatures different living things can share the same patch of Earth and experience entirely
different realities
like if you're a bat, it's
echolocation waves and if you're tick it might be
butyric acid that you're aware of
Obviously if you're a dog the way that you experience the world is
entirely different from the way
Your master or mistress does and if you realize how little of the world they could comprehend
With their nose. They would just feel so bad for us because it's as if we were blind
So here we are living in the same face and we all
See some things very keenly and other things not at all and that I thought was a very good
metaphor for how
We live in the world today now the Ummah Gong is the rest of the world the the world
Complete reality whatever that may be the thing that we can't comprehend, but we are nevertheless sometimes
You know hit across the
Head and shoulders with you know upside the head
with the humble Gong because it's there whether or not we see it or whether or not we choose to see it I
say, okay, so
In this book Brooke takes this
Down as all these different rabbit holes right and so we're trying to explore sort of our own personal stake in
Where we find ourselves which is interesting and you talk about the idea that?
In order for democracy to work we have to have a consensus of the truth
And we we just don't have that right now
Well what we really in order for democracy to work what we need is a common pool of facts of
information
You know we build our own truth out of it. You know our truth is
What we make after we call through the facts pick the ones we like and marinate them in our
values and our beliefs in our history and our personal
experiences and our family traditions and so on and then you know
so we've got some facts in there and others are judiciously left out now for democracy to work democracy is essentially a
negotiation sometimes in agreement to disagree
But you're all working from the same pool of information, and that's where your negotiation begins
If you're able to convey
to
enough of the nation that
Everybody has an agenda that you can't believe the news
You can't believe the Congressional Budget Office. You can't believe the data collected by the EPA
You can't believe anything
that
Anybody does because everybody has an agenda?
Well, then you are free to assume that
You can just pick your facts. You can pick whatever facts you want on the basis of its
true zenus on what makes you feel good and
and democracy falls apart and the
person with the loudest voice wins and I think that you know as I go through
Trying to find
What are those foundational ideas with which many of us crafted our realities which of those didn't obtain?
one of them was that you know reality that democracy will and your
but democracy I finished the book with a quote from John Adams who basically says it's
it's a system like any other and
it's only as good as the people who operate the levers and
That's true of our political system if it's it can be
contorted and distorted and hoist on its own petard and
You know we have to guard it every day
We have to guard the quality of the people who operate those levers, and we have to make sure to
Refresh the system so that at least
the people are being
Represented and we know that given gerrymandering. They're not you know the country is
50/50 but the Congress is
65% Republican not 50% and the reason is that
Gerrymandering
Has become so precise
Thanks to the kind of data collection
We can do that it
Can I mean there is a there's a I know I'm going off on a tangent here
But this is another thing that happens because people care more about winning than they care about
democracy and you know maybe that's just the way he
Well one of the things I think is interesting about your take on this book which is is
Comforting in a way is I think some of us feel that we're in this time that is extremely unique
It's it's because of Trump that we've arrived at this time
Because of one individual and one of the things that you talk about in this book you you mention this
Neil postman idea that he published that this amusing ourselves to death to death back in 1985 and he contrasts the
Georgia or Orwell's 1984 with Aldous Huxley's brave new world. I thought that was brilliant
Yeah, would you you want to read a little bit of that it's really really fascinating
Yeah, you know
We all know that
1984 just flew off the shelves and was a best-seller again after the election and it reminded me of
This in amusing ourselves to death because this is what I see the problem
as and here on quoting Neil postman talking about
Orwell and
1984 and Huxley brave new world and
Does anybody need me to sort of distinguish between those two books?
I mean very quickly in in brave new world you have Big Brother you have a crushing foot that you know
Grinds down on any sense of personal love or individuality
constant surveillance
thoughtcrime
You know all of these
Illogical constructions that people are forced to believe the rewriting of history and so on it's derived from
You know he wrote it in 1948 and it was
his response to you know the Soviet ascendancy and
knots and fad and
Nazism and fascism and all of that now it was ten years earlier in in the 30s still in between the wars that
Huxley wrote brave new world which was a world where
everyone was complacent and happy and fed on
Happy drugs called soma and encouraged to participate in
as nationally subsidized orgies and and they were
designed
Genetically there was no real close personal relationships
They were designed as alphas betas and so on for their a lot in life and anyway
So that's that's brave new world
I probably didn't need to say that but just in case I didn't want to leave anyone behind
And here's what postman said what Orwell feared were those who would ban books
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one?
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information
Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us
Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of
irrelevance
Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture
Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture
Preoccupied with the equivalent of the feeley's the orgy Porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy, which is a book in?
1984
Orwell said that people were controlled by inflicting pain in brave new world
They are controlled by inflicting pleasure in short, or well feared that what we hate will ruin us
Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us
Powerful so so where does Brooke Gladstone fall on the side of those two argument?
100% with Huxley, there's there's just no question
We are drowning in a sea of irrelevance to see that is
Where the waves turn higher and higher, thanks to the endless tweets of the president, I like to I like to think of
President Trump filling the air with shiny objects that reporters run after like
You know dogs after squirrels, and there's and there's not enough
Prioritizing going on the latest thing is the next headline and
And it's all about who's winning and losing and who's getting the blame for what and the really important stuff is
Being reported, but it's being
Subsumed in in many places I really
Do think there's incredibly fine journalism going on out there? I?
Encourage people just not to watch TV and not to get their news from Facebook because
you know as
Clay Shirky a great thinker of the Internet age said it's not the problem isn't one of
Information overload the problem is one of filter failure the gatekeepers are gone. They've been trampled by the
Democratic
communication system the universal media we have now and that in many ways is a wonderful thing but
you know now it's up to everybody to find their gatekeeper or
gatekeepers and not the easy ones whose only
Responsibility is to
Validate what you already believe but to introduce things that are new
Introduce things that are perhaps outside of your bespoke world
Because if you don't find out that stuff your reality is gonna smash again my reality
everybody who's
Shaken now has an opportunity to see what they've missed build their reality along more durable lines
Yes, and so and along those lines you talked today
She was gracious not to be on the record at noon today with bill Radke
And you talked about this idea that in the 24-hour news cycle
there's so much rumor and
speculation because they've got so much news to fill and
So then the burden falls on the listener the view or the reader to then
Make sense of that so this filter that you're talking about
I think is really important, but if it it doesn't it's because it's out there doesn't mean you have to consume it
Yeah, I mean I never
watch cable news
Never I'm not saying that makes me a good person
I'm just it really just says that I prefer to read
science fiction novels then watch the cable news and in fact in that little book
There's a mention of Ursula Le Guin and philip k dick, and you know Gulliver's Travels. That's not science fiction but kinda and
And obviously brave new world
and I mean I find that there's so much more wisdom in metaphor than in the
one damn thing after another that constitutes our
Endless news cycle, and I'm supposed to follow this stuff
I find it's much easier to go searching for the things that I really care about or that
I think the listeners would care about and I do a series of
Continuous deep dives every week rather than be in constant monitor mode
I think my head would explode, and I don't think you need to know
Every single thing I think you need to know
Some important things fewer things, but important ones fundamental ones
So then how is a news consumer to decide because I hear you saying
Be
Be very careful in what you select but also?
get out of your bubble broaden your horizons look at new information so
Where how is a news consumer can we know so if we're thinking we're doing our good job
We're listening to KO w we're listening to NPR but we we think we you know we need to do
Something different we need to break out of our bubble
But then we get into the zone of what you're talking about which is so much rumor speculation unfiltered. How do we go from?
Where we are?
To not going to Infowars somewhere in between what's that? What's the route yeah?
you definitely don't want to go to Infowars because and and not just because it's
This is going on the radio ultimately all right, not just because it's deep but
But because it's just going to validate
what you already believe if you go to the most extreme most outrageous the most scurrilous and
dreadful example of
Of what you think the rest of the world is then you'll be validated never to go there ever again
I mean that guy's just a scary freak show
You know, but if you go to
National Review Online, let's say assuming that this office this audience is
a liberal audience
You know or commentary or you know?
Red state sometimes, or you know just to get a sense of what?
how they're seeing things I mean it it is true that we live in two different worlds now now I
Think it's almost more important to know
how people are living
Then you know necessarily what they're saying. I mean, I still think if we didn't see
Look Trump was elected by Romney
Republicans right and then that was 80% of who voted for him people who voted for him because they wanted tax cuts
you know
That's the Trump voter we love to focus on the exotic on that
Person out there in the middle of the country somewhere who talks with a funny accent
and you know doesn't you know do they do jobs that we don't understand or or
You know they've never lived anywhere else
Or you know whatever they aren't an urban elite
And so that's where we focus our time
And we think we know them we think we understand because part of the way we build our world is with
stereotypes and
Stereotypes they're shortcuts on the books that probably most influence to this book believe it or not is
one that was written in
1920s by walter lippmann called public opinion a
brilliant book and
unbelievably prescient and
readable for free now because the
It's no it's now in the public domain and it's pretty well written so I look it up if you have any
Further interest in this but you know he he was the first person to use the word
stereotype the way that we use it today and
You know we think that we we know a couple of things about a person their race or their job or their or their
where they live and you know maybe another detail or two and we think we know them, but we don't and
You know I think we might understand more about
Why we're in this situation if we knew them better if we knew
how they live what we if we knew what their hopes were and their disappointments and
their fear for the future
We aren't going to agree with them
necessarily if if you didn't start that way if you're not afraid of
Immigrants and now talking to them isn't gonna. Make you afraid of immigrants
I mean one thing that I say in the book, and it's a very personal book in some ways
You know I say, I know I'm right
there's only one person that's right, and it's me I
Know that I'm right so I can risk
going out there and finding out what other people think because it isn't going to rock my world because I know I'm right I I
Just know
So
You know I don't expect anybody to feel any differently although. I am the one who's right and
but it's you know, but there's so much out there that I
Didn't really get but I am a reporter
I have gone to weird places and talked to people very outside of my own
world and it's always been a really thrilling and wonderful and fulfilling experience because it sounds trite and
Banal, but the fact is is that?
people fundamentally
Do share
The same things in common, you know they they love their kids they want peace
They want a sense of security
they have a sense of humor usually I mean I
Am and I haven't haven't talked to Isis, so I don't know maybe but I mean, but fundamentally
It's not like I think oh, it's not like an Anne Frank
I think fundamentally all people are good, but I do think that there's you can get purchase on them somewhere
there is a place where you can connect, and I think it would it would certainly help us as
individuals
Rebuilding our worlds and obviously as a nation which is so Riven right now. If there was more of that
It sounds so bland and yet, it's so fundamental
We were chatting earlier today, and you mentioned to me. You really dislike the term fake news
Tell me more about that. I think it's first of all it's a cliche and I really hate cliches
Second of all it had a meaning once and meant a content farm
Generally off shore you know some teenager in
Slovenia who decided that they could make some money
by making up stuff that got people emotional to retweet it and then they would get ad
revenue from Google or Facebook or wherever mostly Google and
And so that's what they did and they found that
Both the left and the right you know extremes really loved retweeting this stuff
That was completely untrue made up in Slovenia, but they made a nice penny on it
And they made more from right-wing version of the stuff than left-wing generally, but they made money from both
Then you know it was determined that
You know fake news
things like
Donald Trump was endorsed by the Pope and stuff like that which got retweeted a lot
That was fake news and the media
The mainstream media got up in arms about the impact this stuff may have had on the election. I don't think it did but
Much was made of it
And and the term was picked up by the President to mean anything that he didn't agree with and now
Everybody uses the term to mean
Whatever it is that they don't agree with when there are much more
Precise terms that don't glorify
What is a lie or?
propaganda or a deception or any number of things
with the word news
It's just a term that no longer means anything and yet by wielding it
You're denigrating the idea that
News is something that is intended to be
True
Generally if it isn't news then it's propaganda
Then it's a lie, then it's a deception or a conspiracy or whatever you like
But if you call it fake news you're it's it's like saying
little
Mario or or crooked Hillary you're associating the word news which means something
With fakeness, and I just think that's falling into the trap, and I my colleagues use it sometimes
And I it just really bothers me
clearly
So so speaking of that, that's that's a good segue to just the idea of
The words that we're using the words we use in media the words we use
Just amongst our friends in conversation, and you talk about the importance
Specifically with the media of the precision of language and the power that that holds
And so you just you know reference this idea the New York Times
Took a stance and started calling out
What the president's turn certain things be was saying his lies other people wouldn't take that stance so
So when you get into thinking about the precision of language? What is the media's?
responsibility and how far should they take that yeah, I think the media have always had a responsibility to be as
accurate and as fair
but as accurate as they can and
But you know it's Lee since the Nixon administration this idea that the liberal media are biased and therefore
They'll bend over backwards with something that I call in
In the comic book fairness bias you know giving
50/50 time to
Entirely unequal arguments in order to protect themselves from the charge of bias, but they aren't serving their audience
Because those two arguments don't deserve equal time
I mean global warming is the classic example you have the
You know the one outlier scientist paid for by
Frequently it's the tobacco industry not even the oil industry, but they're all part of this
You know junk news junk science. That's the scientific equivalent of fake news you know
anyway, so
They
You know they're for a long time
They would have one scientist the outlier have as much space as the entire scientific
Consensus, and you know look fair and balanced, but is that?
Serving the reader
No
It simply isn't and I think that's all of these attacks
the fact that I think many in the media understand that Trump will just
Use them and abuse them as he sees fit
And there's nothing to be gained and you don't have to make the usual trades
The deals you make to get anonymous quotes that were never any good anyway to finish your story
Because the place leaks like a lobster pot and then and so all you really need to do is
Tell the truth the best you can I
Think it's been quite liberating. I do think however
There still isn't enough
triage being done on the on the president's
Ejaculations, and I use that term as as you'll find that meaning in the dictionary
But I mean you know that's what they are there are these sort of little little you know more every morning explosions
That sounds dirtier, right?
We were all thinking something else
So
Moving away from that
So speaking of so bias let's let's talk about that a little bit both mostly in the media
But it's sort of segwaying into what you talk a lot of in this book which is about our own personal
Bias, but what I'm most interested in in learning from you is so the personal bias
We all carry as journalists right we all have it
Everyone that we I just read a really fascinating article about so much of what the media does is try and hide that?
Anybody has an opinion about anything right?
Maybe you don't mean bias though. Maybe you mean
Just coming to conclusions. I mean it was outrageous to me when I found out that you know a
former editor of the Washington Post and and Jim Lehrer
You know of the NewsHour they they didn't vote they didn't exercise their franchise
Because it would be like putting a stake in the sand well. We have computers who can be that now
I mean what you what you want is someone who has experience and judgment and background information and
Still to present the news in a fair and accurate way
But do you deny your experience were we ever really this band of
passionless
Priests that had no stake in the outcome of anything some of the best journalism. That was ever done in this country was done by
Activists you know we called them muckrakers, Ida Tarbell, and and you know the people that
McClure's and the new masses for that matter these were deep investigative reports, so
We've spent so much time
trying to
deny
Or suppress a lot of the hard-earned experience that we've amassed over the years
But whatever so what let's take that further to the other end so the people that really this is something that we've talked quite a
Bit about in the ko W. Newsroom. They would love us to
To exercise some of that bias right and so we talked about the idea
They would like for us to draw a line at some point and say that's that's too far
We don't want to necessarily
Have your report on that or talk about that and one of the phrases we use which is from NPR is?
We feel our job is to reflect the world as it is not as we wish it were can you give me an example of?
But like the kind of thing you'd have you stayed on there right so so most recently you may have
Heard some of the controversy we had a Nazi on our air at ko W now
There are the whole host of reasons why we would love a redo on that we didn't execute it very well
And we learned a lot from that process
But what the outcry was from our audience and actually internal inside the station was that we talked to him at all
It was very very clear that people were angry at us
Why would you talk to?
A white supremacist a neo-nazi this is there's got to be a line that you will draw
And that was what we we had really deep conversations with at the station, which is if you draw the line there
Where does it stop and as journalists?
We we think our job is to reflect the world to the community that we serve and let them make those decisions
How do you follow that?
Well we had our Nazi on
But it was executed pretty well
I'd say by Bob because in the end the Nazi said I really feel sorry for you Bob. You sound so angry
We have people on who are
With whom we disagree profoundly we don't give them regular space on the air
but I think that if they were going to have an impact and at this point in the in the
Discussion there was a much said about the impact of the alt-right on the President's agenda
It turned out most of them got punted
But maybe they need to be there because the president's still saying the same stuff so
The question is you know if the alt-right is there who are these people you know? Where is the power base? What do they think?
What do they want and you know Bob didn't give the guy a pass in the slightest?
He wasn't there to
necessarily be screaming down either
I mean we had a mond so we could figure out who these people are what do they think I think?
You make your decision on what you think is going to be useful
To your audience to better understand what's going on in the world. I'm not worried about slippery slope
Arguments very much though. Where do you draw the line argument? I think that you know?
when they are applied in
Politics, it's always absurd. Oh, you're having gay marriage now
You're you're gonna legalize sex with Turtles or you know whatever
It is and it's I think that it's all part of the case-by-case
judgments that
You know we have to do as journalists
Right well, I mean it. What's interesting is?
As we move into these uncharted waters, I think you know our audience
They're there with us in this in this way that they they want
They want to see the world as we would show it to them, and they trust us
and so as
Broadcasters as journalists. We were we're mindful of that we want to serve our audience and so so that balance between
Pushing people out of their comfort zones and yet wanting to keep our people close
right
You can still keep them close. You can still represent
your listeners and still have those people on because
you know I think that as an interviewer you function as a
Listeners surrogate you ask the question you make the argument that you think your listener would if they could
Or the ideal listener not every listener clearly some of you are just nuts but
but
you know
But the ideal listener you want to do well by that person that thoughtful person
That you know is listening on the other side
So you're bringing that person on for them not to alienate them?
You are rep, but because you know these people are no longer
Lurking in the shadows the the white supremacists and so on because they are having
a much bigger say in the conversation and causing chaos in the streets
You can't pretend that they're not there. You're not serving your audience by doing that
That's where that's where we landed and it's it's an uncomfortable space, and I think that's the part of
used to do yeah, no question we talked about getting getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and
I feel like not only as
Journalists, but as news consumers. There's it feels like that's the space we're in
And it gets exhausting
I mean do you hear a lot about the fatigue as you're going through and you're talking to journalists?
And and how do you how do you get past the idea that it just it all seems like too much
You know this was the year that I was gonna take off and write a book about Neanderthals
But we have a really young staff and also a friend of
My husband as a journalist too and a friend of ours emailed him and said you feel like you've been
Practicing for like 25 years just for this moment. I mean if if you're not gonna do your best work now. When are you so?
I'm still there
But you know it's it is exhausting. It's exhausting and distressing in the
volume of science fiction novels I have bought has skyrocketed over there, I just
You know people will say well, what kind of media
Outlets should I be consuming and I just want to say can I tell you what the great science fiction writers are doing right now?
but it's
Yeah, I don't know are the biggest fear for me. Is that the nation as a whole come less engaged
you know at least we're
Paid to pay attention
you
Know you have to its a rare person who can devote themselves to
the cause of
Whatever it might be anything the state of our democracy
protecting voting rights
protecting health insurance making sure that the poor have a place to live any
number of things that could take all your time
And maybe it makes sense to do the kind of triage that I talked about for the media
Find the one or two issues and do
Something about it every day. You know write your congressperson or make a phone call or
you know
Volunteer I mean try and channel and and use that energy to live in the world
Because you know
being complacent
Isn't going to move us away from the generalized feeling of kind of sodden
exhausted
Sadness that
So many people feel right now
So turning a little bit of your your lens on on
Public radio is you but I'm really more interested in
You said something today that I thought was you said you thought public radio plays it a little safe
I don't know if you include yourself and man, or if you're talking about local stations like kW RSP
I was talking about NPR mostly. You know they they are look. I've worked in NPR for many years
As Scott Simon senator than the editor of All Things Considered
Then as a Moscow correspondent for three years and six years as their media correspondent. I'm in a long time and
There isn't a place that feels more the pressure of being
Unbiased than public radio
So you know they've made a decision they won't use the word lie
They won't use the word lie because they don't know for sure
Whether or not Trump. Just doesn't know anything
You can't lie unless you understand
That it is a lie
He doesn't seem to care. I have to say that
Do you remember this book that was written a few years back?
by a
philosophy teacher an Ivy League philosophy teacher named Harry, Frankfurt
and it was called and you'll just have to bleep this because it's you know it was called on bullshit and
I think maybe you can say bullshit, actually. I think we can and
he
And what he did is he distinguished between just lying or horse
bleep and
bullshit and and what he said was that the
Person who lies is trying to create
Is trying to persuade you of something really?
One could say one who would track the lives of the Bush administration in the run-up to the
invasion of Iraq
Counted I think one organization counted 92 lies
Intentional falsehoods in order to create the argument for going to war in Iraq
Now one could argue that they honestly believed there were weapons of destruction there
But they didn't have the evidence so they cooked it, but they thought it was there
I would I am willing to give them that and
But that's not Trump's issue
I don't think Trump Trump has created a kind of alternate a
smoking hellscape of America for
for the for a certain part of the population, but
Fundamentally he doesn't care whether or not
What he's saying is true
He wants to cast doubt on the very idea that truth can be known or that it even exists and
And he's using
Statements randomly said true or otherwise for a momentary
Blip of attention or gain or to relieve himself of responsibility or to cast blame on someone else or to?
Distract that is just classic
bullshit and
and you know if we were gonna be truly accurate and
In the Harry Frankford book that would that would be the word we would apply to him. We can't really do that
but
We are
NPR plays it safe won't use that word
Is careful to make sure all?
Sides are reflected, and I think NPR's
Biggest problem is that?
It doesn't ask follow-ups a lot of times when when they should I mean the they get good
interviews sometimes but
You know I have a weekly show so we can spend an hour on an interview and I can ask a question
The same question 15 times in a row you won't hear that
But then I will edit together the complete answer and the interviewee
never has complained all these years because I don't edit to win the argument just to get the most concise and
Cogent response that I can whether or not I'm in agreement with the person. I'm interviewing or utterly not
but I can keep asking and
Sometimes I'll in the the you know the follow up follow up follow up
I have a chance I think that part of it is just a function of NPR that they don't have the time to
Spend with each person they're interviewing, but I think as a result those interviews are just less
enlightening and less valuable, and I think that's
That's a shame. You know it would be better just to do
Longer deeper interviews because they're they're very skilled journalists at National Public Radio
I think it's the process which I've participated in it's just too rushed
But does it so does it feel like to you that we can we can change this conversation
Because I don't know if you saw this most recent poll about the level of trust in media
It's it's at an all-time low, and it's we think it's conservatives versus liberals, but it's it's across the board
and so you know sometimes I wonder is is there anything we can actually do about that given the
Landscape or we do we have to wait it out and at some point. It's just gonna get better as a media organization
We don't know quite how to think about that
Yeah, and I think part of the problem is the terms because the media is
Not a unitary institution. You know we are the media the media are us the media are cable news and
blogs and Twitter and Facebook
and
Infowars in the New York Times and KUOW
And and you know they're all those things, and so who is it that people don't?
Have faith in are they asked about the media in general some studies. Do some polls some break it down
How do you feel about your newspaper or your local TV blah blah blah?
You get various degrees of trust when you when you break it down that way
but I think what people are reacting to first of all is the
crooked Hillary
Conjunction of the attacks on the press that even if you don't agree with them they just they start building
You know kind of associative pathways, so you know the press lion press buying media blah blah blah failing
New York Times, New York Times hasn't been doing so well in
Years because now supporting quality journalism has become an active engagement
Which is great, but but fundamentally? I'll just say that what we have to do is
Better than we ever have and
And that's all we can do is better than we ever have I think we could make better decisions
I think people are responding to the noise the blather the
Emptiness of so much is out there, I and people feel a responsibility
Or a compulsion to consume it you
Know ultimately it is up to the news consumer. This is a business
They serve up what gets viewers and clicks
So sometimes I think people you know
One part of the country is complaining about the other part of the country, but they still switch on you know
Their cable news thing and then they hear this stuff, and it's annoying
But they can turn it off and it it's the electronic fireplace or something. I you know we are all
Culpable and oh we are all punished thereby
So as we wrap up our part of it if you have questions if you want to start to come to the mic and and
Line up we'll take those in a minute, but we always we feel like we we always do want
Something to leave with that we feel like we can do
And you you kind of frame it as a couple of things that there are there are some things within our control and mostly
It's ourselves and you talk about the idea that
Our reality just needs some tweaking first of all so what what what can we do as we as we leave here
And we're thinking about all these things you mentioned some very specific examples of ways you can get involved and engaged
But just in how we think about it
Is there is there kind of a takeaway that you would give people of?
how to get through it how to not go insane how to how to maintain and be active
You know, it's
You're not wrong
But you're not entirely right
none of us is
I
think that I
Think we just have to stop being
So tribal there's so little
Tolerance now. This is an era of such
orthodoxy on all sides and
You know and then there's we derive a feeling of purity from it
And it's maybe a temporary comfort, but it's kind of like you know the comfort of the bottle
You know you can drink it down and it's an excuse for not thinking about things anymore
but you can never be through thinking about things I
Just wish that people wouldn't be afraid to wander
from their
Orthodoxy and from their tribe just take a little walk away
There's any number of ways to do that. You know just by reading in an on
an
unsanctified
Writer on a subject. You know by following up
You know certain facts that you think must be wrong, but they're cited by a responsible organization
and maybe they're not you know just
question things a little bit more
rather than to harden your sense of certainty
Because there's
Because it's so confusing out there, and that's what we want to do, but the world that
Seemed to work the world that said democracy works the world that said that facts will win an argument
the world that said we
you know
We learn from our mistakes you know these fundamental principles
They're just not true. We're just you know we are profoundly flawed as a species and
And all like us all we can do is our best work and the same goes for
Every single person in this room and it's an endless struggle
And you know that's not a comforting thing to walk out with so I'm sorry about that
And don't get your news from Facebook. I think that was a take away
Don't get your news from Facebook. Don't let your friends in an algorithm decide what you should see
Excellent we've got some questions this week, maybe we can get some optimistic questions, so yeah
I'd like to invite folks if they want to ask you a question line up along the side here
We have about 15 minutes, so please keep your questions brief and in the form of a question. Thank you
So I know you mentioned things about embracing
bias or striving for objectivity you know how to
Function in an environment of fake news and this war with Trump in the media. How do you?
Think personally the media should address, you know Trump his tweets
Alternative facts
Narrow question there no I would say that you know
We have on our on our Twitter feed and on our website a whole
a whole
list of the different kinds of Trump tweets they are
How they're intended what they're supposed to do and basically it's a breakdown and an analysis of Trump tweets
It's quite useful. I think that
You know I think
That you're asking what the news consumers should do right or I'm not quite sure what you're asking
I was I see how do you think the media should address? How should the media address it?
well
You know I'd like I said I think the media need to decide which tweets are worth
Digging into and which are worth merely noting you know in tweet watch or something
There's been a big debate over whether or not the tweets should be regarded as
Official statements from Whitehouse, or do we just give this guy a pass and just assume. It's a kind of verbal diarrhea
I don't think that he should be let off the hook that way
So but on the other hand if you pay attention to tweets people will say those are just so many shiny objects
So there there needs to be more reporting on everything, and I think that
the reporting needs to go deep in terms of the
constant disparagement of the news media
I think that
You know there are plenty of periods in history where everybody hates the media
They hated the media in the run-up in during Watergate. They hated the media
In the run-up to the war in Iraq you know you know they loved the media when
During the coverage of Katrina although some of that coverage was terrible because what people really want from the media
are is validation of their own views and a voice to give expression to
how they feel and the expressions of shame and rage that people felt watching the
Debacle a tragedy of Katrina was expressed by those cable news hosts and even though a lot of what they said was just plain wrong
They said it they
Expressed their feelings so the the polls went way up
So you know I think that the media
needs to
stick to its fundamental
mission because you
Sometimes the public will hate you for it, and then they'll love you for it later in fact that happens a lot
I had a question about you were talking about bringing Nazis onto the air
And there seems to be like there's like a crop of people coming up like deplorable kind of people they get attention
from going on the media and
sort of saying these really extreme views and then getting a lot of blowback and a lot of
sort of protest against them
I'm wearing like how like kind of media and not the consumers can kind of repudiate the values of these people have
Well without sort of giving them the the fuel of like victimhood
Yeah, I mean, I think that they can I think by interrogating them
really strenuously and
by having somebody on for a reason not just because they're
You know they're a great car wreck and very entertaining
I think that you know your intention and your execution have to be clear and have to has to be
Really effective. I think that a
byproduct of
Interrogating or an exposing an issue is that you're exposing it
I mean you can't have it both ways you have to make a choice in you know as reporters
I always think more speech is better than less that doesn't mean I'm gonna have somebody on to bloviate offensively
For no reason so you know we had a reason we had a set of questions and we applied
Very you know we were we interrogated ourselves before actually going ahead with it and
I think that there isn't any way around it. There's no way out of the you can't
Expose someone and not give them airtime
That's just kind of against physics
so you you know you just have to do it right and you have to do it sparingly, but you don't just
You know draw a shade over something. That's happening in the country and pretend. It's not there
You could have answered that too
Good evening
Your prescription as I've heard it is primarily an
individual exercise in
cultivating discretion and humility and
Openness
and I am
Questioning how that's going to accomplish a much more broad-based
Cultural change in how we think and I've just been reading the book
gene Myers book dark money
documenting a
40-year
that's what I was referring to starting with the Nixon administration of
think tanks that were designed to
cede the culture we acute the public discourse in a very mcavee alien and
Systematic way propagate using all the most sophisticated
and propaganda techniques based in marketing and
cognitive science how
Do you want to respond to the challenge of the more?
institutionalized problems in our
Information culture that wasn't the intention in that little book
I mean, you know that is a different book and a much larger one this one was
simply an exploration of
What was the nature of this distress now basically the book is divided into three parts?
How we're wired to?
Shrink the world. How are the confluence of human nature and technology?
gave this moment to trump and
what can one do to sort of pace their world back together it did not attempt to offer a
Prescription to the broader problems we do talk about that a lot on the show
When I was approached to write this to write something anything
You know I said
The the world was changing too fast
I didn't have time to take off from program to do the kind of book that you describe
I think there are some wonderful books out there by people who are far more qualified than I am
to talk about that Rebecca Solnit, you know is wonderful and
And Jane mares description of dark money really is harrowing. There's no question about it this is
Is basically an essay, it's it's a it is that's why I just called it a rumination. It's not a cure
It's not a prescription. It is it it doesn't
it
Addresses the institutional problems as a function of human nature, but it doesn't
you know it doesn't provide a recipe for action I
Have a question about science fiction mm-hmm, thank you I
Appreciate the excerpts from your book about
Huxley noir well and I'm wondering if you're reading anything
Now or in the past few years that has felt similarly prescient for the moment that we're in where?
Not only is media pervasive, but we are also not only are we all consumers of media, but we are
producers and distributors of it as well or
Just something really good in escapist because I'm pretty tired these days yeah, they're you know we did a show recently on apocalypse on
Apocalyptic science fiction and also a science fiction
That imagines the environment you know 100 or 150 years now Kim Stanley?
Robinson keeps doing that
Jeff Vandermeer
Did a trilogy that was wonderful he has a new book out called born which has to do
Which has as it's sort of
you know
Fundamental idea the germ of today has to do with bioengineering, and I thought it was fascinating. I really enjoyed it
I've also
Been doing pure escapism, too. You know in in cage Jemison. There's a whole crop of
young
black female
Science fiction writers, it's like you know it's when did Octavia Butler die I mean so long ago
but I mean there seems to be a crop of people who are
Who are creating these incredibly detailed worlds that are so much fun to inhabit
Yeah, there's and I just bought the new pullman book so I'll let you know what I think no you didn't like it
What I
Was looking for your oh oh no, I wish I'd read it
I just have it at home, but I don't have it with me but
Yeah, I'd go with born born is really fun. That's
Vandermeer
So I actually want to dive in with the curators prerogative last questions as we have you on stage
One of my favorite things that on the media covers is the business of the media industry, I remember
while ago now you had a jingle about the present and future business models to monetize the newspaper industry and
This is maybe a also a recommendation question
But right after Trump was elected it seemed like there was this kind of resistance move to subscribe
The Washington Post subscribe to your local newspaper or subscribe to magazines is that a real
Positive trend that you think will have real continuation in the business and what are some
subscriptions that everyone in the room should
I
think I love this question for a variety of reasons one of which is because
Somebody who really complained about the fact that
Quality information wasn't being supported and that it was really
Entertainment that kept the press is running, and that's why the news is so bad
Why was walter Lippmann in the 1920s but?
interestingly this
this maybe finally
Maybe the kind of change from what people in the newspaper business call the original sin
Which is when they started putting their stuff online for free right at the beginning?
And so people got used to it being free and something that Lippmann said is that people always?
Assume they have a right to the information
It's the entertainment
and the and the
You know everything that is enjoyable. You know that isn't broccoli. You know. They're you know
entered
You know like hobby stuff you know or or?
porn or though that has really taken a hit in the Internet age as well and
But people will buy
HBO right and so
When I was a kid
You never paid for television you had your three channels in your two other channels
and then and then the the little syndicated ones five channels on your TV and
You didn't pay for water. I mean there were so many things
You didn't pay for now we got used to paying for that
But we still in the entire history. Do just not used to paying for
quality information
never have and so it's
This may be a moment when the broken business models that we've talked about for certain
publications I do think that the Washington Post the New York Times and public radio
Have benefited
I I know W. NYC has I hope that KUOW has because the thing that's taken the worst hit is
Local news and that's where the most important stuff really happens is in local
Communities some places vast play their vast number of places where no experienced reporters covering the Statehouse
There are lots of states where they're just using
Journalism students for that and they don't have the the institutional history to be able to do it well
However talented they may be and this you know there's corruption happening in plain sight
We did a show a couple of years ago called deadbeats where we talked about beats that have gone dead
You know the labor beat the environment beat has gone dead these
there are no longer people covering this stuff and
You know it is on the local level where?
citizens need to put
their money
Anybody in this room who complains about the eeeh and doesn't pay for the stuff that they?
Consumed that they rely on should just shut up
Hey
Now there's but there's something you can take there's something you can use
Much for being here, thank you all so
On your way out
Please visit the university bookstores table where you can pick up
The trouble with reality at a very reasonable price and Brooke will be signing out there in just a minute
