Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. The rich and powerful bullies
Speaker 1: of the world, governments, corporations, celebrities, et cetera have lots
Speaker 1: of creative ways to control the public's access to information intimidation, bands, bribery,
Speaker 1: or straight up censorship, especially when that information makes them
Speaker 1: look bad. But every once in a while, and especially
Speaker 1: clumsy control effort backfires spectacularly. Take the case of Barbra Streisand,
Speaker 1: the award winning actress, singer, and owner of a sprawling
Speaker 1: mega mansion near the wealthy coastal enclave of Malibu, California.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand three, Streisand sued a photographer by
Speaker 1: the name of Kenneth Edelman because he refused to lead
Speaker 1: a photo of her Malibu mansion from an online project
Speaker 1: that tracked erosion on the California coastline. Edelman wasn't a
Speaker 1: paparazzo trying to snag a shot of Babs in her
Speaker 1: bathing suit. He was documenting an important environmental issue. But
Speaker 1: Streisand obviously felt that her privacy had been violated, or
Speaker 1: perhaps wanted to nip future violations in the bud so
Speaker 1: she took Adelman to court for fifty million dollars in damages. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's for one photo. The irony was that before Streisand
Speaker 1: took Adelman to court, the online image of her house
Speaker 1: had been downloaded a grand total of six times, including
Speaker 1: twice by her own lawyers. But after the media caught
Speaker 1: wind of the lawsuit, the image was downloaded four hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand times in just a month and publicized
Speaker 1: around the world. For an added kick in the teeth
Speaker 1: that judge dismissed the case. Streisand wasn't the first to
Speaker 1: get burned by her own attempt to repress information, but
Speaker 1: her name became indelibly attached to the phenomenon when Tector
Speaker 1: blogger Mike Masnick jokingly labeled the backfire the Streisand Effect.
Speaker 1: But we spoke with Sue Curry Jansen, professor emeritus of
Speaker 1: Media and Communications at Inburg College, who co authored a
Speaker 1: paper about the curious dynamics of the Streisand Effect. She
Speaker 1: said nobody had paid much attention to the whole thing
Speaker 1: until the lawsuit, which I'm sure Streisand wishes she had
Speaker 1: never undertaken. The Streisand effect is a product of public
Speaker 1: outrage and blowback over a perceived attempt by someone with
Speaker 1: the power to repress free speech to do so. As
Speaker 1: Streisand's lawsuit shows, sometimes a supposedly dangerous piece of information
Speaker 1: wouldn't likely draw much attention if left uncensored, but the
Speaker 1: very act of trying to repress it creates public curiosity
Speaker 1: and even outrage, which ends up shining a far brighter
Speaker 1: light on the information in the process. It's also been
Speaker 1: shown that banning books or blocking access to certain websites
Speaker 1: only serves to increase public demand for that information. One
Speaker 1: study from eighteen found that China's attempts to block access
Speaker 1: to sites like Twitter and Facebook prompted millions of otherwise
Speaker 1: a political citizens to download VPN software to evade the
Speaker 1: sensors and access those sites. In the paper, Jansen and
Speaker 1: her co author highlight some truly shining examples of the
Speaker 1: Streisand effect at work, from global corporations to grade school cafeterias.
Speaker 1: For example, the fast food giant McDonald's made a huge
Speaker 1: mistake in the nineteen nineties when it sued two volunteers
Speaker 1: with the activist organization London Greenpeace for a street pamphlet
Speaker 1: that they wrote called What's Wrong with McDonald's. The trial,
Speaker 1: which the British press dubbed McLibel, became the longest running
Speaker 1: civil trial in British history and handed critics of McDonald's
Speaker 1: a media bull horn for publicizing the chain's exploitative advertising,
Speaker 1: low pay and unhealthy food. And just like streisand McDonald's,
Speaker 1: ended up losing the lawsuit. In two thousand three, Fox
Speaker 1: News sued Al Franken, then a comedian and actor not
Speaker 1: yet a senator, for copyright infringement over his anti conservative
Speaker 1: book called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Speaker 1: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox News
Speaker 1: alleged that the phrase fair and balanced was its own
Speaker 1: intellectual property, but a judge disagreed. Not only did Fox
Speaker 1: News lose the case, but the free publicity shot Franken's
Speaker 1: book to the top of the best seller list in Scotland.
Speaker 1: In a nine year old schoolgirl by the name of
Speaker 1: Martha Payne began taking pictures of her school cafeteria lunches
Speaker 1: and writing about them on her personal blog. When chef
Speaker 1: and TV personality Jamie Oliver tweeted about Pain's blog, the
Speaker 1: site received three million hits in just two months, the
Speaker 1: local town council, fearing that the grade schooler was making
Speaker 1: them look bad, banned her from taking photos at school.
Speaker 1: Of course, Pain blogged about the band too, which then
Speaker 1: made international news. The town council wound up publicly apologizing
Speaker 1: and they removed the band. Then, in twenty nineteen, Republican
Speaker 1: Senator Devin Nunez filed a lawsuit against Twitter, alleging that
Speaker 1: he was defamed on the platform by Republican political strategist
Speaker 1: Liz May and by the anonymous owners of the Twitter
Speaker 1: accounts Devon Ninez's Cow and Devon Ninez's Mom. Before the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: devon Ninez's Cow had only one thousand, two hundred and
Speaker 1: nine followers. After the lawsuit was filed, it's shot up
Speaker 1: to fifty four thousand. A year later, the account has
Speaker 1: over seven hundred and twenty two thousand followers and has
Speaker 1: inspired several more copycat accounts. The lawsuit is still ongoing,
Speaker 1: but Jansen says that unfortunately, most censorship efforts are successful.
Speaker 1: Quote that's the way power works. For example, the non
Speaker 1: disclosure agreements that employees have to sign to work at
Speaker 1: many corporations, you can know something really bad is going on,
Speaker 1: but you can't tell anyone. Not only will you be fired,
Speaker 1: but you'll be sued. Even if a powerful person or
Speaker 1: entity is caught trying to silence a critic or hide
Speaker 1: a dirty secret, there's a whole crisis management playbook to
Speaker 1: diffuse public outcry, sometimes called outrage management. In the paper,
Speaker 1: Jansen and her co author list five techniques at sensors
Speaker 1: used to discredit and silence critics, covering up the action,
Speaker 1: devaluing the target, reinterpreting events by lying, minimizing consequences, blaming others,
Speaker 1: and using favorable framing, using official channels to give an
Speaker 1: appearance of justice, and intimidating or rewarding people involved. Jansen
Speaker 1: said there are pr people who are very good at
Speaker 1: doing this kind of thing. They set up listening sessions
Speaker 1: with people who are objecting to something, then single out
Speaker 1: one or two people and put them on a committee.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they even overtly bribe people with some kind of
Speaker 1: honorific and then proceed with whatever they intended to do
Speaker 1: in the first place. The streisand effect can be an
Speaker 1: effective check on censorship and the more general misuse of
Speaker 1: power to bully critics into silence, but only if the
Speaker 1: act is dragged into the light by a free and
Speaker 1: unfettered press. None of the examples we cited above, including
Speaker 1: Stresa End, would have happened if not for journalists picking
Speaker 1: up the stories and bringing them to the public's attention. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of the media as a check on this
Speaker 1: sort of misuse and abuse of power has taken a
Speaker 1: hit during this are fake News era. If politicians and
Speaker 1: other people in power can dismiss news stories that make
Speaker 1: them look bad as being biased or false, then the
Speaker 1: power of the streisand effect dries up. Jansen said, that's
Speaker 1: a real issue. The whole sense of what is the
Speaker 1: truth has been undermined quite deliberately. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on listen lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works
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