In Reality

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media.Have you ever thought about what you are really doing when you scroll for news, or click on a headline that pops up in your feed? The quick answer is, “I want to know what’s happening in the world.” Or, more pompously, I’m seeking the truth.Sure. But when you’re honest you have to admit that you’re mostly sucked in, like the rest of us, by unthinking instinct -- by news that lights up your emotions, that confirms your prior beliefs, or especially news that warns you of a threat. Today’s guest has spent her research career trying to divine how our media affects our view on the world and vice versa. She’s Dannagal Goldwaithe Young, Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware, and author of Wrong: How Media, Politics and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation.She argues that much of modern media - sometimes deliberately more often unconsciously - reinforces political division and intensifies what she calls people’s mega identities, the set of beliefs that define our political allegiance and our sense of who we are. There’s a lot to unpack here about the perverse incentives in news media, about the differences in how conservatives and liberals consume news, and about the need for us news audience members to consume news consciously, deliberately, not instinctively. The conversation was recorded live in my class at the University of Chicago.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in MediaThe news business has been in freefall, as every listener to In Reality is aware. The plunge has been steepest in local journalism. We lose two local news outlets a week, on average. Half the counties in America have only one news outlet or none at all. Dousing that five alarm fire is the mission of today’s guest, Mackenzie Warren, director of the Local News Accelerator at Northwestern University’s Medill School, hands down one of the premier journalism schools in the country. Mackenzie is a long-time local newspaper executive himself; at Medill, he now helps local newsrooms in Illinois discover innovations aimed at putting themselves on a path to sustainability. Mackenzie joined Eric recently at his class on the future of media at the University of Chicago. They discussed the role of local news in counteracting polarization, the incoming class of new journalists and how they view their careers, as well as a few bright stars in the local news firmament, like the Minnesota Star Tribune, Chicago’s hyper-local Block Club and Atlanta Journal Constitution.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Americans have long had a conflicted attitude about political news. On the one hand, most Americans, Republicans and Democrats, see the press as an essential watchdog on government. This is not a new idea: The founders of the country singled out the press for protection from government interference for just that reason. At the same time,  sizable majorities of Republicans and independents today--and a good many Democrats besides--have little to no trust in professional media to report the news accurately. And audiences and advertisers are not willing to spend enough money to support it.Evaporating trust. Collapsing business models. Along with an ever more obvious need for an independent press. These are the existential contradictions facing journalism today, a topic that we come back to continually here on In Reality. However, we’ve never had a chance to discuss them with Norman Pearlstine, one of the most significant figures in institutional journalism of the past 50 years. Norm has crowned the editorial masthead at the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg News, Time Inc. with its hundreds of magazine titles and, most recently, the Los Angeles Times. He has been in the room where journalism happened.  Norm recently joined Eric as a guest speaker at his University of Chicago course on the Future of Media. This evening’s class was called, Where We Are and How We Got Here.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.Among the many forces unravelling institutional media is the relatively recent ability of journalists to become mini-institutions on their own, thanks to social media and especially newsletter platforms like Substack and Ghost.  For journalists with a following or a novel approach, going indy can yield a much better living than they could earn in a traditional newsroom. Eric Newcomer was one of the early movers in this parallel media universe and has proven to be one of the most successful. Having cut his teeth as a tech writer for Bloomberg, he was one of the first writers to join the groundbreaking digital newsletter, The Information. Four years ago, he branched out on his own, and now has a newsletter and podcast, two million in revenue, employees, and a highly regarded tech conference, Cerebral Valley AI summit. Eric S met up with Eric N at the first HumanX conference in March. That’s accounts for the background noise, if you hear it. Among other things, they covered how to build a one-man media empire in the modern era, the questions of building trust, and whether and how institutional newsrooms fit into the new media ecosystem. To join Eric’s Substack: Newcomer.coWebsite - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

In this conversation, Jonathan Stray, Senior Scientist at the UC Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, explains to Eric Schurenberg the intersection of AI, media, and conflict, emphasizing the challenges of objectivity in journalism and the need for a new approach to reporting that embraces complexity and 'multipartiality'. He explores the role of AI in shaping social media narratives and the potential for algorithms to foster better understanding in political discourse. Stray also highlights reasons for hope in addressing political polarization and the importance of bridging divides through constructive dialogue.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation, and the Media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.Media overall is in dire straits financially, as In Reality listeners are well aware. Local journalism has been the hardest hit: We’ve lost a third of the papers we had twenty years ago and continue to lose, on average, two a week. Most of the rest have been hollowed out. Which makes today’s guest particularly interesting. Andrew Morse is the president and publisher of the 150-year-old Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While the AJC is not immune to recent turbulence, it is expanding rather than contracting, going regional rather than doubling down on the Atlanta metro area.  What makes Morse even more intriguing to me is that he’s not a local paper guy: He comes to the role as the former head of CNN digital, Bloomberg TV and ABC digital. Eric asks why he was attracted by the challenge of revitalizing a legacy institution like the AJC, what it takes to rebuild trust in a brand like that, and whether his digital subscription strategy could offer a blueprint for the future of local news. He’s a persuasive guy. You’ll like this one.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation and the Media with Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.  In Reality is dedicated to the proposition that there is such a thing as objective truth and that the pursuit of it is a noble effort, one that over the centuries has increased human well being. Some objectively verifiable claims are the source of division in the US right now: the 2020 Presidential election was, in fact, legitimate. The covid pandemic was real, not a hoax. But that doesn’t mean everyone accepts those facts. And if we are going to thrive as a democracy, if we are going to rebuild trust in the institutions crucial to that form of government, including media, we need to be able to get past differences. Not just on facts, but also on the matters of opinion, or faith, or moral judgment that divide us. That’s where today’s guest comes in.Monica Guzman is the senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, an organization devoted to sparking civil conversations across the political divide, also author of a book Eric enjoyed: I Never Thought of it That Way. How to Have Fearless Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. They talk about the search for commonality even in our most divisive issues and the power of curiosity. Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation, and the Media. I'm Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.Just when you thought it could not get harder to recognize truth in your newsfeed, along comes artificial intelligence. Now it’s child’s play for bad actors to create fake news, fake videos, fake pornography at digital scale and in quality all but impossible to detect. As deepfakes multiply, reality itself becomes just one of several options your algorithm can serve, and not necessarily the most convincing one. Our guest today leads a company that offers an intriguing defense to this dystopia. Ben Colman is CEO of Reality Defender, whose technology exposes deepfakes in real-time across voice, images and text. I’ve seen the demo, and it’s impressive. Ben’s background is in cybersecurity. We’ve seen this in other disinformation fighting technologies: Cybersecurity is a logical foundation in many ways for information security. Ben and Eric cover some chilling real-world examples of deepfakes, Ben explains how Reality Defender’s technology works, and why usability is critical to scaling truth’s defenses. They’ll also discuss whether deepfake detection could strengthen trust in traditional media. Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.It’s not exactly news that the traditional news business is in decline. Most distressing to those of us who grew up in the profession: that audience levels of trust in the work we do has dropped to the lowest levels ever recorded. Today’s guest, Julia Angwin, back for a second time on In Reality, is like Eric a product of the traditional news business. She worked at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and also founded startup newsrooms like the Markup and, most recently, Proof News. But that’s not why she’s here today though...Julia recently penned research for Harvard’s Shorenstein Center about what traditional newsrooms can learn from online influencers about trust. According to her paper, you earn trust by convincing others that you are competent to do what you say; that you have integrity and that you have their best interests in mind. Julia and I discuss how influencers support those beliefs about themselves, without benefit of institutional brand names; how traditional newsrooms squandered trust; and ,what journalism needs to do about it.Read Julia's Paper! The Future of Trustworthy Information: Learning from Online Content Creators TakeawaysTrust in media has reached a historic low.The creator economy is significantly larger than traditional journalism.Content creators often have a closer relationship with their audience.Integrity and accountability are crucial for rebuilding trust.Journalism needs to engage more with its audience.The concept of objectivity in journalism is outdated.Benevolence is about serving the audience's needs.Transparency in journalism can enhance trust.The future of journalism may be more about practice than profession.Holding power to account is the core mission of journalism.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Welcome to in Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. On previous episodes, we discussed how you can distinguish between reliable news online and unreliable, story by story. An obvious shortcut is simply to only read or view stories from places that you know to be reliable in advance. But these days, how do you know who is reliable? Today’s guest is long-time journalist, prolific media entrepreneur and author, Steven Brill, whose six-year-old company, NewsGuard, helps readers and advertisers identify trustworthy newsrooms, based on the newsrooms’ adherence to sound journalistic practices. In addition to starting media brands like American Lawyer and Brill’s Content, Brill has written numerous books on American culture—but the one that relates the most to NewsGuard is his most recent, the Death of Truth. Eric gets Brill’s insights about how social media swamped truth with the unwitting help of respected advertisers and well-intentioned legislators; they talk about his proposed solutions to this mess; and also why non-partisan NewsGuard has suddenly, alarmingly, found itself in the crosshairs of the new Trump administration. The Death of Truth by Steven BrillNewsGuardWebsite - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com