AI Won't Save Us From Fake News: YouTube's Fact Checking Tool Thinks Notre Dame Fire Is About 9/11

from the content-moderation-doesn't-work-this-way dept

In the ongoing moral panic about social media algorithms and what they recommend, there are various suggestions on how the companies might "improve" what they do -- and many of them suggest relying on newer, better, algorithms. It's the "nerd harder" approach. Mark Zuckerberg himself, last year, repeatedly suggested that investing heavily in AI would be a big part of dealing with content moderation questions. This has always been a bit silly, but as if to demonstrate how silly this notion is, yesterday, during the tragic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, YouTube's fancy new "fact checking AI" seemed to think multiple videos of the fire were actually referring to the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the US and linked to a page on Encycolpedia Britannica with more info about the attacks:

These links didn't last for very long, but at the very least, it should be a reminder that expecting AI to magically fact check breaking news in real-time is (at the very least) a long, long way off, and at worst, a nearly impossible request.

This puts YouTube and others in an impossible position of their own. Just a few weeks ago, people were freaking out that YouTube and Facebook (briefly) allowed videos from the attack in Christchurch to be on their platforms -- and have been demanding that the platforms "do something" in response. Having a tool that provides at least some sort of context, or even counterpoint to nonsense (when people start posting nonsense) certainly seems like a good idea. But it requires a level of sophistication and accuracy that is currently severely lacking.

One response to all of this would be to admit that human beings are not perfect, that social media sometimes reflects all aspects of humanity, and that sometimes bad stuff is going to make it online, but that doesn't seem acceptable to a large number of people. Given that, they're going to have to accept that sometimes AI is going to get this kind of stuff laughably wrong.

Filed Under: ai, fact checking, fake news, notre dame fire
Companies: youtube

Hey Elon Musk, Let's Talk About The Media

from the bad-press-happens,-attacking-the-media-doesn't-help dept

Hey Elon,

Let's start this off by noting I'm generally a big fan of what you've done over the years with your various companies (Zip2 always seemed a bit silly, but, you know, since then...). Just recently I got a tour of the Tesla factory and I felt like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, even if I didn't get to own the factory when it was over. I've also been impressed by the way you decide to seriously "just get it done" when you see something that should be done. I mean, half the world seemed to think your idea for the Boring Company was actually a joke and yet a year and a half later, you've got a freaking tunnel under LA (in contrast, the 2nd Avenue Subway in NY was proposed in 1919 and just opened partially last year). So, like, I take it seriously when you say you've got a new project underway.

And, yesterday you went on a bit of a Twitter rant about the media and said that you were going to start a media truth rating site called Pravda (clever!). And, as with the Boring Company, I believe you'll do it. I mean, you actually did incorporate Pravda Corp. last fall. So, you've got that going for you.

On top of that, I even think you have a general point about how bad the mainstream media is. We've been at this for over 20 years, and some of our most successful stories have been calling out really bad reporting by big publications. It's good to keep them honest.

That said, I have some pretty serious concerns about this whole setup and believe you've misdiagnosed the problem. Let's start with your tweet that suggests the reason reporters get stories wrong is because they're incentivized by clicks and ad dollars:

I'm curious if you could point to any actual example of that happening in practice today for a mainstream publication? I know that Gawker -- who your former colleague Peter Thiel killed off -- used to pay writers a bonus based on clicks, but I can't think of any other news organization that still does that. It's a nice story that people outside the media like to claim, but actual journalists know is not actually the case. Hell, here at Techdirt, I've never actually told any of our writers how much traffic their stories get, because I don't want them thinking about clicks at all. I want them to write the best stories they can write, and then they can let me focus on how to monetize good content and a good insightful community, rather than just going for scale and clicks.

And, as for the whole "fossil fuel companies as advertisers" bit, it may be true that there are some publishers out there who do worry about offending their advertisers, but I've almost never seen that information conveyed to the journalists themselves, and in the rare cases where that does happen, lots of journalists would (and do) quit rather than feel that their reporting was compromised by advertisers. So, blaming "clicks" and "advertisers" for more sensational stories you don't like is -- dare I say it -- "fake news" (in the parlance of our times, even if that's a dumb and meaningless phrase). It's good to correct the record when the press gets something wrong, but imputing incorrect motives to the reason for the coverage has serious consequences that you really might want to think about.

The reason Tesla gets lots of coverage, both good and bad, is because it's a fucking fascinating company. You've built (1) the first successful new American car company in like a century and (2) done it with an important advancement in technology (electric cars) that have failed in the past. It's a fascinating story. And, as tech comms guy Aaron Zamost pointed out years ago, there's a predictable cycle of "Silicon Valley Time" in how all successful companies tend to get covered -- for good or for bad. For what it's worth, it looks like you're somewhere in the 9 to 10 o'clock hour on Zamost's clock (which actually means you're not that far off from hitting 12 o'clock and getting to start the cycle again.)

But, let's get back to this whole Pravda (again, clever name!) idea (or is it called "You're Right!" now?). I know it feels like you're striking back against some recent bad media coverage. But, honestly, you're really just serving to call more attention to some of the negative stories about Tesla out there right now (including an eye-opening story from the Center for Investigative Reporting, a non-profit not exactly known for clickbait or making decisions based on its non-existent advertisers). Of course, you've done this before as well. I wrote about it five years ago, when another instance of you lashing out at the media only seemed to call more attention to those negative stories.

There's a term for that sort of thing that maybe you haven't heard about.

But, there is a larger, more important issue here that should be discussed. I know you've dismissed a few people who have suggested your anti-media rant does more harm than good, but you might want to rethink that stance. Yes, the media makes mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are pretty serious. And, yes, some media organization are just... terrible. But painting the entire media industry with a broad brush, at the same time that many other powerful institutions who don't want to be held accountable (*cough* *cough*) are doing the same thing, doesn't help make the media better or more credible. It just empowers those who seek to discredit the actually good and necessary job of underpaid, overworked reporters who are actually breaking important stories, holding the powerful accountable and speaking truth to power.

Indeed, if you've actually read this far (and I know that's unlikely, but humor me), I would recommend seriously considering the four questions that Alexios Mantzarlis at the Poynter Institute (again, a non-profit known for supporting serious, thoughtful journalism) had for you about this plan -- which really lays out all the ways in which your plan can go wrong. Crowdsourcing has lots of benefits. But crowdsourcing "truth" tends to turn into a popularity contest of narratives. And, as we've seen, sometimes that leads to some pretty fucked up outcomes.

And you don't need to encourage that kind of thing just because a few journalists pissed you off. You're crazy rich and super powerful. The journalists you are maligning tend to be neither of those things. And your plan looks likely to make things not just worse for them, but to make their jobs in actually bringing about truth that much more difficult.

I might not know how to build a cool factory like the Tesla factory or be able to launch my sports cars into space, but I do know something about the media world. And your little tirade and plans to "fix" things, are based on faulty assumptions and will make a difficult situation for the media much worse -- doing pretty serious damage to the good work that much of the media actually does. I have no problem with calling out bad reporting, weak fact checking, silly assumptions and the like. You've got a powerful soapbox and you should use it accordingly. But, tarring and feathering the entire media and providing tools for everyone else to do the same is going to lead to really bad outcomes.

So, please, focus on continuing to do the impossible with your various companies rather than attacking the media. The Silicon Valley clock will keep ticking, and it'll be 12 o'clock before you know it. Hopefully, by then, there may even be some Teslas that those of us working in media can actually afford.

Thanks,

Mike

Filed Under: credibility, elon musk, fact checking, journalism, media, trust
Companies: pravda

Student Loan Lenders Created A Fake Person Whose Points Were Uncritically Repeated By Numerous News Outlets

from the disinformation-nation dept

If you hadn't noticed, the United States has a bit of a disinformation problem, leaving it immeasurably susceptible to bullshit. It's a flaw that's easily exploitable by any company, individual, or nation willing to put in a little elbow grease. Whether it's Russian troll factories inflaming already deep U.S. partisan and racial tensions, the ongoing problem with fake reviews, the use of astroturf to foster dissent on things we even agree upon (like net neutrality), or the spread of nonsensical and often hateful prattle on social media, we're only just now coming to terms with the world we've been building.

And however info-savvy we like to pretend we are as information consumers and creators, the reality is we're simply... not. We're being manipulated on an industrial scale almost constantly thanks to our cultural apathy toward critical thinking, lagging educational standards, napping regulators and unskeptical journalism. Case in point: this week a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education detailed how a student-loan refinancing company had some incredible success in getting media outlets to parrot its positions on the debt merchant industry. How? They simply created an entirely fake journalist out of whole cloth.

The report discovered that a journalist by the name of "Drew Cloud" was created by a loan refinancing company by the name of LoanEDU. Cloud, his website and his various hot takes were routinely hoovered up by a large number of media outlets that were willing to parrot them entirely without question:

"Drew Cloud is everywhere. The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC, and is a fixture in the smaller, specialized blogosphere of student debt...Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries."

The character of Drew Cloud ran a "independent, authoritative news outlet" named the The Student Loan Report, which was created after Cloud purportedly "had difficulty finding the most recent student loan news and information all in one place." How nice. But like so many things in 2018 Cloud wasn't real, something only confirmed with the company that created him after The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence.

Once the story broke, LoadEDU CEO Nate Matherson and his team went through and changed all of Cloud's bylines on the website to "SLR Editor." And in a piece now posted to the site in question, the creators decided to double down on the "we were only trying to help" justification:

"As we prepared to launch The Student Loan Report, we debated who should author it, and felt that it was really a blend of our personal experiences and perspectives that would create the best source material, so we created a pen name of “Drew Cloud,” and conceived a background that we felt personified a lot of the perseverance we hoped to inspire with The Student Loan Report. When we pictured what Drew Cloud looked like, we pictured a friend of ours from college, so we used his photo (with his permission) to round out the pen name."

That's some odoriferous nonsense. The company effectively created an entirely fake reporter to hoodwink journalists into parroting positions of the debt merchant sector. And when initially pressed by the real journalists who discovered it, the company's first impulse was to lie and claim that the fake construct was traveling and couldn't respond to e-mail. That's unethical however you spell it, and the company likely will be enjoying some very real legal festivities in the very near future.

The question then shifts back to how we address the nation's bullshit problems without concocting solutions that infringe on speech or make matters worse. And despite a flood of hot takes on this subject over the last few years, it's a question we still haven't clearly answered.

Filed Under: deception, drew cloud, fact checking, fake people, journalism, marketing, nate matherson, student loan report, student loans
Companies: loadedu

Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony

from the interesting,-but-doomed-to-fail dept

Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee last week, giving his insight into Russia's propaganda machine. Like everyone else in Washington, the Senate is trying to determine how much of a role the Russian government might have played in the recent election. An FBI investigation into Trump's ties with Russia is ongoing.

Watts noted Russia's attempts to influence American thinking isn't really new, nor is it solely tied to Trump's unlikely political success. He points out he began seeing major inroads being made almost three years ago. Here at Techdirt, we noticed the stateside spread of the Russian troll army, confronted directly here by Karl Bode in response to a stream of pro-Russia comments on one of his articles.

Also of concern to many (although in varying degrees) is "fake news." Much of what's considered fake news tends to be in the often-partisan eye of the beholder, but a growing network of conspiracy theory sites and news outlets with Russian government ties aren't helping. Watts states this is simply more the same Cold War tactics by the Russian government, but with the advantage the internet's built-in instant amplification power.

On the evening of July 30, my colleagues and I watched as RT and Sputnik News simultaneously launched false stories of the U.S. airbase at Incirlik being overrun by terrorists. Within minutes, pro-Russian social-media aggregators and automated bots amplified this false news story and expanded conspiracies asserting American nuclear missiles at the base would be lost to extremists. More than 4,000 tweets in the first 78 minutes after launching of this false story linked back to the Active Measures accounts we’d tracked in the previous two years. These previously identified accounts, almost simultaneously appearing from different geographic locations and communities, amplified this fake news story in unison. The hashtags incrementally pushed by these automated accounts were #Nuclear, #Media, #Trump and #Benghazi. The most common words found in English-speaking Twitter user profiles were: God, Military, Trump, Family, Country, Conservative, Christian, America, and Constitution. These accounts and their messages clearly sought to convince Americans a U.S. military base was being overrun in a terrorist attack like the 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. In reality, a small protest gathered outside the Incirlik gate and the increased security at the airbase sought to secure the arrival of the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the following day.

Watts' testimony is informative and genuinely interesting. But when it comes to the subject of "fake news," Watts' suggestions as to how it might be handled seem a little less grounded in reality. In January, Watts floated the idea of a "Consumer Reports for news:" an independent group made up of members of major social media platforms that would grade new sources for reliability.

The idea was fleshed out a bit in front of the Senate Committee:

Social-media companies should band together in the creation of an Information Consumer Reports. This non-governmental agency would evaluate all media organizations, mainstream and otherwise, across a range of variables producing news ratings representative of the outlet’s accuracy and orientation. The score would appear next to each outlet’s content in web searches and social-media streams providing the equivalent of a nutrition label for information. Consumers would not be restricted from viewing fake news outlets and their erroneous information, but would know the risks of their consumption. The rating, over time, would reduce consumption of Russian disinformation specifically and misinformation collectively, while also placing a check on mainstream media outlets that have all too often regurgitated false stories.

There are a few problems to this approach, starting with it being pitched some sort of private sector "information war" effort -- a companion piece to the government's efforts to combat Russian propaganda. Watts also suggest the State Dept. and DHS both form their own version of Snopes to fact check claims about actions the US government is taking at home and abroad.

The second problem is this won't solve much, even if it's able to overcome the resistance of nearly everyone involved. News agencies aren't going to care much for being graded by platforms that do very little other than drive traffic to them or, in the case of Facebook, find new ways from preventing readers from leaving Facebook.

Facebook, in particular, has been spectacularly bad at handling content that flows through its platform. While it has been more proactive in its attempts to handle abuse and police content than other platforms, it's also been more error-prone and willing to adjust its ethics to avoid losing traffic and users from countries engaged in censorship.

A grading system can't be left to algorithms, so it will end up being a representation of graders' biases, rather than an objective score based on verifiable inputs -- in other words, nothing like the "nutrition label but for news" Watts envisions.

Worse, it won't do anything to overcome readers' biases. If Facebook, et al hand out a "C-" to Fox News, no one who regularly views Fox News is going to question the trustworthiness of the company's reporting. Instead, they'll see the score as untrustworthy: the result of left-leaning social media companies and their hate for anything "conservative."

The only way this would come about as a concerted effort would be through government direction or legislation. Tying the government to it makes the "independence" of the rating even more questionable, providing another percentage of the population with a reason to distrust the low grades slapped on their favorite news sources.

The fact is readers have to want or care that their new sources are trustworthy. Far too many people don't and the grades handed out won't change readers' minds. It will just give them something new to argue about.

Filed Under: clint watts, fact checking, fake news, nutrition labeling, propaganda

Facebook Announces Its Pilot Plans To 'Deal' With Fake News -- Not With Censorship, But With More Info

from the not-a-bad-idea dept

Facebook is now taking clear steps to try to address what some are calling its "fake news" problem. As someone who has argued that the fuss over this is massively overhyped and misleading, I actually find Facebook's steps here to be fairly sensible, and not a cause for concern -- but let's dig into the details.

We've made it clear that we think that people freaking out about fake news on Facebook are overreacting, when they try to "blame" the results of the election, or even how people feel about certain candidates on Facebook. And, we've also warned that the end result of much of the complaining is inevitable calls for censorship, which is dangerous. In fact, we've already seen that both China and Iran are using the hubbub over "fake news" to justify their own draconian censorship and surveillance efforts.

But, that doesn't mean that Facebook should do nothing about it. "Fake news" is unlikely to be influencing the election, but that doesn't mean it's not a nuisance -- though, if we're going to talk about "fake news" at the very least we should divide it into more accurate subgroupings: there's outright made up false news, there's propaganda (those first two can overlap, admittedly), there's erroneous (but well-intentioned) reporting and then there's actually good reporting that people dislike. That last one some may argue is not fake news, but trust me when I say that some people are using this "fake news" storm to lump in those kinds of articles too -- which does a good job of showing why the label "fake news" is a real risk of being abused for censorship.

As for Facebook's actual approach, it appears to take some of the suggestions many have made over the last month or so, and starts to implement some tests to see how good a job they do in real life. The plan is not one based on censorship, but more about providing individuals with more information. There's certainly still the possibility of abuse here, but the initial implementation does seem reasonable. Here are the key changes:

• Making it easier for users to "report" hoax stories. This has been available within Facebook's system already but it's pretty buried, and apparently not widely used. This is very much targeted at purely 100% fake stories, things that were made up solely for clicks, but the real challenge will be to see how it handles vote brigading by people who, say, want to attack a particular article from another bucket described above. In the end, it's likely that some users will be unhappy about this, especially if they attack a story that they disagree with, but which is factually accurate, and Facebook doesn't agree with their assessment.
  
  
• Partnering with fact checking organizations to help flag "disputed" stories. Facebook says that it will use the user-flagging (along with the black box known as "other signals") to alert a number of third party fact checking organizations to look into stories that reach a certain threshold of flagging:

  We'll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed will also appear lower in News Feed.
  
  It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share. Once a story is flagged, it can't be made into an ad and promoted, either.

  Again, this seems reasonable, and should be common (in a slightly different format...) to the way some subreddits use a "disputed" flag. Instead of blocking the content, more information is provided, including links to third party sources that people can check out, and such stories are less likely to appear at the top of the algorithmic feed. This, of course, will also make some people nervous, and you can already predict the viral reaction that's going to shoot around the internet the second some stories get hit with the "disputed" flag. We've already seen lots of claims in our comments from people who don't trust fact checking organizations, and so it's likely that there will be some anger over some of these decisions. Overall, though, this seems like a good solution.
  
  I've also been told that eventually (perhaps not immediately) if someone goes to share a link that's been hit with the "disputed" flag, the user will get a prompt, just making sure they recognize it's disputed and making sure they really still want to share it. This seems like a reasonable approach -- one that involves providing more information, rather than jumping straight to "blocking" information.
  
  
• New signals of what's hoax content: Above I mentioned that some of this is a black box, but it looks like one signal that Facebook will now be using is seeing if people actually go and read an article, and don't share it, compared to those who just share it without reading it first:

  We've found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way. We're going to test incorporating this signal into ranking, specifically for articles that are outliers, where people who read the article are significantly less likely to share it.

  It would be fascinating to see the data on this. It makes sense, but I do wonder how clear and obvious the different sharing rates are on that particular signal.
  
  
• No boosting/promoting spam content: This one seems to just be a version of what Facebook already announced last month. But it looks like they're going a bit further in trying to just stop the pure 100% hoaxers-in-it-for-the-money sites from being able to totally overrun Facebook news feeds:

  On the buying side we've eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications. On the publisher side, we are analyzing publisher sites to detect where policy enforcement actions might be necessary.

  Again, this is a case where how this is actually done is going to matter a lot. However, it does seem that Facebook is suffiiciently concerned about being seen as putting its hands too heavily on the scales, and it seems likely that the company will really target this kind of action only towards the pure spammers. Otherwise, it's likely to face backlash.

One thing that the company is also making clear is that it's testing all of these things to see how they work -- and they could change. I'm still nervous about the possibility for any such systems to be abused, but the approach here seems to be pretty reasonable from a first glance -- and set up in a way that if it's not reasonable, there will be pretty quick public backlash.

Filed Under: fact checking, fake news, information, social media
Companies: facebook

Let Them Eat Facts: Why Fact Checking Is Mostly Useless In Convincing Voters

from the feeling-entitled-to-your-own-facts dept

Last week I wrote a bit about the ridiculous and misguided backlash against Facebook over the election results. The basis of the claim was that there were a bunch of fake or extremely misleading stories shared on the site by Trump supporters, and some felt that helped swing the election (and, yes, there were also fake stories shared by Clinton supporters -- but apparently sharing fake news was nearly twice as common among Trump supporters than Clinton supporters). I still think this analysis blaming Facebook is wrong. There was confirmation bias, absolutely, but it's not as if a lack of fake news would have changed people's minds. Many were just passing along the fake news because it fit the worldview they already have.

In response to that last post, someone complained that I was arguing that "facts don't matter" and worried that this would just lead to more and more lies and fake news from all sides. I hope that's not the case, but as I said in my reply, it's somewhat more complicated. Some folks liked that reply a lot so I'm expanding on it a bit in this post. And the key point is to discuss why "fact checking" doesn't really work in convincing people whom to vote for. This doesn't mean I'm against fact checking, or think that facts don't matter. Quite the reverse. I think more facts are really important, and I've spent lots of time over the years calling out bogus news stories based on factual errors.

But here's the problem: the general business of fact checking seems to merely serve to, again, reinforce and retrench opinions, rather than change them. As I said in my comment, there are a large group of people out there that view the whole fact checking business itself as a sort of condescending "let them eat facts" kind of thing, in which they're being scolded for believing the "wrong" kind of thing. And this has lead (not surprisingly) to widespread attacks on fact checkers themselves as being "biased." You don't have to look very hard to find (often conservative-leaning) publications argue that "fact checkers" are biased against their views. The famed debunking site Snopes has come in for particular attack this year as just a liberal front. In the past few months, any time I've mentioned Snopes, or seen someone else link to it in our comments, another comment will mock them from linking to such a "biased" or "Clinton-supporting" site. Snopes itself, for it's part, has put up a somewhat amusing page with all of the contradictory accusations of bias it has received over the years from people who dislike its fact checking on certain politicians.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously stated "You're entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." It's a good quote, but the problem is that plenty of people do feel entitled to their own facts these days. And straight up fact checking seems like the wrong approach. In psychology, there's a concept known as cognitive dissonance, describing how people basically trick themselves into dealing with contradictory beliefs (the term is technically about the uncomfortable position people are in put in because of the contradictory ideas, but it is commonly used to describe how people effectively trick themselves to get out of that state). It seems to describe how many people end up dealing with inconvenient facts. They don't change their mind -- they just come up with an excuse as to why the facts presented are wrong or biased. And when they're presented in the form of "fact checking" from a big site or news publication, it's easier than ever to dismiss them, because we're told over and over again that "you can't trust the media." That gives people an out -- when they come across inconvenient facts, they insist that there's bias or a problem with the source while not dealing with the actual underlying facts. And studies have shown that fact checking can not just fail to convince people in political debates, it can actually make them cling more strongly to their false beliefs.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with this, but I wonder if the overall approach needs to change. It's pretty uncommon to see people change their minds when just handed a big stack of facts. Some have suggested that convincing people they're wrong on something is so complex that it has to involve them literally transforming how they think of themselves, which is not going to happen when you just throw a pile of facts at them. In my experience, the times I've been convinced to change my mind, or seen others change their minds, it tends to come when there are long drawn out conversations, exploring the issues in more depth -- with lots of back and forth. But also it tends to happen in environments where the stakes are lower (e.g., often private, rather than public discussions, where no one "loses face" for realizing they were wrong).

Given that, I still don't know what the solution is, but merely pumping up the fact checking isn't going to do much to change anyone's minds. It just angers some, and reinforces the feelings of superiority of others.

Filed Under: cognitive dissonance, fact checking, facts, journalism, truth

If You're A Journalist Who Thinks That Pointing Out Lies Shows Bias, You're Not A Journalist

from the you're-a-pr-person dept

For years, we've pointed out the ridiculousness of "the view from nowhere" reporting (a phrase coined by journalism professor Jay Rosen). This is the ridiculous belief that being an "objective" journalist means never challenging what someone says to you, but rather just showing "both sides of the story" and not "taking" any side. But, that's ridiculous. If someone claims that the earth is flat, and you do a story showing the person claiming that, alongside someone else saying it's not, but never point out that the person saying the earth is flat is crazy, then you're not doing your job as a journalist. A journalist should be focusing on getting to the truth, and that means calling bullshit when warranted.

This issue has come up again this week, thanks to NBC talking head Matt Lauer's inability to challenge Donald Trump's blatantly false statement that he was against the war in Iraq. Trump has been saying this throughout the campaign, and it's simply not true. What's more, plenty of journalists have pointed out that it's not true, and any journalist interviewing the candidate, as Matt Lauer did, should have known that and should have pushed back. But Lauer did not, leading to widespread criticism.

What's perhaps even more astounding, however, is that some TV journalists jumped in to defend Lauer, insisting that doing actual fact checking on lies is showing bias:

Political talk-show host Chris Matthews, for example, said after the event that if Lauer had called Trump out for lying, that would be equivalent to expressing an opinion, and moderators are supposed to be neutral.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who is going to be moderating one of the debates between Trump and Clinton, said something similar in an interview. Wallace said it’s not his job to question the factual accuracy of a candidate’s statement during such an event.

“I do not believe it’s my job to be a truth squad,” Wallace said. “It’s up to the other person to catch them on that.”

If that's what they think, then they should all find new jobs. Because they're not journalists. The finding of truth is important, and calling out a candidate (or others in power) for false statements when they make them is part of that important role. It's not "biased" to seek the truth. It's not "biased" to call a false statement a false statement. It's the job of a journalist.

Filed Under: bias, chris matthews, chris wallace, donald trump, fact checking, facts, he said, journalism, matt lauer, objectivity, reporting, she said, truth

Reporter Who Wrote Sunday Times 'Snowden' Propaganda Admits That He's Just Writing What UK Gov't Told Him

from the journalism! dept

So we've already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times' big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had "cracked" the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had "blood on his hands" even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove "agents" from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they're not called "agents" and there's no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request.

Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn't know what's actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him -- more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer. Here's the key snippet: If you can't see or hear that, it's Harper saying "we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government." This is a claim that he repeats throughout the interview, pleading ignorance to anything factual about the story. In short, his argument is that he heard these allegations through a "well placed source" within the UK government and he sought to corroborate the claim... by asking another source in the UK government who said "that's true!" and Harper ran with it.

Some more highlights. CNN's George Howell kicks it off by asking how UK officials could possibly know that the Chinese and Russians got access to the files, and Harper immediately resorts to the "hey, I just write down what they tell me!" defense:

Um... well... I don't know the answer to that, George. Um.... All we know is that... um... this is effectively the official position of the British government. Um.... we picked up on it... um... a while ago. And we've been working on it and trying to stand it up through multiple sources. And when we approached the British government late last week with our evidence, they confirmed, effectively, what you read today in the Sunday Times.

Again: government official tells them stuff, and they confirm with another government official -- and that's the story. Note that he says he showed the UK government "evidence" yet there is no evidence in the article itself. Just quotes and speculation. He goes on, trying to downplay the entire point of journalism, which should be to ferret out the truth. But, to Thomas Harper, if you question his report, you should be asking the government about it, not him. That's not his job.

It's obviously allegation at the moment, from our point of view. And it's really for the British government to defend it.

So, you publish an explosive story based on anonymous quotes and already proven falsehoods, and then you refuse to defend it, saying that it's the government's job to do so? Do you even know what a journalist is supposed to be doing, Harper?

Howell digs deeper, questioning how the UK government even knows which files Snowden took -- and questioning if the UK government has been able to decipher that as well. Harper, again, pushes it aside, saying he has no idea and they avoided such tricky questions altogether:

Again, that's not something we're clear on. So, we don't go into that level of detail in the story.

It's then that he makes the "we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government" claim. Howell then points to one of the many contradictions in the story: the idea that Russia/China hacked into the Snowden files... and the claim that they were just handed over. And again, Harper pleads ignorance. He's just the stenographer:

Again, sorry to just repeat myself, George, but we don't know, so we haven't written that in the paper. Um... you know, it could be either. It could be another scenario.

I mean, it could be that the great fairyland dragon from the 6th dimension dreamed up the Snowden documents and then gave them to Russia and China. Who the fuck knows? I'm just a reporter, man. Why would you ask me for evidence or facts? I'm just rewriting what some government guys told me!

Howell then points out that his story is just the British government's claims, and then asks about the MI6 "agents" that were supposedly moved, and again, Harper pleads ignorance:

Um.... Again, I'm afraid to disappoint you, we don't know. There was a suggestion, um, that some of them may have been under threat. Um. Er. Um. But... the um... statement from senior Downing Street sources suggests that no one has come to any harm, which is obviously a positive thing from the point of view of the West.

Huh. So now he's the spokesperson for "The West?" Fascinating.

Again, Howell, somewhat nicely, points out that Harper is doing nothing more than stenography: "So, essentially, you're reporting what the government is saying, but as far as the evidence to substantiate it, you're not able to comment or to explain that at this point." And, Harper basically agrees.

No. We... we picked up on the story a while back, from an extremely well placed source in the Home Office, um... and then... um... carried on trying to substantiate what was going on through various sources in various agencies throughout Britain. And then finally presented the um... um... story, to the government, and they effectively confirmed what you read in today's Sunday Times.

In short: one government official told them this, and they asked other government officials, who all had a personal interest in having the answer be "yes" and after enough government officials all agreed on the same talking point, good boy Tom Harper wrote it all down and presented it as fact.

A few times in the interview Harper makes the accurate and reasonable point that when you're dealing with the intelligence community, getting evidence is often quite difficult. That's absolutely true. But then there's a way of presenting that kind of story and it's not the way Harper did so. When you have a story like this, where many of the details seem highly questionable, you don't just talk to government officials, but you try to reach out to other sources who can further the story. But Harper admits that they had no interest in doing this -- they were just presenting the government's side of the story. Even that can be done in a journalistic manner, in which case the article should not present itself as presenting factual information, as it does, but the idle speculation of government officials who won't put their names or positions behind what they're saying.

Harper concludes the interview by saying that it's very difficult to say things with "certainty" when reporting on national intelligence issues -- but if that's the case, why did the Sunday Times report present its findings with exactly that kind of certainty? Wouldn't the reasonable thing to do be to highlight the questionable claims and to detail what was known and what was no actually known? But that's not how Harper and the Sunday Times did it at all. And now he's trying to pass off the blame, saying that it's the UK government who needs to defend the "journalism" that he supposedly did. Given that he's admitting he just scribbled down and republished their thoughts, perhaps that's true concerning defending the facts of the story. However, it does seem quite reasonable to ask Harper to defend what sort of journalism he's actually doing.

Filed Under: ed snowden, fact checking, journalism, propaganda, tom harper, uk government
Companies: news corp., sunday times

Russian TV Channel Blames Internet For Suckering It Into Running A Fake Photo Of A Ukrainian Jet Shooting Down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17

from the unfortunately,-'society'-had-previously-been-named-in-several-other-down dept

Chasing eyeballs but catching internet infamy. That's Russia's Channel One, which took an unsourced photograph from an online forum and turned it into a complete embarassment.

Friday, Russia’s Channel 1 featured a photo they claimed proved a Ukrainian jet fighter shot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 in July, only to have it disproved hours later as an obvious fake, according to Buzzfeed...

The state-run television channel presented the image, claiming it been taken moments before the passenger jet crashed in eastern Ukraine, to bolster Moscow’s contention that the passenger plane was brought down by a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet, killing all 298 people on board.

Because it agreed with the Russian narrative, no one at Channel One bothered looking into the validity of the photo. The (supposed) engineer presenting the "evidence" claimed the "sensational photo" came from an American MIT graduate. This lent the photo a bit of short-lived credibility, but what the engineer said about the photo's origin wasn't strictly true.

George Bilt—who said he is an MIT graduate and aviation expert with 26 years experience, but would not provide further biographical details—said that he had come across an earlier report by the Russian Union of Engineers (RUE) blaming a Ukrainian fighter jet for the crash, and thought that it concurred with his own amateur findings. When he saw the picture online, Bilt wrote to Andreyevsky, the “expert” from the broadcast, with a link to the forum where the image was posted, clearly stating that he had found it there.

The photo's legitimacy was soon decimated by a number of internet sleuths.

Hours after the picture was shown, Russian and international bloggers called the image a fake, noting the logo for Malaysia Airlines was misplaced on the plane and the clouds in the picture were identical to those found in a Google Earth image from 2012. Bloggers later noted that fighter jet in the picture appeared to be a Russian MiG-29 and not an Su-27, and the the picture of the airliner looked like it had been lifted from Google Images, when requesting ‘Boeing view from above.’

As was the pedigree of the "engineer" who presented the photo as fact:

The Russian Union of Engineers turned out not to add up either. Ivan Andreyevsky, the “expert” quoted in the show, does not appear to have an engineering education. A quick analysis of his PhD turned up obvious signs of plagiarism.

But the fun didn't really begin until the head of the Russian Union of Engineers (Vladimir Saulyanov) defended the presentation of the fake photo as fact with a statement simultaneously sublimely ridiculous and the truest words ever spoken.

“How could we check it?” Saulyanov said. “It came to us from the internet.”

With any luck, Saulyanov's Excuse will become the go-to defense when anything is erroneously published anywhere from this moment on.

And with that, the internet switched gears, crafting their own versions of Bilt's Photo (which, in his defense, was never presented as a factual depiction).

One speculated that a Nazi flying saucer was involved.


Another, crafted by Sophisticated Jane Doe of Fight Copyright Trolls, offered this equally-plausible scenario.


As for Bilt, who is now somewhat of a lightning rod for anti-Russian sentiment, he has given a long statement to Buzzfeed concerning his involvement in this debacle.

Bilt said that he was shocked to see his email, which he thought that he had written to Andreyevsky in confidence, used on Russian TV as proof of the Kremlin’s claims, citing him as a source. “I am quite unhappy that my bona fide informal attempt possibly became a source of yet another battle in a media war,” he said. “This was definitely not my intention. I am also not looking for a cheap fame. This tragedy is simply too awful to gain from it."

The final sentence of his statement is at least as incisive as Saulyanov's Excuse. However, Bilt's statement carries with it the gravitas of being deliberate rather than inadvertent. When a media outlet becomes a mouthpiece for state narratives, it is everything Bilt says succinctly about Channel One's actions.

“Those folks are either desperate or totally unprofessional,” he said.

I'd put some money on both.

Filed Under: channel 1, fact checking, george bilt, internet, journalism, russia, sourcing, ukraine