In Reality

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

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with your host Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. On In Reality, we talk a lot about the supply side of the information ecosystem, about journalism and social media and how disinformation gets spread. We talk less about the demand side—how we readers and viewers of news can trustworthy information. We’ll fix that imbalance a bit today, with a special guest, Michael Caulfield. Caufield is a former professor at University of Washington and researcher at the Center for an Informed Public. He’s the author with Sam Wineburg of Verified, a book with the highly explanatory subtitle How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online. The book introduces what I have found to be a highly useful, easy to remember and very quick way to quickly vet a claim you come across online. Caulfield and Wineburg call that technique by its acronym SIFT. I hope you’ll find it as handy as Eric does.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 on truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, a former journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.At the front lines of the battle for truth in the information ecosystem are the social media platforms’ trust and safety teams. Trust and safety teams are the data-science professionals who make sure that social media content conforms to the platforms’ standards. It’s a finger-in-the-dike kind of task, because of both the volume of content—34 million videos uploaded on TikTok every day, for one example--and the judgment needed to distinguish merely obnoxious content from the truly harmful. And lately, the whole idea has run into significant headwinds, some political, from Republicans who say that trust and safety is just a code word for censorship; And some economic, from platforms leaders, who have been cutting back their trust and safety teams as cost centers and generally more trouble than they’re worth. Today’s guest, Jeff Allen, is very much part of this world. Jeff’s a former trust and safety executive at Meta, now the founder of the Integrity Institute, which is both a community for trust and safety professionals and an advocacy group for a kinder gentler social internet. Jeff and I discuss what trust and safety professionals really think about free speech; why Instagram search tends to harm young people and Google’s does not; why Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like trust and safety, in Zuck’s own words; and where those hoping for an internet that does better at fostering human well-being, might find reason for optimism.Website - free episode transcriptswww.in-reality.fmProduced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapiensoundsapien.comAlliance for Trust in Mediaalliancefortrust.com

Peter Pomerantsev, a British journalist and author, dives into the crucial battle against disinformation. He reveals historical tactics used by Sefton Delmer to combat Nazi propaganda, drawing parallels to today's media landscape. Peter discusses the rise of autocracy in the US and the urgent need for a robust, public service journalism that counters misinformation. Engaging on media literacy and the psychological power of propaganda, he also emphasizes innovative local news strategies to empower citizens and reclaim democratic values.