From WNYC in New York, this is America. Are We Ready? Hello, everyone. I'm Brian Lairer from WNYC.

I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Loinger. Brooke and I co-host on the media.

And we're here for the next two hours. The basic questions we're putting on the

table in this hour are, do you trust the professional news media more, less, or about the same

as you did when Donald Trump first hit the presidential campaign scene in 2015? And how do you

think they're doing it covering Trump versus his opponents this year?

So, Brooke, let's talk about misinformation and disinformation that professional news media

organizations have to keep playing whack-a-mole with more than in past generations, I think.

And let's start with some basic definitions.

What's the difference between misinformation and

disinformation? Misinformation is false information that is spread regardless of whether or not there's

intent to mislead. And disinformation is, quote, deliberately misleading or offering biased information, manipulating narratives or

facts, which is propaganda, and we've seen a whole lot of both over the last few months.

So you got any most high-profile, most egregious, miss or disinformation narratives.

We've been hearing in the run-up to the election some examples.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, how far back do you want to go?

I mean, we can go all the way back to Kamala not being sure if she's black or not.

But more recently, you have the lies around FEMA workers stealing money from the people who need it in the wake of Hurricane Helene and giving them to migrants.

Can you imagine such a thing? Well, obviously, it's total BS. I guess it started on X, but I mean, I think Trump doubled down just

yesterday. So that one's there and that has consequences. It's, uh, it's resulted in threats against

FEMA workers. And then you have JD Vance spreading the false story from a Facebook group and he's

...