On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the rise of disinformation and how to counter the powerful right-wing media machine.
From Fox News and Newsmax to white supremacist podcasts and YouTube shows, media manipulation has exploded. Right-wing media coverage of COVID facilitated the spread of misinformation in the early stages of the pandemic and widespread attention on Donald Trump's Big Lie increased support among Republicans across the country to make it harder to vote.
Guest:
Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters, a progressive research and information center dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. Angelo joined Media Matters in 2010 and is an expert on right-wing extremism and disinformation
Emily Dreyfuss, senior editor at the Technology and Social Change Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Emily covers the impacts of technology on society, with a focus on social media and information systems. She was previously a Nieman Berkman Klein fellow, a senior editor at WIRED, and the editorial director of Protocol
Web Resources:
The Media Manipulation Casebook
Media Matters, Chloe Simon and Gideon Taafe: Right-wing media have spent a year trying to discredit the 2020 presidential election in promotion of the Big Lie
Media Matters, Tyler Monroe and Rob Savillo: Fox has undermined vaccination efforts in nearly 60% of all vaccination segments in a 2-week period
The New York Times: Tracking Viral Misinformation
The Daily Beast, Roger Sollenberger: The Aristocrats Funding the Critical Race Theory ‘Backlash’
The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells: How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory
