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