Maslows Pyramid Fake News and the Future of Journalism
i’m not here today to talk about fake
news
first of all fake news as a term has
grown out of control
and now encompasses everything from the
original russian troll
farms to actual verified facts that some
people don’t want to hear
no matter what definition you use fake
news only works because
people simply don’t trust the media
and without trusted news sources it’s
easy for people to
be fooled by made-up news stories or for
politicians to dismiss
cold hard facts and so i’d rather talk
about something that’s more core to this
problem
which is trust and how do we make
journalism that deserves people’s trust
in 2015 i co-founded city bureau a
journalism lab
based in chicago to answer that question
and to imagine a future of local media
where trust is at the center of
everything we do
i’ve been in this industry about 10
years working as an editor
from places like trade publications and
national ideas magazine
neighborhood news website and a big city
glossy magazine
what i’ve learned is a simple truth that
a lot of people intuitively understand
but feel like they can’t fix which is
that
the vast majority of journalism is made
for and funded by people with money
and because of america’s awful legacy of
racism that also means
journalism’s target audience is more
white and has more political power
than the rest of the country so if you
think about
all the biggest news stories of the day
whether it’s the climate crisis
pandemic economic turmoil or policing
the people who are most directly
affected by those issues
who need news and information the most
are looking for it in the news media
that’s not serving them so it’s not
surprising that
american news media has some of the
lowest rates of trust
of all institutions in the country and
that is the fertile ground
where fake news and disinformation has
taken root
so how do we change that if we’re going
to make
journalism that deserves people’s trust
we have to completely rethink the way
journalism is made some of you
might be familiar with maslow and his
hierarchy of needs
it’s a concept in psychology that says
you need to have your basic needs met
at the bottom of the pyramid
like physiological needs and safety
needs
before you can dedicate your time and
energy to
higher level psychological needs at the
top of the pyramid
like esteem and belonging
and if you’re lucky enough to climb to
the top of this pyramid then you’re
working on something
that maslow called self-actualization
which is the fulfillment
of your full potential
so for instance if i am looking for food
and water
and can’t find it well it’s going to be
really hard for me to be
building any relationships and without
healthy relationships in my life
well it’s going to be even harder for me
to reach my full potential
so much like other concepts in
psychology
this hierarchy is not exactly cut and
dry and there’s still
debate over the details but if you bring
it into the world of journalism
we have this simple tool that helps us
answer an essential question
which is is our work actually making
anybody’s lives better
this hierarchy of information needs
is what we need to move forward together
information is power we know that the
right information
at the right time can be transformative
to somebody
if you need basic information to get
through the day whether it’s finding
healthy food for your
family or a safe place to stay the night
that’s critical and as journalists if
we’re trying to build a solid foundation
of trust
then we should dedicate more of our
resources to making sure
those needs are met first and sometimes
we do
but it’s more of an exception than the
rule think about disaster reporting
and stories about the locations of
hurricane shelters
or how to reunite with a lost family
member
if a disaster is huge and it affects
everybody equally
that’s front page news but if a disaster
affects a smaller group of people
people who are at the margins of society
there’s simply not a lot of news and
information
made for them at a big picture level
you can see this because there are
dozens of websites
and publications that are made for the
stock market
people trying to get rich on that stock
market on the other hand
very few publications available if
you’re looking for
affordable housing or trying to avoid
eviction
this hierarchy of information needs
gives us an ability
to see that we need to completely
reprioritize
our journalism for instance if you think
about
the evening news turn on the tv and you
see these blaring headlines
about four killed in a weekend shooting
it might have some information about
where it happened or the race and the
age of people involved
but ask yourself do those stories
actually fill any of your information
needs
do they make you feel like you
understand why that gun violence
happened
or if you’re a concerned citizen and
want to prevent future shootings
does that help you do that all those
stories do
is give you a sense of fear fear of a
neighborhood
fear of a city fear of an entire race of
people
now imagine if you witnessed the
shooting or you know somebody
who is involved you have really basic
immediate needs
like maybe mental health trying to
navigate that trauma
or the most simple need which is just
understanding where the funeral is so
that you can grieve with your loved ones
those things aren’t going to be the news
stories either which begs the question
if these stories aren’t filling any
public need then why do they get so much
air time
we need to look at this hierarchy of
information needs
it helps us understand how are we making
sure
the information that we give has a
purpose
too many stories nowadays are what i
like to call
wow that’s awful stories you read an
article
you turn on the radio you watch a video
clip and you might feel
generally more informed about this world
and you might have a sense of
accomplishment because of it but then
what
if that story is about injustice you
might feel sad or angry
or maybe even feel powerless it might
make you hate the news
now imagine that you are convicted of a
crime that you didn’t commit
by some estimates this happens to 10 000
americans a year
you’re in prison and you’re trying to
fight your case trying to appeal it and
get a retrial
realizing how hard it is how the system
was built to make it hard to even
file the paperwork that should be your
path to freedom
yeah a journalist might write a story
about that and somebody somewhere will
read it and they’ll think
wow that’s awful but what do you need at
that moment
you need information about the peel
system so that you can navigate that
you need advice on how to stay motivated
when things get hard
you need information that’s shareable
for your friends and family so they can
understand what’s going on
that is a basic information need to you
the need for freedom
so at city bureau when we met a young
man in this exact situation
instead of taking that information and
writing
a story so that someone in a far away
place might be
generally more informed about what’s
going on we ask the people who are
directly affected
how can this be helpful to you and
that’s how we made
after the trial an illustrated guide to
the appeals process
with easy to understand visuals and
articles and then we printed it out and
we distributed it
to prisons for free it might not look
like the journalism that you’re used to
but after all it includes the first
person stories of people who are
impacted
it quotes legal experts and advocates
and it’s entirely fact checked we just
packaged that information
for people who needed it the most
in that same vein when covet 19 hit at
city bureau
we surveyed community groups and asked
them
what can we do to be helpful right now
what we learned was that
with the flood of pandemic stories
coming around every day
it was really hard to cut through the
noise and find access to the critical
resources that they needed
and so we spent weeks compiling over
1300 resources
ways to apply for aid like money legal
help housing and food
and we put it all into one single
searchable database
and translated it into 12 languages
i’ve been all over the journalism
industry and it wasn’t until i got to
city bureau that i had the freedom to
experiment with different types of
journalism besides just
telling a great story luckily since we
started down this road we’ve met amazing
people
scattered across the country doing the
same work
and chipping away at distrust
in detroit at outlayer media they are
using 3-1-1
data and text message surveys to find
out what people are looking for
and then they use their investigative
skills to help people navigate eviction
or foreclosure or to stop utility
shutoffs
and their work has elevated those issues
to the level of creating local policy
change
proving that you don’t have to choose
you can actually
serve the people who are most affected
while also pulling for long-term
solutions and context is critical
in douglas arizona spaceship media has
used this hierarchy
to try to prioritize what information
needs are the
biggest for them they found out that
border crossing rules
change often and that is the biggest
news for a lot of people in that
community
for us here in chicago it might sound
like an abstract information need but
for them
it’s crucial to their everyday lives and
just like maslow’s original hierarchy
when you put this into the real world it
starts to get messy
in newark free press and the center for
cooperative media brought this
activity to a group of community members
and they started asking all these big
picture questions around the edges like
how do we make sure we keep people on
the ground or how do we get rid of the
gatekeepers
how do we make sure contributors are
being paid
they debated should this belong here
maybe this belongs here
or maybe this doesn’t belong here at all
but that messiness is the beauty of it
we should be constantly debating
and revising and challenging our
assumptions around this pyramid
for too long news has been dictated by
journalists who are targeting a single
type of audience
when you bring more people into that
picture you get something that’s a lot
more complex
something that matches the realities
that we live in
news media is in a deep crisis in the
decades since 2008
more than 30 000 journalism jobs have
been lost that’s a quarter of the
industry
besides the lack of public trust we’re
also dealing with predatory hedge fund
owners
a lack of revenue models and
a spike in physical assaults of
journalists and also arrests
business as usual for american news
media is simply not sustainable
this hierarchy of information needs this
shape however you want to draw it forces
us to rethink
how and why we serve our communities
but it’s only a start we still need to
do that hard work of
bringing people together even people who
hate the media to think of a new way
forward
we need to recruit journalists and
newsroom leaders
from diverse perspectives who can lead
that conversation
and we need to stop thinking of our
audiences as passive consumers
and start thinking of them as active
partners
we can equip our communities to build
the future of journalism together
with a strong foundation that’s bottom
up
instead of top down and can fight the
wave
of fake news and disinformation that
threatens our democracy
that is how we build a journalism that
deserves people’s trust
thank you