Speaker 1: Next month, the twenty seventh Conference of the Parties or
Speaker 1: COP the UN Climate Negotiations Conference, will kick off in Cairo, Egypt.
Speaker 1: Once again, negotiators and politicians from all over the world
Speaker 1: will join up to talk through what they are willing
Speaker 1: to do to stave off human extinction. That sounds dramatic, right,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of what we're talking about here. There
Speaker 1: will be the usual massive contingent from the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry there as well. Last time in Glasgow, the fossil
Speaker 1: fuel industry sent more representatives than anyone country did, and
Speaker 1: there's likely to be more of the same in Egypt.
Speaker 1: The organizers have, in a much publicized and criticized move,
Speaker 1: allowed major global polluter Coca Cola to sponsor the event.
Speaker 1: Even worse, they've also hired Coca Cola's publicist Hill and
Speaker 1: Knowlton to do pr for the conference. If you missed
Speaker 1: season three of Drill, go back and listen to it.
Speaker 1: We did an entire episode on Helen Milton founder John
Speaker 1: Hill and his work for both the oil industry and
Speaker 1: the tobacco industry all at the same time. Hill masterminded
Speaker 1: the strategy of hiring scientists to say tobacco smoking wasn't
Speaker 1: bad for you, and that the jury was still out
Speaker 1: on whether it caused cancer. At the very same time,
Speaker 1: his firm was working for the American Petroleum Institute and
Speaker 1: some of its member companies. In fact, it was Hill
Speaker 1: who brought tobacco folks into the American Petroleum Institute. The
Speaker 1: long standing relation whip between oil and tobacco eventually resulted
Speaker 1: in the creation of the cigarette filter, a money maker
Speaker 1: for oil and gas companies looking for a new place
Speaker 1: to sell petrochemicals, and a slide of hand for the
Speaker 1: tobacco industry looking to convince consumers that they could make
Speaker 1: smoking less harmful by smoking lighter filtered cigarettes. Hill represented
Speaker 1: Mensanto around the same time, too, so no surprise that
Speaker 1: the chemical industry embraced a lot of the same tactics. Definitely,
Speaker 1: the folks you want strategizing the messaging for your climate conference,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they won't be reporting directly back to their clients.
Speaker 1: Q head banging against Wall video.
Speaker 2: At any rate.
Speaker 1: Cop isn't just a time for official corporate greenwashing. It's
Speaker 1: also a period of time that tends to see major
Speaker 1: spikes in climate disinformation. Social media will almost assuredly be
Speaker 1: flooded with various memes about the elitist at COP, the
Speaker 1: failures of renewable energy, and that dam frozen windmill picture
Speaker 1: that makes the rounds every couple of years. A coalition
Speaker 1: of environmental groups has come together under the banner of
Speaker 1: Climate Action against Disinformation to monitor the disinformation that spawns
Speaker 1: around some of these big inflection points. They initially got
Speaker 1: organized around COP twenty six in Glasgow and now in
Speaker 1: advance of COP twenty seven in Cairo, they've put together
Speaker 1: a report full of information aimed at helping journalists and
Speaker 1: other communicators avoid unintentionally spreading or amplifying mis and disinformation.
Speaker 1: The lead author on that report, Connor Gibson, is joining
Speaker 1: me here today to walk us through it. That's coming
Speaker 1: up after this quick break.
Speaker 3: A little bit more savviness is needed in newsrooms in
Speaker 3: the modern era in order to not allow that to happen,
Speaker 3: because certainly disinformers now know how to exploit that tension
Speaker 3: in terms of something like viral sloganeering, which is a
Speaker 3: concept that the Data in Society Research Institute wrote.
Speaker 4: To report on.
Speaker 3: You know, basically, climate gate is the example that I
Speaker 3: use in this report, you know how many major news
Speaker 3: outlets printed the word climate gate, that is the tagline
Speaker 3: of the climate change denial movement, and just putting that
Speaker 3: in your headline over and over again really created a
Speaker 3: sense among news readers that there was guilt and that
Speaker 3: there was fabrication of data and all of the false
Speaker 3: accusations that had been aid after those climate scientists emails
Speaker 3: were hacked and taken out of context and released. And
Speaker 3: you know, the fact checking that came after the investigations
Speaker 3: and exonerations that came after that didn't spread. That didn't
Speaker 3: spread nearly as widely as the phrase climate gate. It
Speaker 3: never does, Yeah, exactly, it never does. So I think
Speaker 3: one of the biggest insurmountable feeling trends that I looked
Speaker 3: at in this report is just the economics of the newsroom.
Speaker 4: You know, when there is a.
Speaker 3: Revenue incentive that is based around clicks shares, most emailed articles,
Speaker 3: that precludes the type of tone that is actually needed
Speaker 3: to stop misinformation from festering. And so the simple capitalist
Speaker 3: economics of keeping a news outlet functioning actually creates a
Speaker 3: breeding ground for misinformation as well, and is something that
Speaker 3: needs to be taken and a lot more seriously than
Speaker 3: it currently is. But unfortunately, because it's about economics. I
Speaker 3: think that is one of the biggest obstacles that reporters
Speaker 3: will face when it comes to that tension between the
Speaker 3: responsibility of a reporter to communicate something accurately without feeding
Speaker 3: into conspiracy theory or myth, and the responsibility of an
Speaker 3: editor to keep the newspaper in circulation and financially healthy.
Speaker 2: Oh totally, especially given all the social media stuff too.
Speaker 2: Like I see it all the time on Twitter A
Speaker 2: lot of times. You know, the article itself will be
Speaker 2: halfway decent, but the tweet is really seeing sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The research started with a literature review, mostly a review
Speaker 3: of academic articles, many of which are peer reviewed, some
Speaker 3: of which are not, but are very prescriptive in terms
Speaker 3: of communications expertise. And that's where First Draft and the
Speaker 3: Data and Society Research Institute, the Union of Concerned Scientists
Speaker 3: and some others have published really helpful information when it
Speaker 3: comes to just psychology based communication techniques, perhaps nobody more
Speaker 3: than academics like Stefan Lewandowski and John Cook, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the collaborators on reports like the Debunking Handbook
Speaker 3: and the Conspiracy Theory handbook, just really excellent psychology based
Speaker 3: communications advice that these academics have published in order to
Speaker 3: help people navigate the most basic traps. And this stuff
Speaker 3: has been around for decades, right like Richard Nixon, I'm
Speaker 3: not a crook. Everybody hears the word crook. George Lindhoff
Speaker 3: wrote a book, Don't Think of an Elephant, because the
Speaker 3: only word that sticks in your brain after you say
Speaker 3: that is the word elephant. So, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff has been known for a long time.
Speaker 3: But I poked around at some headlines, you know, from
Speaker 3: major outlets, and I still see the same mistakes happening.
Speaker 3: And you know, a lot of that is not it's
Speaker 3: not because people are foolish. It's just that there is
Speaker 3: an amount of faith in the audience when it comes
Speaker 3: to an honest journalist and editor writing a report and
Speaker 3: writing a headline that unfortunately just misses the traps that
Speaker 3: disinformation relies on in order to spread. And that's got
Speaker 3: to be really frustrating when you're a professional who writes
Speaker 3: something that's very intellectually honest, and yet as a result
Speaker 3: of writing it in an intellectually honest way, it is
Speaker 3: misinformation and disinformation to spread. So that's really why we
Speaker 3: wrote this report. It's why we focused on climate as
Speaker 3: a topic because of a COP twenty seven coming up
Speaker 3: in Egypt, and every year when the United Nations climate
Speaker 3: negotiations happen, there's an inevitable amount of misinformation online and
Speaker 3: social media related to climate and you can predict what
Speaker 3: some of it will be. It will be rich people
Speaker 3: are flying on jets, how ironic and things like that.
Speaker 3: There will probably be some outdated imagery circulated, like perhaps
Speaker 3: frozen wind turbines or you know, solar panels not failing
Speaker 3: to meet electricity demand in some country. You know, something
Speaker 3: that's taken out of context that usually has recirculated every
Speaker 3: few years in a moment like this in order just
Speaker 3: to see it a narrative of cynicism, in order to
Speaker 3: make people feel like this isn't a problem that can
Speaker 3: be addressed, or this isn't a problem that needs to
Speaker 3: be addressed. Also, climate journalists are kind of a good
Speaker 3: target audience for us here because the phenomenon of climate
Speaker 3: change denial, I think has made climate change reporters a
Speaker 3: little more sophisticated and understanding these trends. Before social media
Speaker 3: made disinformation such a rampant problem in the last few years.
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it that way before, but yeah,
Speaker 1: climate reporters to be sort of dealt with the disinformation
Speaker 1: thing before everybody else did in some ways.
Speaker 3: And just the the relentless nature in which that community
Speaker 3: of climate change deniers, you know, has stayed organized like
Speaker 3: they really and it's the same guy as mostly men
Speaker 3: you know now for twenty thirty years that have.
Speaker 4: Been at it.
Speaker 3: You know, it took a long time, but I would
Speaker 3: say that most of the people who are in the
Speaker 3: climate reporting world are far more sophisticated now than certainly
Speaker 3: they were in the nineteen nineties or the two thousands,
Speaker 3: when that phenomenon was a little underreported, the cast of
Speaker 3: characters wasn't as widely known. And there are definitely improvements
Speaker 3: in how that has been covered, in kind of the
Speaker 3: level of scrutiny that is applied to those folks as
Speaker 3: messengers when they have a vested interest or they just
Speaker 3: have a long history of at this point debunked contrarianism.
Speaker 3: So you know, we try to write this report and
Speaker 3: publish it with acknowledgement that we're not writing it because
Speaker 3: climate reporters are particularly gullible or anything like that. We
Speaker 3: think it's one of the more relevant fields with which
Speaker 3: to understand what communication techniques are required in order to
Speaker 3: mitigate misinformation and disinformation, as well as a field where
Speaker 3: some of that understanding is already a little bit more
Speaker 3: fully developed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's super interesting. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why this report is coming out now and
Speaker 1: particularly why it's being pegged to cop.
Speaker 3: Sure this report has been over a year in the making.
Speaker 3: I've been doing research on behalf of Greenpeace, which is
Speaker 3: my former employer of a decade until twenty twenty. And
Speaker 3: green Peace, you know, in several different offices around the
Speaker 3: world that operates and has an interest in misinformation and disinformation.
Speaker 3: And green Peace has partnered with a variety of groups
Speaker 3: like a VASE as well as a coalition that this
Speaker 3: report will be published on behalf of which is Climate
Speaker 3: Action Against Disinformation. THEA and Climate Action Against Disinformation is
Speaker 3: a coalition that is formed actually from work it did
Speaker 3: a year ago monitoring the previous conference of Parties COP
Speaker 3: twenty six in Glasgow, Scotland, and that was a less
Speaker 3: formal effort but the same kind of idea of what
Speaker 3: is happening this year, which is a variety of groups
Speaker 3: including the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Stop Funding Heat, Friends
Speaker 3: of the Earth, Climate Nexus, Greenpeace. Many organizations are just
Speaker 3: trying to proactively monitor social media disinformation related to climate
Speaker 3: change and related to COP twenty seven in Egypt as
Speaker 3: it's happening, and so they will be publishing daily briefings
Speaker 3: that will be made available to reporters that are covering it.
Speaker 3: Trying to observe disinformation and misinformation on social media as
Speaker 3: it's emerging in order to kind of sound the law
Speaker 3: and let people know which types of misleading narratives are
Speaker 3: being seated in order to undermine the United Nations negotiations
Speaker 3: this year. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a bunch
Speaker 3: of other organizations published a report earlier this year in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty called Deny Deceive Delay Documenting and Responding to
Speaker 3: Climate Disinformation at COP twenty six and Beyond. And that
Speaker 3: report I thought was a particularly coherent breakdown of trends
Speaker 3: on social media, who some of the most prominent misinformers
Speaker 3: and disinformers were, and just like kind of tracing the
Speaker 3: who was the original person that put you know, the
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen photo of a de icing exercise of a
Speaker 3: windmill and recirculating that into a myth as if it
Speaker 3: was something that were happening in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we actually had Jenny king on to like
Speaker 1: walk through that report. When it came out to I
Speaker 1: thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 4: Too, right, So that's the origin.
Speaker 3: It's that cluster of organizations that are working to monitor
Speaker 3: disinformation around COP twenty seven. This report is intended to
Speaker 3: complement that effort to give a little bit more prescription
Speaker 3: based on the best research that's available right now for journalists,
Speaker 3: specifically to assess when to write or to not write
Speaker 3: about a trend. When is their platform giving more oxygen
Speaker 3: to a harmful narrative as opposed to recognizing, oh, I
Speaker 3: do not have control over the oxygen hose. This is
Speaker 3: a serious, widespread problem that needs to be covered. But
Speaker 3: how do I cover it? What techniques can we use
Speaker 3: in order to help interrupt misinformation without actually helping it grow?
Speaker 4: And that's really tricky.
Speaker 3: The research is actually complicated on that, but there is
Speaker 3: now a more sophisticated understanding, certainly than there were three
Speaker 3: or four years ago, about what some of the best
Speaker 3: practices are, and the meat and potatoes of this report,
Speaker 3: or the tofun potatoes, is to summarize what some of
Speaker 3: those best practices are and also highlight what some of
Speaker 3: the unknowns and some of the nuances are that are
Speaker 3: still being researched.
Speaker 1: Okay, can you get into some of the specific examples.
Speaker 1: Obviously we can't get through all of them, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of really good ones in here, but
Speaker 1: what are some that really jump out to you?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: And I want to say too, none of this report
Speaker 3: is intended to shame specific outlets or reporters. It's intended
Speaker 3: to learn together. And for that reason, I actually included
Speaker 3: myself on my blog doing something that was a mistake,
Speaker 3: and in order to try to reinforce that notion that
Speaker 3: this isn't about trying to make any particular media outlet
Speaker 3: look bad, you know, unless they actually did something in
Speaker 3: bad faith like bright Bark, right of course, of course, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know. One example is the hurricane and climate conversation.
Speaker 3: Science continues to develop. We actually are getting to the
Speaker 3: point where scientists are more able to estimate how much
Speaker 3: worse hurricanes are as a result of ocean temperatures being
Speaker 3: warmer as a result of sea level rise and what
Speaker 3: that means for storm surge. You know, that is not
Speaker 3: something that scientists could do ten years ago. The modeling
Speaker 3: technology was not at that point, and so the goal
Speaker 3: coaster shifting as scientific understanding has caught up, and in general,
Speaker 3: it's still the case that it is difficult to assign
Speaker 3: like a percentage in terms of how much worse any
Speaker 3: given hurricane is as a result of climate change. But
Speaker 3: there are very specific factors which scientists clearly understand make
Speaker 3: hurricanes stronger, make them hit harder, make them cause more
Speaker 3: damage and suffering, and that is a nuance that can
Speaker 3: be navigated. We have an example of the Washington Post
Speaker 3: and this report doing a good job talking about climate
Speaker 3: change in hurricanes without losing track of a couple things.
Speaker 3: One is the nuance between how weather variability is unpredictable
Speaker 3: and it's hard to assign any specific amount of you know,
Speaker 3: how much worse any given storm is as a result
Speaker 3: of climate change, but the factors that definitely make hurricanes worse,
Speaker 3: as well as not losing track of the human suffering
Speaker 3: and how it is a also not just a climate
Speaker 3: change story, but it is an impact on humanity story
Speaker 3: and not to lose that point, you know, while people
Speaker 3: are still digging up you know, possessions from the wreckage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this, this next one. The right headlines
Speaker 1: that omit the disinformation. I think that is something that
Speaker 1: I see happening all the time, and partly because of
Speaker 1: this thing that we were talking about before. It Like,
Speaker 1: if something is controversial or trending, then there's a desire
Speaker 1: to and have capitalize on that by sticking in the headline, right,
Speaker 1: but yeah, talk me through how damaging that is and
Speaker 1: also like what people should be thinking about doing instead.
Speaker 3: Sure, and this brings us back to the classic the
Speaker 3: Richard Nixon I'm not a crook example. Everybody heard him
Speaker 3: basically admitting he was a crook. Because that's how psychology works.
Speaker 3: You don't want to uplift the words that you do,
Speaker 3: not want to stick in people's mind. That's just how
Speaker 3: our brains work. We know how to conceptualize the thing
Speaker 3: that's being illustrated through language. We're not going to be
Speaker 3: illustrating something that's not mentioned. So if you are a
Speaker 3: communications professional, including journalist, but also advocates activists, you don't
Speaker 3: want to be using the language that paints a picture
Speaker 3: that's going to stick, where the misinformation is the thing
Speaker 3: that is being illustrated. You know, again, this is not
Speaker 3: intended to shame anybody. The PolitiFact website kind of does
Speaker 3: not adhere to best practices when it comes to this.
Speaker 3: They quote the myth that they are debunking. So even
Speaker 3: when they have these really great images, including the pants
Speaker 3: on fire logo, the reality is that they are still
Speaker 3: quoting the myth at the top of their article. And
Speaker 3: then oftentimes the next thing is they use the word no,
Speaker 3: and then they refute the myth.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 3: That's two rounds of uplifting misleading language before getting to
Speaker 3: the nuances of their fact check. It's also really important
Speaker 3: for me to say that this is a matter of
Speaker 3: best practices. With results of the language, it is always
Speaker 3: worth doing a fact check. So I do not want
Speaker 3: to make it out like that PolitiFact shouldn't exist because
Speaker 3: they're not always using the best communication technique. It's actually
Speaker 3: always best to fact check. That's the most important thing
Speaker 3: that can't be done. There was some research in recent
Speaker 3: years that was a little overconcerned about various backfire effects,
Speaker 3: and it is turning out that any attempt to fact
Speaker 3: check or debunk misleading information is worth it first and foremost,
Speaker 3: so that's the most important thing, is please debunk the
Speaker 3: information and spread that as far as possible. That said,
Speaker 3: there are still best communication practices that can be adhered to,
Speaker 3: and that's where some of these examples, like uplifting misinformation
Speaker 3: about climate change on Facebook or repeating Tucker Carlson's words verbatim,
Speaker 3: that's not the best practice because that uplifts the misleading information,
Speaker 3: that keeps it in circulation, that continues to frame the conversation.
Speaker 3: In terms of misleading language, it is better, as with
Speaker 3: the example from the Associated Press here to in the headline,
Speaker 3: address that there is a myth that is circulating before
Speaker 3: uplifting what the myth and the language surrounding it is.
Speaker 3: And a lot of these better fact checks in terms
Speaker 3: of the language and the order in which things are addressed,
Speaker 3: are what is now being called the truth sandwich, in
Speaker 3: which you first warned the audience that they are about
Speaker 3: to hear misinformation, and you give them important details on
Speaker 3: what the topic is, who said it, before you uplift
Speaker 3: any of the misleading information, and you explicitly warn them
Speaker 3: that they are about to hear something that's misleading after
Speaker 3: they've already heard the context in which it is false,
Speaker 3: and then you can kind of address the explicit topic
Speaker 3: of misinformation before again reasserting the truth and why that
Speaker 3: information is false. And that's something I first saw again
Speaker 3: from academics like John Cook, who's at the George Mason
Speaker 3: University Center for Climate Communication, in publications like the Debunking Handbook.
Speaker 3: They've been very clear that just because of how our
Speaker 3: brains work, it's really important not to mention the myth first.
Speaker 3: It's important to mention the truth first and contextualize where
Speaker 3: the myth happened before you address it explicitly, and then
Speaker 3: to follow up again by reiterating the truth. That's a
Speaker 3: much more effective way to this lawe misinformation from a
Speaker 3: human's brain after they've already been.
Speaker 4: Exposed to it. Yeah, that's so interesting again.
Speaker 3: George Lakeoff, author of Don't Think, I believe he might
Speaker 3: have coined the term truth sandwich. The technique of the
Speaker 3: truth sandwich is something that has been around for longer
Speaker 3: than that, and I'm not sure if John Cook and
Speaker 3: Stephan Lewandowski and all the co authors of the Debunking
Speaker 3: Handbook were first to do it, but They're the first
Speaker 3: people that I saw addressing it in some of their publications,
Speaker 3: and I've found those reports to be invaluable in terms
Speaker 3: of explaining communications best practices from a psychological perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about the partisan signaling thing, because I
Speaker 1: also thought this was really interesting and something that I think, well, A,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I have made this mistake myself, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of journalists too.
Speaker 3: Great, and I agree this one's really tricky just as
Speaker 3: a matter of personal preference. Like when I wrote publications
Speaker 3: for Greenpeace, which is an explicit activist organization, unapologetically that's
Speaker 3: what it exists to do, I tried very hard to
Speaker 3: never write conservative or right wing in any of my posts.
Speaker 3: I did not want to signal to an audience that like,
Speaker 3: this is only something liberals should care about and conservatives
Speaker 3: should not care, because that conversation is just a race
Speaker 3: to the bottom, and it's hyper prevalent in our media
Speaker 3: environment here in the United States. But what makes it
Speaker 3: so tricky is the fact that when it comes to
Speaker 3: climate change, Republicans don't care and Democrats do care, and
Speaker 3: their constituents follow that exact pattern as well, and that
Speaker 3: is a factor in all of this. So how is
Speaker 3: a reporter is supposed to navigate that when that is
Speaker 3: actually the factual reality of this situation. But it does
Speaker 3: readers of disservice to signal that you should care about
Speaker 3: something or not as a result of partisan royalty. And
Speaker 3: I think that it's something that can be navigated by
Speaker 3: framing the conversation around something else and including statements from
Speaker 3: politicians later in the article, perhaps to help illustrate the
Speaker 3: partisan divide or the massive disparity in how science is
Speaker 3: accepted or interpreted depending on partisan affiliation. But making that
Speaker 3: the story or making that the headline only serves to
Speaker 3: increase those divides. When you know, polling indicates there is
Speaker 3: a little bit more nuance among the electorate in terms
Speaker 3: of how they care about climate change. Support for renewable
Speaker 3: energy and other policy solutions to climate change are a
Speaker 3: little more popular than you would expect when you just
Speaker 3: read headlines about Republicans trying to tank climate policy and
Speaker 3: Democrats trying to pass it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. And also, like I feel like
Speaker 1: with climate in particular, part of the disinformation effort has
Speaker 1: been a concerted effort to politicize it so to the
Speaker 1: extent that we can move away from that, it seems
Speaker 1: like a good Okay, This next one I also found
Speaker 1: really interesting. I mean, there are lots of reasons to
Speaker 1: avoid the passive voice, but I had not thought about
Speaker 1: how it might preclude accountability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was one of the most revelatory things.
Speaker 3: So this is an idea that was published in a
Speaker 3: video by the Union of Concerned Scientists through a communications
Speaker 3: expert named Sabrina Joyce Stevens, and it's about not writing
Speaker 3: in the passive voice. So Stevens, I'm going to quote
Speaker 3: from what she says in the video. She instructs users,
Speaker 3: when we just name disparities and outcomes without naming who
Speaker 3: and what is responsible for those disparities, we make it
Speaker 3: seem like a person's identity is responsible for the problem
Speaker 3: instead of the people and institutions discriminating against them on
Speaker 3: that basis. So there is an implication, an unintentional consequence
Speaker 3: to glossing over and issue without kind of naming people
Speaker 3: who are most impacted by it and people who are
Speaker 3: most responsible for making decisions or incentivizing that problematic trend.
Speaker 3: Pollution is the example that Sabrina Joy Stevens uses in
Speaker 3: the video, and again, environmental organizations I think often fall
Speaker 3: into this trap just as much as reporters do, where
Speaker 3: you're trying to do the responsible thing by mentioning, hey,
Speaker 3: it's communities of color that are most disproportionately subject to
Speaker 3: polluting infrastructure, which is, you know, responsible for higher rates
Speaker 3: of chronic illness and preventable death. But that narrative doesn't
Speaker 3: include the fact that it's not an accident. Those polluting
Speaker 3: refineries and facilities are built in communities are that are
Speaker 3: you know, lower income, majority people of color. Those are
Speaker 3: decisions that are made on purpose by executives, by politicians,
Speaker 3: by officials who have the power to permit them, and
Speaker 3: excluding that from the story does a disservice that is
Speaker 3: akin to victim blaming. And it's really important for journalists,
Speaker 3: i think, to feel empowered to be able to put
Speaker 3: that in print without it being seen as an activist move.
Speaker 3: It's actually just part of the reality and something worth
Speaker 3: including reporting that it's not an accident that these things
Speaker 3: impact different groups disproportionately, that is by design, and it's
Speaker 3: okay to put that in print because that's just the
Speaker 3: reality of the situation. We don't really need any more
Speaker 3: examples or data to understand that's how this happens.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting one to think about, and.
Speaker 3: It just requires such self awareness of your own writing.
Speaker 3: I think that's why it struck me, you know, I
Speaker 3: was like, how many times have I done this by
Speaker 3: kind of not stating something explicitly or just following the
Speaker 3: norms of you know how I've seen reporting and writing
Speaker 3: done from both the media as well as from advocacy groups.
Speaker 3: Maybe something that can be done is in the final
Speaker 3: editing stage doing a scan intentionally for are there points
Speaker 3: in this article where the passive voice is being used
Speaker 3: that actually leaves a lot left on? Said that precludes accountability?
Speaker 3: And in my life, I think.
Speaker 1: Part of that is sort of norms in the media too,
Speaker 1: that very much, I don't know, started to shift away
Speaker 1: from accountability in like the thirties and forties and have
Speaker 1: never really gone back. You're sort of conditioned to not
Speaker 1: make accountability statements in a sort of straightforward way. You're
Speaker 1: just sort of describing the situation versus assigning agency or
Speaker 1: blame to anyone. That is very much sort of how
Speaker 1: a lot of newsrooms encourage people to write even though
Speaker 1: in general, the passive voice is something that editors like
Speaker 1: to edit out of pieces for grammar reasons.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that's also Again, this is just how
Speaker 3: a function of how newsrooms operate, the need for brevity
Speaker 3: competes with the need for nuance, and yeah, how that
Speaker 3: can actually unintentionally lead to a more inaccurate reporting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean sometimes it's even driven by a desire
Speaker 1: to not seem opinionated or bias, which means this is
Speaker 1: a conversation that's been going on for years now around
Speaker 1: the sort of myth of objectivity and media and how
Speaker 1: in fact it often emphasizes a particular bias in the
Speaker 1: interest of avoiding any sort of opinion or bias. This
Speaker 1: one was really interesting to me because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I definitely see this a lot, and I also have
Speaker 1: seen and had editors actually encourage that type of construction
Speaker 1: because you're not supposed to ascribe intentionality to anyone.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's got to be one one of the trickiest
Speaker 3: things about best communication practices for journalists and editors when
Speaker 3: it comes to misinformation. And even that's a point where
Speaker 3: best practices in this report might seem to contradict each other.
Speaker 3: Like I'm saying, some research indicates precludes accountability to write
Speaker 3: in the passive voice, and I'm also saying, please avoid
Speaker 3: partisan signaling. There's an irony there where Republicans are more
Speaker 3: obstructive to climate change, and yet this guide says, don't
Speaker 3: just write about Republicans and what Republicans don't do and
Speaker 3: what Democrats do. There's an irony there. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of nuance here that's actually very very hard to navigate
Speaker 3: if you're a journalist or a newsroom. And I think
Speaker 3: that's why this is so important too, is there's not
Speaker 3: a lot of time to sit and think about this.
Speaker 3: If you're a journalist, you're on a deadline for story
Speaker 3: after story after story. You don't want to get scooped.
Speaker 3: You want to do an informative piece without taking too
Speaker 3: much time away from the next responsibility. And that's you know,
Speaker 3: the competing interests, the finances of a newsroom, and the
Speaker 3: time constraints on a journalist or an editor are also
Speaker 3: major factors here. So I'm hoping that a report like
Speaker 3: this can help start conversations between journalists and editors and
Speaker 3: anybody else in the journalist profession about you know, what
Speaker 3: are the next steps in terms of best practices to
Speaker 3: navigate some of this stuff, because some of it is
Speaker 3: seemingly contradictory. I don't think it is necessarily but like
Speaker 3: more conversation is needed to figure out what journalistic norms
Speaker 3: are necessary now that social media misinformation has interrupted previous
Speaker 3: best practices that are now irrelevant and learned how to
Speaker 3: exploit them in order to generate coverage for something that
Speaker 3: shouldn't be covered, or in order to let misinformation go
Speaker 3: viral before it is debunked in a way that is
Speaker 3: like less makes less impact than the viral misinformation in
Speaker 3: the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the of inoculation is one that I
Speaker 1: know I've talked to John Cook about before too, but
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting and important. How do you
Speaker 1: think about inoculation in general and how successful have some
Speaker 1: of these tactics been.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how to measure if inoculation is successful,
Speaker 3: which I think makes it frustrating in terms of knowing
Speaker 3: how to prioritize it. If you do a good job
Speaker 3: inoculating against disinformation, the disinformation just doesn't really take hold right,
Speaker 3: So it's much easier for us to look back in
Speaker 3: time and say, here's a narrative that was not inoculated against,
Speaker 3: and it really took off, like the false blaming of
Speaker 3: wind power for the Texas freeze disaster in February twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. Very obvious example. Most of Texas's city generation
Speaker 3: infrastructure that winter was from thermal power, mostly gas and nuclear.
Speaker 3: That's the majority of what failed, and yet some politicians
Speaker 3: falsely blamed wind turbines for the lapse of the grid
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, a deadly disaster, as well as
Speaker 3: the misleading images that circulated online, like frozen wind turbines
Speaker 3: in Sweden many years previous, where helicopters were actually performing
Speaker 3: a maintenance exercise about de icing them. You know, that
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with Texas. They're completely different regions
Speaker 3: of the world. Texas did not weatherize any of their
Speaker 3: electricity generation infrastructure, not just wind turbines, but also there
Speaker 3: are gas and nuclear plants which froze. So that's an
Speaker 3: example I think where inoculation could have gone a long way.
Speaker 3: But it's complex to anticipate. You can't anticipate a disaster
Speaker 3: like that necessarily or when it's going to happen, and
Speaker 3: that means there was no priority for journalists just to
Speaker 3: start writing articles to make sure people understand the composition
Speaker 3: of Texas's grid, and.
Speaker 4: You know, things that could have inoculated right against it.
Speaker 3: That said, the contexts that were in Right now, we're
Speaker 3: coming up toward the twenty seventh United Nations Climate change negotiations,
Speaker 3: there are certain predictable pieces of misinformation that will circulate,
Speaker 3: including against the leitism, the irony of using Jeff fuel
Speaker 3: to go to a climate conference. Those are arguments that,
Speaker 3: out of context, are very easy for people to scoff
Speaker 3: at and become cynical about. And I think when there's
Speaker 3: a major event that is predictable that's coming up, that
Speaker 3: is a good time for journalists to have a think
Speaker 3: about writing some inoculation pieces like predictable misinformation that will
Speaker 3: likely circulate in the next few weeks and why that
Speaker 3: is not true, the cherry picking that's required in order
Speaker 3: to make that sound reasonable in the minds of people
Speaker 3: who don't spend all day paying.
Speaker 4: Attention to these trends.
Speaker 3: So inoculation is a tricky one because there's not necessarily
Speaker 3: a direct revenue incentive to write articles that get out
Speaker 3: head of misinformation that is only theoretical. You know, this
Speaker 3: information might circulate. That's a much harder thing, I think
Speaker 3: to get past an editor's desk than a disinformation trend
Speaker 3: that just happened and had widespread impact.
Speaker 1: Right right, that makes a lot of sense. Awesome, All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we will definitely share a link to the whole report
Speaker 1: and show notes so people can check that out. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you walking me through it. It's a handy resource.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, I'm not coming at this cold,
Speaker 1: but there was definitely things in here that I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about that are super helpful.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, Amy.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week, Thanks for listening, and we'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production.
Speaker 1: The show was created and reported by me Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: Original music and mixing and mastering for this episode by
Speaker 1: Peter duff. Our artwork is by Matthew Fleming. For ad
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Speaker 1: our Patreon at patreon dot com slash Drilled