The Long History of Fake News: Elizabeth Mehren (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript and summary of Elizabeth Mehren’s talk titled “The Long History of Fake News” at Tedxberkeley conference.

In this TEDx talk, journalist Mehren discusses her personal experience of being taken in by fake news and its growing impact on society. She explains that fake news is a dangerous tool that has been politicized and weaponized in recent years. The former White House advisor who invented the term “alternative facts” is just another way to describe fake news, which seeks to disrupt and sometimes cause harm.

Mehren emphasizes the importance of truth in democracy and encourages the audience to be concerned about the future of the truth. Mehren then talks about the history of fake news and the current state of journalism, including the Watergate scandal and the difference between disinformation and misinformation.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

My goddaughter Cara was about three when I took her to see the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. As the dancers whirled and spun across the stage in their glittery costumes, she was spellbound, entranced. When the curtain fell, she could barely stop clapping. And as we left the auditorium, she slipped her small hand in mine and asked, “Was that real? Or did that just happen on TV?”

Now, Cara was three years old. This is a room full of smart people. Berkeley people. “Woohoo! That’s it! Go Bears!” Right.

The Trap of Fake News

And I’m willing to bet that somewhere along the line, sometime, some of you, maybe even more than some of you, have been taken in, snookered, by something you saw or read. Something you thought was real, but was not. It’s happened to me. One time, my neighbor circulated a government study, fancy letterhead, the whole thing, warning of the perils of canola oil.

Now, I went nuts.

I threw everything in my kitchen cupboard out that had the word canola in it. But of course, it turned out that the study was bogus. My family was never in imminent danger of death by canola oil.

And I should have known better. I should have done my research. Research is what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. Ever since I finished up here at Berkeley’s esteemed journalism school, I’ve been a reporter, editor, author, and most recently, professor of journalism at Boston University.

I moved from small papers to the Washington Post, and eventually home to California, to the Los Angeles Times, where I was a national correspondent and member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom-wide team. Like me, nearly everyone I know who went into print journalism in that distant era did so because we believed in truth. Truth, after all, is the bedrock of our democracy. It’s so sacred that it’s enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution, the protected ability to speak the truth.

But today, as we are daily subjected to an avalanche of fake news, a furious flood of fabrication, I’m worried that our democracy is on shaky ground. I’m worried about the truth. I care about this. And if you care about the future of democracy, and if you care about the truth, you should be concerned too.

The Nonpartisan Nature of Fake News

One reason to be concerned is that fake news has been so heavily weaponized and politicized in recent years. It’s a cudgel. Big, fierce, and nasty. It’s important to point out right at the outset that fake news is nonpartisan. It’s an equal opportunity evil.

Some of my smart journal friends do not like the term fake news and avoid it because they don’t want to give it any added oxygen. Well, sorry, that horse has long since left that barn. I do know of one scholar who prefers the term viral deception, or VD for short. Any parallel to the scourge and contagious nature of venereal disease is purely intentional.

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The Rise of Alternative Facts

And then there’s the former White House advisor who invented the term alternative facts. What does that even mean? Well, whatever you call it, fake news is everywhere. At its most benign, fake news seeks to disrupt. But more often, fake news sets out to cause harm.

Deceit is a powerful force, and too often it succeeds. So I want to talk about a possible alternative to fake news, a way that I want to give you some good news to sort of mull over, and that is that there is a possible antidote. It’s called media literacy. Hold on to that term. I’ll get right back to it.

Meantime, many, many moments from a long and rewarding career for me stand out. One of them was hovering in the new, in the composing room of the Washington Post in the wee hours of August 8th, 1974, as I watched the 72 point “Nixon resigns” headline stream across the front page. Now, to my knowledge, no one in America questioned whether the 37th president had actually stepped down.

No one blamed the Post or anyone else. Well, actually many people blamed the Post for driving him out of office, but no one said the Post or anyone else had made the whole thing up. Many people did blame the Post for, and others, for driving him out of office, but no one said that what had happened hadn’t happened. They knew it was the truth. They knew it was not fake news.

The History of Fake News

Well, I did some research. Research is what I’d love to do, and I discovered that there’s really nothing new about fake news. As a matter of fact, the earliest reference I could find to fake news was in the 13th century BC, and that was when an Egyptian leader named Ramses the Great, he actually was so great that he called himself Ramses the Great, Ramses the Great declared a great military victory in a battle that was actually a draw.

Now, Ramses’ repurposing of the truth was a great example of misinformation, but there is also disinformation. I’m betting that, like me, there’s a whole bunch of language nerds out there, people who know that the proof is in the prefix, meaning mis, as in misinformation, which is, or mis as in mistake, which is basically what misinformation is. It can be as simple as a misspell, a typo, a transposed number.

The Nature of Misinformation

It almost never has a nefarious purpose. It’s usually a mistake. It’s an error. In my reporting days, my misinformation nemesis was the fact that I’m directionally challenged. Now, I grew up in California. The Rocky Mountains were always to the east. This did not serve me well when I was reporting from the East Coast, but my editors knew that I was directionally challenged, and so if I wrote something with east or west or north or south, they knew to check it, and that’s the thing.

Misinformation can be fixed. It can sometimes cause hurt or grief. For example, I’m thinking of the obituaries of people who weren’t really dead, but this is why the gods of journalism invented something called the CX, which is also known as a correction, and so misinformation can be fixed. Disinformation is something else entirely.

The Harm of Disinformation

Dis comes from the Latin, meaning lack of, as in dishonest or dishonesty, which is what disinformation is. It’s material that is fabricated, false, fictitious, and deliberately distorted. Here are some dis words that are kind of kissing cousins of disinformation. Discredit, disarray, dishonest, dis, dis, dis. The shorthand is that disinformation equals fake news.

So I promised that we could talk about an intelligent intervention, something we could think about that would help with this, and I want to discuss that. I want to talk about an intelligent intervention that we can all embrace to try to combat fake news. First, I want to point out that I have no personal involvement with the organization I’m about to describe.

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I’m not on the payroll, and my enthusiasm is very genuine. So some years ago, my former Los Angeles Times colleague, Alan Miller, was invited to speak to his daughter’s sixth grade class about his work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. The letters of gratitude he got afterward got Alan to thinking about what might happen if journalists spent some quality time with school kids.

Checkology: A Tool for Media Literacy

In 2008, Alan quit his job with the LA Times and started a groundbreaking nonprofit called the News Literacy Project, NLP for short. Its goal was to bring news literacy, the ability to distinguish fact from spin, to middle schoolers. What a good idea this has proven to be. Alan and his NLP colleagues developed a free e-learning platform called Checkology that helps students to use 21st century critical thinking skills to suss out fact, to make a distinction between what is real and what is not real.

It’s now in use in hundreds and hundreds of schools. Thousands of teachers across this country are using it in every single state. It’s used also in more than 100 countries. And it also crosses age barriers, and NLP’s technology is used by the American Association of Retired People.

The Finnish Example

So speaking of foreign countries, did I mention Finland? Whoops. All right, Finland. Okay, Finland played a key role in World War II, fending off both Russia and Germany. It shares a critical 300-mile border with Russia, and it also has a language that is beautiful but spoken by almost no one other than the 5.4 million Finns.

Since 2003, media literacy has been a core part of Finland’s national academic curriculum, starting in preschool. Think about that. Four-year-olds all the way up to high school students are learning to assess information and form intelligent and informed opinions. When they can read, or maybe even before they can read, Finnish kids learn how to spot fake news.

The result is that Finland consistently ranks number one out of 41 European countries in resilience to and resistance to mis- and disinformation. If Finland can do it, we can do it. And in fact, we must do it. Well, we must do it.

Combating Fake News: Practical Steps

In the meantime, though, in order to save you the plane fare of a trip to Finland, although it’s a lovely country, I’ve been there, here are some steps we can all take to help combat fake news. Be more mindful about the information you consume. Ask yourself, is it news? Is it propaganda? Is it advertising? Is it silly satire? Is it the vehicle for someone’s agenda?

Do not be seduced by fancy titles or famous names. Do not fall for global generalizations. Do not figure out, do not look at things that have no, that are completely baseless. Also, think about outlandish information.

At this moment, deniers come to mind. Wait, the dead kids at Sandy Hook were actually actors pretending to be dead? Come on. Or global climate change is not real? Go talk to the polar bears.

And finally, there’s election deniers. Now, this one totally confounds me. The system works. We know it works. The results are the results. But maybe, maybe there’s some evil genius to this line of anti-reasoning.

Maybe we all should have thought of this when we were running for student body office in high school. “Wait, I didn’t lose. Susie rigged the election.” So, if you have doubts about some, about, about information, Google that individual or that entity.

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Look for legitimate information that may confirm or refute the assertions in question. Again, I’m talking to a very small crowd, smart crowd. This is obvious. But if there’s math involved, check to make sure it adds up.

You know what’s kryptonite for fake news? Push back. That means that when you come across something that’s false, ferret out the truth and push back with the truth. Repudiate with the facts.

Now, remember my neighbor with the fatal canola oil? Just don’t pass stupid stuff on. Just don’t. Above all, remain skeptical. Back in the Pleistocene, when I was a Berkeley student, “question authority” was a popular buzz phrase. Today, I would update that mantra and say, “question everything.”

And you know what? We may not be able to completely stop fake news, but we can use truth as a shield against it. Thank you.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Elizabeth Mehren’s talk, “The Long History of Fake News,” offers a comprehensive insight into the evolution, impact, and potential solutions for the pervasive issue of fake news. Here are the key takeaways from her discussion:

Childhood Naivety and Adult Deception: Mehren begins with a personal anecdote about her goddaughter Cara, who was mesmerized by a ballet performance and questioned its reality. This story serves as a metaphor for the widespread confusion in discerning real from fake, a challenge not just for children but adults in the information age.
The Prevalence of Fake News: Mehren acknowledges that everyone, including the highly educated audience at Berkeley, is susceptible to being misled by fake news. She shares her own experience of being deceived by a bogus study on canola oil, highlighting the ease with which misinformation can spread and be believed.
Journalism as a Beacon of Truth: Reflecting on her career, Mehren stresses the vital role of journalism in upholding truth. She recounts her journey from a student at Berkeley’s journalism school to working with reputable news organizations like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. The commitment to truth in journalism, according to Mehren, is foundational to democracy.
The Dangers of Fake News to Democracy: Mehren expresses concern about the current onslaught of fake news and its potential to undermine democracy. She emphasizes the nonpartisan nature of fake news and critiques the term’s political weaponization.
Misinformation vs. Disinformation: Mehren differentiates between misinformation (unintentional errors) and disinformation (deliberate falsehoods). She uses historical examples, including a reference to Ramses the Great’s misleading claims of victory, to illustrate the longstanding nature of manipulated truth.
Media Literacy as an Antidote: Proposing a solution, Mehren advocates for media literacy as a tool to combat fake news. She highlights the News Literacy Project (NLP) and its e-learning platform, Checkology, which educates students on discerning facts from fabrications.
Global Examples of Media Literacy: Mehren points to Finland as a successful model in integrating media literacy into education, noting its effectiveness in making the Finnish population resilient to misinformation and disinformation.
Practical Steps Against Fake News: She concludes with actionable advice on combating fake news: being mindful of information sources, questioning everything, and using skepticism as a shield. Mehren encourages the audience to push back against falsehoods with facts, emphasizing the collective responsibility to uphold truth.

Overall, Elizabeth Mehren’s talk is a compelling call to action against the scourge of fake news, underscoring the importance of media literacy and critical thinking in preserving the integrity of information and democracy.