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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

35 | Jessica Yellin on The Changing Ways We Get Our News

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.84.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2019

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Everything we think about the world outside our immediate senses is shaped by information brought to us by other sources. In the case of what’s currently happening to the human race, we call that information “the news.” There is no such thing as “unfiltered” news — no matter how we get it, someone is deciding what information to convey and how to convey it. And the way that is happening is currently in a state of flux. Today’s guest, journalist Jessica Yellin, has seen the news business from the perspective of both the establishment and the upstart. Working for major news organizations, she witnessed the strange ways in which decisions about what to cover were made, including the constant focus on short-term profits. And now she is spearheading a new online effort to bring people news in a different way. We talk about what the news business is, what it should be, and where it is going. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Jessica Yellin has worked as a journalist in a number of different capacities. Beginning with local news in Florida, she then worked as an on-air correspondent and anchor for MSNBC and ABC, before becoming Chief White House Correspondent for CNN. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. She is currently focusing on a new project using Instagram as a new way of delivering news. Yellin is a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Public Integrity. Her upcoming novel, Savage News, is about a woman trying to navigate the modern news business. Instagram news feed Wikipedia Savage News at Amazon Twitter Profile in Vogue USC web page See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

0:03.0

I'm your host Sean Carroll and I'm going to start with an apology if my voice sounds a

0:07.1

little more rumbly than usual today.

0:09.6

Apparently the punishing schedule of podcasting and recording does not allow you to take a

0:15.0

day off just because you have a cold and your voice is not completely in good form.

0:19.3

But the audience needs its content and I'm going to provide it no matter what shape

0:22.4

my pipes are in that particular day.

0:24.5

And the content today is good.

0:26.4

We're going to be talking about the news.

0:28.8

We all know that we live in a world now where there's all sorts of information coming

0:32.3

at us from all sorts of places.

0:34.3

But much of the stuff that we get, Twitter, social media, podcasts, blogs, it's commentary

0:39.8

on the primary stuff, the news reporting that is telling us what is actually happening

0:44.1

out there in the world.

0:45.6

And I remember I think that in my very first podcast teaser trailer for Mindscape I talked

0:50.9

about this issue of what we pay attention to.

0:54.2

You know there are an infinite number of facts there in the world.

0:57.7

Which ones do you notice?

0:58.9

Which ones do you communicate to other people?

1:01.6

You and I do that every day but if you're a news organization your choices in this matter

1:05.8

are incredibly important.

1:08.0

And as it turns out as we will hear in today's interview the news organizations that make

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