How Not to Cover a Conspiracy Theory

Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

Ana Marie Cox, Open Mike Eagle, and Andrew Steven

Business, Performing Arts, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

QAnon! What a *wild* conspiracy theory! Blood-drinking! Pedophilia! JFK Jr.! Pretty fascinating stuff! I bet you want to listen to this episode! Which is exactly why we need to rethink how the media covers conspiracies and how we think about them. George Mason University disinformation researcher John Cook helps explain how we can keep toxins out of the media bloodstream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These Good Intentions Edition.
0:12.0	You, a listener to this podcast and a savvy consumer of political news, probably know all
0:18.9	about, or at least a little about, QAnon.
0:24.0	Kicked off by what might have been an image board cosplay game and set a light by a weird
0:29.3	rhetorical aside by Trump in 2017.
0:32.9	QAnon is a racist, violent, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that first merged into mainstream
0:39.7	news coverage in 2018 when a Q sign appeared at a Trump rally.
0:45.9	The stories that followed had, well, they had a theme.
0:50.7	What exactly is QAnon? I'm so sorry, you asked. Get ready for some deep weirdness.
0:56.8	What is QAnon? Man, ask, well, sit back and get ready for a wild ride.
1:01.8	Because I think he wants to put everything out there so you can judge for yourself.
1:05.8	I've heard it before. You've heard it.
1:08.8	You're just a speck man. Hearing it is not meaning it's true.
1:11.8	I just believe what Average Roll is going to feature right.
1:14.8	I don't know. Yes.
1:16.8	I want to foreground the fact that I, too, participated in coverage of QAnon that was at least
1:22.8	partially based in a kind of wonder and astonishment.
1:27.8	A point in laugh, retweet with no comment kind of coverage.
1:32.8	I am now fairly certain that that was a mistake.
1:37.8	I had a conversation a couple of years ago with friend of the pod Whitney Phillips.
1:42.8	Whitney wrote a brilliant white paper called The Oxygen of Amplification.
1:47.8	It was primarily about how the mostly white, mostly male makeup of mainstream journalism
	...

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