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Press Panel: The Future of Media in a Post-Truth Age
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AvatarShruti Rathi
5:24
Hello and welcome to Press Panel: The Future of Media in a Post-Truth Age. 

The panelists are Jeremy O'Grady, Editor-in-Chief of The Week, Robert Guest, Foreign Editor of The Economist and Jim White, Telegraph columnist, writer, and broadcaster.
5:39
Robert Guest starts by saying that we live in an era of fake news, but it's not the first one.
5:42
He adds that The New York times ran a story in 1835 about John Herschel observing the moon.
5:47
Can media bring positive changes in the future?
yes (0% | 0 votes)
 
no (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 0
He says, "We seem to have gone back to the period where we had anonymous pamphlets put off presses. Each story on Facebook isn't connected to anything else. It can be put out there by a teenager in Bulgaria who is just putting out stories to get clicks." Robert states that there is a real problem with trusting whether what you read is true, and that affects Politics Gathering accurate news costs money, writing fake news is fairly easy.
5:49
do you consider fake news as offence?
yes (0% | 0 votes)
 
no (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 0
Robert continues: real news where you have to go out there and find things out costs a heck a lot of money. If you want news that's true someone has to pay for it and that could be you the reader.
5:50
Jeremy states, "I hope we can distinguish between the phenomenon of fake news and the idea of partisanship during this session."
5:53
Jim White tells, "Apologizes if you were hoping for a bloke with a yellow tie shooting for transfers." He shares an incident that long ago has immediate editor used to live in Ipswich traveling in the train counting who's reading which newspaper on the train and his count would be really close to the actual figures.
5:54
Should there be strict regulations to stop the spread of fake news?
yes, indeed (0% | 0 votes)
 
no, it isn't necessary (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 0
"If you caught the 8.15 traveling on the train, very few people reading newspapers people are on their phones. The Independent doesn't even print newspapers, the shift has been to online. Every one of us has here the pocket opportunity to be a Journalist", he says. "Every single one of us can be a journalist and we have greater means in our pocket. It is democratized that way there are dangers of trust and what we can believe." He advises to new journalists to create a new world via the new technology.
5:56
The moderator asks why is it that people find harder to decide what is true and what is fake . even though they are getting more intelligent.
5:59
Robert replies that there is plenty of evidence out there that shows being highly intelligent is no protection against believing codswallop. He says, "My first day at Oxford where one of my students was completely brilliant but started telling me about astrology which is complete bullshit. It's not like intelligent people are necessarily wise. One of the things that makes people most likely to believe something is if it reinforces what they believe in as we see on Facebook algorithms, particularly if you're passing stories around online to your friends. It is also possible for completely malicious people to cause trouble. Russians have spent a long limb time trying to undermine the West. Back to the Cold War spread rumors through word of mouth."
Jeremy: I absolutely agree with Robert. We are all part of a tribe. It's uncomfortable when we get information that goes against our tribe.
6:02
6:03
Jeremy says, "we have got the idea of what the polarization of news is, in Britain, it has become entangled with comment. It's difficult to distinguish whether we are listening to the news or someone's comment on the news. The whole idea od objective reporting is under threat now partly because we as consumers are losing trust. There's an edge between the use of numbers and how it's presented."
6:04
6:06
Jim: About the difference between fact and fiction, he was in Russia, he saw the Russians using the visiting Western media to confound the assumptions they had about Russia. So Russia was beyond their best behavior. He saw the whole of the high street filled with Columbians partying. The next day he found out from Russian friends that the locals can't wait for the visitors to leave. He is fascinated with how England and Western European fans who would send huge numbers of people, they blamed the media. They said Western media cooled up fake news about Russia being horrible, he realized it's a very sophisticated PR machine.
6:07
Robert talks about the authoritarian regime. "During the Olympics, they shut down all the factories near Beijing. You can do that in an authoritarian regime, not in a free country. Authoritarian regimes understand the weaknesses democracies have," he says.
6:10
To reply moderator's question, where does the onus to regulate fake news lie, Jeremy says, "There is a deep need to inculcate in the news a vigilance. The danger is to give the responsibility to platforms instead of ourselves, they become moderators. It's quite dangerous, we should work out a regulatory system which is much needed."
6:12
Jim: Interestingly in America recently the NYT just announced its best figures of all time in terms of internet subscription and print and they seem to be doing very in Trump administration because they are the centre of skepticism and criticism. Trump himself uses the skepticism to use the naturally occurring to cover up his indiscretions he calls all of them fake news. It's a trick and a device, and we can only maintain vigilance by proper scrutiny.
6:14
Robert: Starting with self-regulation, newspapers have a duty to the truth. If I ever catch someone working for me making stuff up they will be fired. If someone makes a mistake fine, the fess up say sorry, fine. The first responsibility of the Journalist is to get things right even if you do get facts right doesn't mean you will have the same views as the reader.
If you have the colossal privilege of speaking English you have available to you newspapers from a wide variety of countries, it's up to you as consumers of the news to read things critically.
6:15
He quotes the 33rd edition of The World edition "The Vigilant Citizen" in which someone made the argument on why they are focusing on the number 33 do they believe in the occult Free Masons.
6:16
Jeremy: So there is an argument which would say that this isn't a post-truth era - it's where everyone has a microphone, and the level of anti-intellectualism is high. There is a distinct feeling of unease because you hear a lot of chatter all the time. We have this fantastic jungle is podcasts which weren't there before - this leads to the more truth era.
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