S7: Episode 39 - Nolan Higdon

The panic over fake news has reached another peak, especially in the run-up to Election Day on November 3. Media scholar Nolan Higdon, who recently authored The Anatomy Of Fake News, joins Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola to discuss the problem of fake news. Nolan has an expansive definition that implicates much of the establishment media. It singles out political propagandists, and it highlights state-funded outfits in and outside of the United States, recognizing there is an information war. In our conversation, Nolan addresses some of the history of fake news and how the government typically responds to fake news when it is a perceived problem. He describes whether the problem of fake news is worse than ever before. Nolan suggests ways in which the public can detect fake news in the mass media. Later in the discussion, we have a conversation about journalist Glenn Greenwald's resignation from The Intercept. And as a kind of case study, Nolan assesses what happened with the New York Post and their stories on the emails from Hunter Biden's laptop.