Misinformation the media and the role youre playing in both

[Music]

we have a problem

we live in time

where we have access to too much

information

and when it comes to the role the media

plays

in sharing this information it’s

important that we know

who we can trust it’s important that

we’re able to discern

fact from fiction

so how do we do that

i grew up in a household where the today

show was on during the morning rush to

school

npr was blaring on the radio in the car

and nightly news was on during dinner

prep so

mbc family three newspapers hit our

doorstep

each day the new york times the wall

street journal

and the local examiner two major

magazines

time and u.s news and world report

so i like to think i grew up

in an informed household my parents

loved talking about current events and

it was during these discussions

that i started to recognize how issues

of the day

at times mirrored those of the past

my parents also encouraged

challenging conversations with friends

and family

who maybe had opposing views because

they firmly believe

that in order to truly understand a

topic

you need to understand all points of

view

so nothing was off the table anything

from religion

to politics to abortion rights to the

great vaccination debate

and as i grew older i realized i wanted

to be part of the industry that was

responsible

for celebrating this type of

conversation

i wanted to be part of the industry that

provided information to the public

who that could then take it and learn

more about a subject matter

that was important to them either as an

individual or as a larger member of

society

i wanted to be a journalist so

i went to school i studied politics and

undergrad

and journalism and graduate school

but by the time i entered the workforce

at my dream job at 30 rock because

nbc family the media landscape had

already dramatically changed

with the explosion of online media

anyone anywhere in the world

could have a voice

and that was a problem because

so long as you had a point of view and a

platform upon which to share it

you were part of the media consortium

and so began the erosion of the media

and the role they played in our

democracy

once a destination we as

active participants went to to gain

inside knowledge

on subjects that mattered to us

and so began this shift from us being

active participants in this process to

passive recipients of

information from the information

superhighway

or autobahn as i now refer to it

and i found this terrifying

so how did we start to shift from being

active participants to passive

recipients of information

you don’t have to look very far if i

think about my childhood

newspaper hit the door and we read it

we knew the times that the news came on

each day and we watched

and if we missed either one of those

opportunities

we missed the news that is definitely

not the case today

today it is incredible to see

how much information is available to us

online

and a lot of these outlets are operating

with little to no

oversight when it comes to the accuracy

of the information that they’re sharing

you have everything from the new york

times to tmz and everything in between

there is space

for everyone and

this information is coming at us 24

hours a day

seven days a week 365 days a year

so when you think about that when you

think about the volume of the

information that we’re receiving and the

frequency

it’s no surprise that

we’re taking a passive stance it’s no

surprise that

we’re going on autopilot

it’s no surprise because we put a lot of

our life

on autopilot we have our groceries

delivered

we use siri or apple or google home

or alexa to turn on our lights to

turn off our security system to feed our

pets i am fairly certain one of these

devices is teaching my son

and when it comes to directions don’t

get me started i don’t even know how i

got here

thanks to waze and maps and the

navigation system in

the car we have embraced

the conveniences that allow us

to put parts of our life on autopilot

and maybe that’s okay in some instances

but what happens when you allow that

behavior

to become part of how you

receive information

so if you put it all together

if you think about the amount of

information that we’re receiving

and the frequency plus

our tendency now to sort of be passive

go on autopilot

and the fact that as a society we have a

severely

diminished attention span the latest

studies have us hovering at around

eight seconds so thank you for still

paying attention

when you put all of that together it is

no surprise that misinformation is

flying all around

it’s taking root and

the truth is lagging far behind

the misinformation is flying and the

truth

is lagging behind and it’s lagging

behind

because we’re allowing it to we

aren’t taking a beat to check a fact

to dig a little bit deeper to gain the

insight

that we need so that we can make an

informed decision

we absolutely are not looking back

to something that we heard about the day

before and we just want to check

and see is that still true or was there

a retraction or was there a correction

we’re just being fed information we’re

digesting the information

and we move on

another byproduct of

being on autopilot is the amount of

information that we share

with companies we

tell them where we shop we tell them

what we purchase

we tell them where we travel

where we vacation what we listen to what

we read and

everything and companies take this

information

and they start to establish a narrative

of who they think we are

what we want to buy what we want to read

where where we want to go on vacation

in the case of media they start to

create an

archetype of who they think we are

what we want to hear who we want to hear

from

and because we’ve taken more of a

passive position

we start to follow and

as we follow we are moving further and

further away

from people whose views don’t align with

ours

and we’re starting to sit in these echo

chambers where we’re only hearing from

and speaking to like-minded people

what’s happening is they’re contributing

to

the polarization of our society

let me ask you a question do you

think that fox news speaks to

a certain type of viewer

and do you think that msnbc

speaks to a certain type of viewer

do you think they speak to the same

viewer

now i’m gonna make an assumption that

you don’t

and how interesting is that that

two major news networks responsible for

providing us the public

with information we need to make

informed decisions on

at times the same topic have little to

no overlap

when it comes to their viewers

and this is what happens when the media

starts to tailor

information to a specific audience

but let’s bring this conversation

forward let’s talk about something more

current

let’s talk about covet 19.

there has been no shortage of

information on this subject matter

from severe downplaying early on

to seemingly end of days

it’s run the gamut and it has been on

every minute of every day

and the information is all over the

place

you can’t discern the fact from the

fiction the misinformation is flying

around

and as a result we as a society

are unable to agree on a path forward

to mask or not to mask

to open or to remain closed

to go back in school in person

and to go to sports or to remain virtual

and to postpone

so as i was working on this talk and

thinking about this point in particular

i asked my husband a question

and it’s important that you know that i

consider my husband to be a very

informed person

he is a voracious reader he

stays current on events every day

and he loves his podcast a range of

podcasts

so i asked him why do you wear a mask

he looked at me like i was crazy and

said

because dr fauci said so

okay and when dr fauci said so

what did you then do to learn more about

why you should wear a mask did you learn

anything about the particles did you

learn anything

more about covid19 what did you do

to learn more about the subject so that

you could make an informed decision

around wearing a mask

and he looked at me he said dr fauci

said so

and it’s funny because maybe that’s okay

maybe it’s okay that the foremost

knowledgeable person on this subject

said so but it doesn’t change the fact

that my husband my

my informed husband didn’t

do due diligence he was he followed the

information

he was fed information from an outlet

that he

listens to and he acted accordingly

he was not a critical thinker in the

process

and so maybe it’s okay

in this instance maybe it’s all right

it’s dr fauci

except i would argue i’m not sure we

have the luxury for it to be okay

because of the time in which we live

misinformation is all around and that’s

not new

misinformation has been around since the

beginning of time

we are the consumers of the media

and at some point in time we abdicated

our responsibility to be critical

thinkers in the process

we stopped checking facts we stopped

digging deeper to get the information

that we needed to make informed

decisions

sometimes life or death decisions

we stopped having conversations

we stopped hearing from people with

opposing views

stopped being okay

with disagreeing

and we need to change that

we need to get back to being the active

participants in the process

we need to get back to being those

critical thinkers

we need to stop the canceled culture

we need to do the work

and for me i think it’s work

worth doing because if we don’t

we’re gonna wake up and the erosion of

our democracy won’t be happening

it will have happened we were all just

on autopilot

thank you

[Applause]

[Music]

you