Everyone Hates Fact Checkers (E299)

QAA Podcast

Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky

News

4.5 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2024

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite Travis’ best efforts, it’s still possible to occasionally read posts on the internet that are not perfectly accurate. In fact, Travis’ failure to turn networking technology into primarily a means of rationally exchanging ideas and substantive policy issues has forced media outlets all over the globe to employ so-called “fact checkers.” To get a better handle on this phenomenon (for which, to reiterate, podcast host Travis View bears most of the blame) we spoke to the hardest working man in online fact checking: BBC Verify Senior Journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh. For years, he has tracked and reported on viral falsehoods, both silly and deadly, in many countries. We discuss how Shayan got into this unique discipline of journalism, his response to the criticism that “fact checking” primarily serves the reinforcement of establishment narratives, research which suggests fact checkers are less trusted than other kinds of reporters, the rise of deep fakes, atrocity denial, and how to maintain trust as a fact checker. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/QAA Shayan Sardarizadeh https://x.com/shayan86 BBC Verify https://www.bbc.com/news/reality_check Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast. SOURCES The Onion: Factual Error Found On The Internet https://theonion.com/factual-error-found-on-internet-1819566445/ Nieman Lab: Readers are more suspicious of journalists providing corrections than journalists providing confirmations https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/08/readers-are-more-suspicious-of-journalists-providing-corrections-than-journalists-providing-confirmations/ Rolling Stone: Right-Wingers Heartbroken by Picture of Little Girl Who Doesn’t Exist https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ai-girl-maga-hurricane-helene-1235125285/ Washington Post: Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/10/21/tim-walz-matthew-metro-video/ Newsweek: Gaza War Death Toll Passes 43,000, Palestinian Health Ministry Reports https://www.newsweek.com/gaza-war-deaths-surpass-43000-palestinian-health-ministry-reports-1975910 BBC: False claims of staged deaths surge in Israel-Gaza war https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67760523 UN News: Rights expert finds ‘reasonable grounds’ genocide is being committed in Gaza https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: Türk says world must act as darkest moment of Gaza conflict unfolds https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/turk-says-world-must-act-darkest-moment-gaza-conflict-unfolds

Transcript

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0:37.0	I'm going to be Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 299.
0:42.0	Everyone hates fact checkers.
0:44.0	As always, we are your host Jake Rakatanski
0:46.0	and Travis View.
0:48.0	In 2002, the satirical publication The Onion
0:52.0	published an article headline Factual Error The was dealt a stunning blow Monday when a factual error was discovered on the internet.
1:04.4	The error was found on Ted's Ultimate BradyBunch.com, a BradyBunch fan site that incorrectly listed the show's
1:11.0	debut year as 1968, not 1969.
1:15.0	I think about that article a lot because it was published 22 years ago
1:20.0	before the invention of social media as we know it today.
1:23.2	There was no Twitter or Facebook or YouTube.
1:26.1	There wasn't even a My Space.
1:28.0	There wasn't even a Friendster.
1:30.2	But this onion article shows that even in this immature stage of the internet's development,
1:35.0	it was understood that falsehoods were routinely published on it.
1:39.0	The quality that made the internet so empowering,
1:42.0	the ability for anyone to share their words. that made the internet so empowering.
1:42.5	The ability for anyone to share their words or other creations
1:46.2	with the world without a gatekeeper
1:48.2	also enabled its most frustrating flaw.
1:51.0	Someone who publishes anonymously on the internet has fewer incentives to be perfectly
1:55.8	factual than traditional outlets or publishers.
	...

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