Misinformation & uninformed comments are clogging war coverage; plus, Tupac's legacy

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

A warning: This episode contains explicit language and mentions of rape.

For the past two weeks, social media has been flooded with coverage and commentary on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And while the news updates have been devastating, not everything coming across our feeds has been true. We've seen footage pulled from a video game purporting to show a Hamas fighter shooting down a helicopter, and a fake memo from the White House that claimed to announce $8 billion in military aid. This week, host Brittany Luse is joined by NPR correspondent Shannon Bond to learn why we're seeing so much misinformation online. Brittany is also joined by Molly McPherson, a crisis public relations expert, to unpack the hasty public statements about the conflict made by corporate brands and celebrities. They discuss how this may be indicative of a new media landscape that demands commentary and sentimentality.

Then, we turn to Tupac Shakur. He is back in the news 27 years after his death, following the first arrest of a suspect connected to his murder. Joel Anderson, a Slate reporter who covered Tupac for the Slow Burn podcast, joins Brittany to discuss Tupac's complex impact and how the rapper has been able to stay relevant almost three decades after his passing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Linda Holmes from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast.
0:04.0	I'm one of thousands of NPR network voices coming to you from over 200 local newsrooms
0:09.2	across the country. We bring all Americans closer together through free and independent journalism,
0:14.4	music, politics, culture, and so much more. The NPR network, what you hear, changes everything.
0:24.4	Hey there, I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR.
0:28.6	A show about what's happening in our culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:35.3	I want to start today by saying how horrified I've been over the past two weeks,
0:40.1	seeing images, watching videos, and reading about the escalating violence between Israel and Hamas.
0:46.4	It is nothing short of heartbreaking. I've also been horrified by how quickly reports of
0:52.4	the violence have been hampered by misinformation and social media noise. And frankly, I'm at my
0:58.9	limit. This conflict is the first major test of Elon Musk's ex when it comes to spreading verified
1:06.8	information and it's failing hard. Twitter was once a place where you and I could turn for real time
1:14.0	on the ground information from journalists. Instead, I've seen footage from a video game
1:19.6	being passed around with people claiming it was from the conflict. That is mind-boggling.
1:26.1	On top of that, celebrities and corporations alike are jumping on the moment to make statements
1:31.2	and take stands, posting just moments after the news dropped. They're taking a deeply complex
1:37.4	history and boiling it down to press statements on social media. And for what? Who is this for?
1:44.9	I was perplexed when Justin Bieber of all people posted an image of a bombed out city with the
1:52.8	words Pray for Israel on top of it. He had reposted it from an account called Church Home,
1:58.2	an account which clearly has no access to any geopolitical information. And I need to make
2:03.9	very clear that this photo of the bombed out building is not from Israel. It was from Gaza.
2:10.4	So I ask you, what good is that doing any of us?
	...

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