In our free-for-all information ecosystem, the liars have the inside track. It’s much easier to make up outrageous claims about, say, migrants than it is to send reporters into the field and check facts. The more outrage a bogus claim generates and the more often it’s repeated, the more widely it spreads. That’s human nature.
So it’s encouraging to encounter a model that tilts back in favor of truth. Today’s guest Peter Pomerantsev has identified one such model from history in his book How to Win an Information War.
Peter is a British journalist, academic, book author and long-time anti-disinformation warrior. He also co-hosts a podcast at The Atlantic called Autocracy in America. The title tells you all you need to know about what worries Peter these days. Peter and Eric talked about Peter’s book and how its hero, Sefton Delmer, countered Nazi propaganda, and a bunch of contemporary topics including: the insidious way autocrats take power; the lack of public service journalism in the US; and the true source of propaganda’s psychological power.
Website - free episode transcripts
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Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
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Alliance for Trust in Media
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