Fake News: The Facts

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2017

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There are lies, damn lies, and then there’s fake news. Manipulating the facts for political gain is as old as politics itself, but due to the rise of social media and search engine algorithms false stories can now spread like wildfire. In the run-up to the US presidential election, more people on Facebook engaged with fake news than they did with fact-checked media outlets. And according to a study by Stanford University, fabricated news items favouring Donald Trump were shared 30 million times during the campaign. In the recent French elections, a quarter of the political stories shared on Twitter were based on deliberate misinformation. Fake news was even broadcast live on television during the second-round debate, when Marine Le Pen alluded to a false online story that her rival Emmanuel Macron had an offshore bank account in the Bahamas. Welcome to the world of ‘alternative facts’, where conspiracy theories, false claims and dodgy statistics proliferate. This phenomenon doesn’t just undermine the work of the mainstream media: it may have devastating consequences for democracy itself. Our system depends on citizens making electoral decisions based on facts. What happens when people don’t know what to believe? Fake news – often linked to Russian interests – has become an increasingly effective instrument of propaganda to create chaos and weaken the public’s trust in democratic institutions. Can anything be done to combat the new post-truth politics? Tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are hosting, propagating and monetising ‘clickbait’ stories. Will they eventually come to acknowledge that they are no longer neutral platforms directing traffic to news sites and admit that they are media organisations with all the responsibilities that implies? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you've arrived you head to the brasserie then the terrace cocktail don't mind if I do
0:08.5	You raise your glass to another guest because you both know the holidays just beginning.
0:14.0	And you're only in Terminal 3.
0:18.0	Welcome to Virgin Atlantic's unique upper class clubhouse experience
0:22.0	where you'll feel like you've arrived before you've taken off.
0:26.0	Virgin Atlantic, see the world differently.
0:30.0	Everything is fuel for your creativity
0:32.0	with the LenovoAnovo Yoga laptop series.
0:34.4	From the people you meet to the creators you follow, it all comes together with Lanovo yoga.
0:39.2	Plus, you get a 50 pound travel voucher and a shot at winning an awesome trip to New York and a Motorola
0:44.6	razor 40 Ultra. Check out the L'Novo Yoga series with laptops made for creatives at
0:49.8	Lenovo.com slash yoga, limited time only terms and conditions apply. Engine you very much, Hannah.
1:05.0	Thanks to all of you coming.
1:06.0	Just hearing there about the agenda coming up,
1:09.0	it does sound as if that's perfectly timed
1:10.0	because I think election nights tend to be when Russia does indeed come in from the cold.
1:15.0	So that's obviously very, very good planning there.
1:19.0	We have a subject before us though which could not be more pertinent for our time. You'll have known that the
1:24.9	Oxford English Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2016 was post-truth. You'll also know that there are three books no less than three, no fewer than three
1:36.4	rather, that have come out right now on that subject and central to any argument about
1:40.9	this post-truth landscape is fake news and that is the subject
1:45.9	before us and it's going to be discussed by six people all expertly placed either
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Intelligence Squared, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Intelligence Squared and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.