Saturday, November 18, 2023

How does the media make money from lies?

 First of all, it is worth mentioning the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. This phenomenon means that people trust the media in matters about which they have no knowledge, despite being aware of their unreliability in matters about which they do have knowledge. An example to illustrate this phenomenon is the figure of an electrician reading a newspaper. In this newspaper, on page three, there is an article that encourages readers to repair sockets without first turning off the plugs. The electrician is an expert in this field and recognizes that it is dangerous. He also realizes that the person writing the article is wrong and is putting readers at risk of death.

A moment later, the electrician turns to the fourth page of the newspaper, where he sees an article about the large shale gas deposits in Poland. At the same time, Gell-Mann's amnesia effect is triggered in his mind. The electrician forgets or simply ignores the fact that this newspaper had false information a page ago and treats it as an authority in a different field. The text about shale gas may, of course, be completely correct, but it does not change the fact that people experience the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

Treating the media as an authority on issues we know little about can be dangerous when we meet journalists who consciously share with us their own, often false views. Such things happen even in renowned magazines, such as "Der Spiegel". It turns out that the newspaper's leading reporter, Claas Relotius, not only invented stories for the publication, but also fabricated characters. We read that Claas Relotius fabricated at least 14 of the 60 stories he wrote for the newspaper. What's worse, this journalist won 4 prestigious journalism awards, including the "CNN Journalist of the Year" award for 2014.

In his stories, which coincided with the immigration crisis in Europe, he wrote about how services in Arizona were securing the border with Mexico and placing "Down with Mexicans" signs. He also wrote about a poor orphan from the Syrian city of Aleppo, working as a slave in a tailor's workshop in Turkey, and about a young man fighting against Assad's troops in Syria. What all these stories have in common is a positive attitude towards immigrants, but also the fact that none of these stories can be confirmed, and the author himself did not provide any evidence for them.

What is most terrifying in this case, however, is the fact that in such a well-known and well-funded organization as "Der Spiegel", editorial supervision was so weak that for four years it published false stories with non-existent people. Therefore, the question arises - Do newspapers even have a person on their payroll who checks articles for substantive correctness? This is not about small media with a low budget, but about an agency with enormous opinion-forming power that spends large sums of money. In the case of such a company, it seems obvious that they should employ people who verify the content.

The next story is about Newsweek. In 2019, Jessica Kwong was assigned to write a story about how the then-president spends Thanksgiving. So she created an article: “How does Trump spend Thanksgiving? He tweets, plays golf and more.” The problem is that during this time, Trump went on a secret trip to Afghanistan to visit and encourage soldiers overseas. This story shows us two problems. The first of these has already been touched upon earlier. Newsweek does not check the accuracy of the published content, and when confronted with the truth, resorts to blaming the reporter and firing her.

  The second problem is more serious. Pop culture may have created in some of us the image of a reporter who is the last bastion of truth, controlling politicians and large corporations - it is even an image of the dream job of a spy-journalist for some. The truth is that most journalists and editors are commercial writers who write texts full-time. Jessica, probably like you and me, wanted to take some time off during the national holiday. So she sat down the day before the event, looked at the president's official plan, and then based it on what she called a "Pre Write," a story based on what was going to happen, not what had happened.

The question that arises is: "Why does there even exist a system that allows reporters to write about stories that haven't happened yet, and when something goes wrong, the company pretends the incident is an isolated incident?" The answer is probably the rush and extreme commercialization of media. The article was to be published on the day of the holiday, so it had to be prepared in advance - in this case, before the events that were to be described in the article. Why such a rush? Well, posting content about Thanksgiving a few days after the holiday itself would get much less attention.

The next issue we will discuss will show us how the media is used as a political weapon. The story of US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is an example of such a situation. Kavanaugh was accused of sex crimes by four different women during the time he was nominated to be a Supreme Court justice. This position is very important in American politics because the nominated candidates are, in a sense, representatives of the parties nominating them in the country's future legislation. At the time, the media was full of stories about how Kavanaugh should not become the supreme justice.

You can see what impact such stories can have by watching the episode devoted to this problem titled: “How to destroy a man.” Ultimately, the case of the said judge ended with a message from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which stated that there was "no evidence to support any of the allegations" of sexual misconduct made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

This story was considered a political issue for several reasons. First, there was a considerable time lag between the first knowledge of the accusations and the public publication of the accusations. Secondly, no adequate evidence was found to prove the judge's guilt and thirdly, two of the four victims ultimately withdrew their initial accusations. This may suggest that prosecutors intended to damage Kavanaughow's public image and stop his nomination using the media, rather than to prove his guilt in court.

However, messages can be used not only by political parties. The American actor Jussie Smollett knew this well and wanted to use the media to arouse sympathy in others and increase his fame. He hired two men to fake an attack on himself. Smollett is a black gay man, so in his testimony he suggested that his tormentors attacked him because of racism and homophobia. His story was full of ambiguities and changing testimony from the beginning.

Although some local newspapers tried to get to the truth, larger media outlets happily picked up the story that showed the racist face of the United States. Ultimately, Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in prison, 30 months of probation and ordered to pay a $145,000 fine for fabricating a hate crime and wrongfully involving police.

The next story that calls into question the competence of the media is the Nicholas Sandmann case. The true version of events is as follows - the teenager was returning from a school trip with his class. For about 10 minutes, Sandmann's class was caught between two groups of protesters and a third group made up of religious extremists. A group of extremists began to provoke and challenge Sandmann's class. In response, this class began performing dances and chants used to cheer on the school team. At one point, an older man, a representative of a local tribe, approached the group and started singing Indian chants.

It is worth adding that the entire incident was recorded and available in the form of a 1.5-hour video. However, the media based their stories about Sandmann on minute-long videos, taken out of context and manipulated in such a way as to stir up racial tensions in the United States. So what was the media narrative like?

“A group of young white Americans wearing “Make America Great Again” hats performed mock dances in response to the Native American protest.”

“A group of teenagers surrounded a poor Indian who was a veteran of the Vietnam War.”

“Sandmann, at the head of the group, laughed and blocked the passage of the Indian and did not allow him to leave the place where he was.”

Well, as it later turned out, this veteran never left the country and only repaired military refrigerators. Ultimately, the case ended well. The boy's parents sued The Washington Post, CNN, NBC Universal and earned anywhere from $1 to $800 million. The final amount is not known because the terms of the settlement remain secret.

The most important conclusion you can draw from this story is that when an incredibly hot story appears in the media and it appears on all the newspapers and TV shows, you are most likely dealing with a situation in which one or two journalists are trying to understand the story , and the rest of them are limited to uncritically copying history written by someone else.

The last issue we will discuss is using artificial intelligence to write articles. In January this year, CNet, a technology coverage website, found itself in trouble after it was revealed that it was using artificial intelligence to generate stories. As we read, 41 out of 77 articles that were created using AI had errors that required correction. The increase in the number of articles generated by AI coincided with the period in which 10% of employees at CNet were laid off.

Ultimately, the production of articles using artificial intelligence was stopped, but we can be sure that these attempts will be resumed in the near future. This is a problem because the rise of Chata-gpt has shown us that artificial intelligence can be "confidently incorrect", i.e. it can very convincingly discuss and present arguments that are untrue.

Be aware that the articles you read are written by people who, just like you and me, have their own views, beliefs and imperfections. Sometimes they may be having a bad day, sometimes they just want to go home early, and sometimes they may want to write false stories for money. However, if the content you read is written by AI, it is worth being aware that this technology is also not omniscient and infallible.

Try to understand that sometimes you may be dealing with a journalist looking for the truth, and sometimes it may be an activist using his social position to convince you of his views. Whenever you see the title of an article, try to find the answer to one question: "Who is benefiting from this article and is it a presentation of dry facts or an attempt to convince you to adopt a certain point of view?" See you in the next episode.

Sources:

1. Brett Kavanaugh (online), access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh, [access date: October 13, 2023].

2. CNET found errors in more than half of its AI-written stories (online), https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571082/cnet-ai-written-stories-errors-corrections -red-ventures, [access date: 13/10/2023].

3. CNET is doing big layoffs just weeks after AI-generated stories came to light (online), access: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/2/23622231/cnet-layoffs-ai-articles-seo -red-ventures, [access date: 13/10/2023].

4. Der Spiegel reporter who faked stories returns awards (online), available: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/21/sacked-der-spiegel-reporter-claas-relotius-returns-awards, [date of access: 13/10/2023].

5. Der Spiegel says top journalist faked stories for years (online), available: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiegel-journalist-resigns-over-fake-interviews, [access date: 13/10/2023].

6. Jussie Smollett sentenced to 150 days in jail in attack hoax case (online), access: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60695975, [access date: October 14, 2023].

7. Lincoln Memorial confrontation 2019 (online), access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confrontation, [access date: October 14, 2023].

8. Newsweek reporter fired for Trump Thanksgiving story blames editor (online), available: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/exclusive-newsweek-reporter-fired-for-trump-thanksgiving-story-blames-editor, [ access date: 12/10/2023].

9. 'No evidence to substantiate any of the claims': Takeaways from report on Kavanaugh allegations (online), available: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/05/brett-kavanaugh -allegations-report/1889770002/, [access date: 12/10/2023].

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