Craig Silverman on Real Reporting on Fake News
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2020
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek spoke with Craig Silverman, the media editor for Buzzfeed News and one of the leading journalists covering the disinformation beat. Craig is credited with coining the phrase “Fake News.” Evelyn spoke with him about how he feels about that, especially now that the phrase has taken on a life of its own. They also talked about a book Craig edited, the second edition of the "Verification Handbook,” available online now, that equips journalists with the tools they need to verify the things they see online. Journalism and reporting on disinformation has never been so important—but the internet has never been so chaotic and journalists are not only observers of disinformation, but also targets of it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | If we look at the amount of misinformation and disinformation about the coronavirus, |
| 0:39.0 | if we look at how difficult it is becoming for people to actually determine what credible information is, |
| 0:45.0 | to make decisions about their life and their health, |
| 0:49.0 | we're in a really bad moment right now. |
| 0:51.0 | And it didn't take advanced technology or deepfakes or synthetic media, |
| 0:56.0 | or some of the things that people had sort of become obsessed with with the last couple of years, |
| 1:00.0 | we have just this massive global event with tons of fear and uncertainty built in, |
| 1:04.0 | where expertise is needed around epidemiology and other things that the average person doesn't have. |
| 1:10.0 | And it's just been completely weaponized, and people are having a really hard time knowing what the best advice is, |
| 1:16.0 | what they should be doing, whether or not the virus is a hoax, whether or not the death counts are inflated. |
| 1:22.0 | I think we're in a moment right now that people have been worried about for some time, |
| 1:26.0 | and it's not necessarily about politics, it's about health. |
| 1:30.0 | I'm Quinteduristic, and this is the LawFair podcast, May 14, 2020. |
| 1:36.0 | It's another episode of our Arbiter's of Truth series on disinformation. |
| 1:40.0 | This week, Aguiland Wax spoke with Craig Silverman, the media editor for Buzzfeed News, |
| 1:46.0 | and one of the leading journalists on the disinformation beat. |
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