Capital Press Club Podcast
Capital Press Club Podcast
CPC Legacy Podcast #20: Misinformation, Media Trust, and Kamala Harris Interview Insight
Get ready for a fascinating exploration into the world of media and misinformation as we break down an insightful interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, conducted by the National Association of Black Journalists. Our conversation begins with a tribute to Black history, celebrating the legacies of trailblazers like MC Lyte and Alexander Miles. We navigate through the deliberate contrasts between Harris's poised and presidential interview setting and that of a previous interview with former President Trump. The younger audience and polished environment seemed to set the perfect stage for a less confrontational discussion, even as Harris remained elusive on certain topics like reparations.
Are traditional media outlets falling behind in the race for trust? We tackle this provocative question by examining the shifting dynamics of media trust in today’s digital age. The influence of content creators and social media platforms like TikTok is weighed against established news giants like CNN and Fox News. The narrative shifts under the influence of figures like Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter (now X), sparking dialogue on the evolving landscape of journalistic integrity. We bring in international perspectives too, highlighting Sweden’s commitment to media literacy and critical thinking from an early age.
Misinformation and fake news are at the forefront of societal challenges. We dissect conspiracy theories surrounding recent hurricanes and debunk absurd myths about Haitian migrants in Ohio. It’s a serious reminder of the importance of media literacy and accurate reporting, especially as elections loom on the horizon. Derek Kennedy is acknowledged for his dedication to combating falsehoods, reinforcing the need for constant vigilance in our fast-paced information era. Join us in this episode as we champion the truth and the critical thinking necessary to thrive in today’s complex world.
Welcome back everybody to episode number 20 of the Capital Press Club Legacy Podcast. I'm Dr Colin Campbell. Thanks for joining us today. We wanted to start with today in Black history. Well, we have MC Lyte the rapper. Legendary rapper, who started many years ago as one of the preeminent women rappers of the genre, is turning 54 today and she just released a new single actually as well that she's promoting. So we wanted to give her a happy birthday shout out.
Speaker 1:We also wanted to commemorate Alexander Miles. Alexander Miles was a person who invented the electric elevator. He did not invent the elevator, let's be clear, but he did invent several improvements to the elevator and the way that they operate and the way that their doors open and close. So we wanted to just give a shout out to him as well for his contributions to America in the way that we use elevators. I'm sure all of us who are watching have used elevators at one time or another. So thank you to Alexander Miles. Now, before we jump into our topics, I wanted to welcome our man, Derek Kenney, my man behind and in front of the scenes.
Speaker 2:Good to see you again.
Speaker 1:Hey, how are we?
Speaker 2:doing. Man, it's good to be seen, and thanks for having me here again, colin. Looking forward to talking with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we've got a lot to talk about today. We've got first up. Okay, we wanted to talk about that interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and NABJ. And of course NABJ has been in the news a bit this year because of its interview with the former president, former President Trump, in July, where it got kind of controversial, where the issue of race was brought up and dissected and of course he had his grievances with the way the interview was run. So now we see an interview with Kamala Harris, with NABJ, in Pennsylvania I believe Philadelphia where she fielded questions about the economy. She was a little bit demure about how she felt about reparations, but altogether she wanted to talk about issues that she felt would impact the Black community and she felt that NABJ would be a good platform to talk about these issues. So what did you think of this interview, dk? Was there anything that stood out to you of note? Well, a few things.
Speaker 2:One I think, as we look at the interview, dk, was there anything that stood out to you of note? Well, a few things. One, I think, as we look at the interview, we need to look at it juxtaposed to the Trump interview, where we had a lot to say about that interview, not only about the controversy that came from his answers. Of course, he has ways of answering questions that are very confrontational or controversial, to say the least. Right, but we did also speak about the, the makeup of the interview panel. In the past, I think you mentioned that it was notable that NABJ selected all women journalists, as opposed to having one male. In this case, nabj had a couple of males, men in addition to a lady, a woman interviewing as well. So that's different.
Speaker 2:And then also another maybe in another interview we talked. We criticized not necessarily the interviewers, but we talked about the interview where Kamala Harris was being interviewed on. Was it CNN and she was being interviewed in like a post-apocalyptic diner where there's mugs on tables and it's dark in the background and it's very unpresidential, or it's not something that you'd see. That signifies that you're interviewing a potential president of the United States of America. The background was dark, there was no American flag, there was no patriotism espoused. Kamala was sitting at a table where she looked smaller than the interviewers and so I think all of those things that we talked, criticized or that we may have had comments about in the other interviews that we saw with Kamala Harris or that we may have had comments about in the other interviews that we saw with Kamala Harris, this time was different.
Speaker 2:I can tell this time that someone on her team made sure, or someone made sure, that she looked presidential. So if you look at this scene where she is this time so the communications person you have the American flag, the literal American flag, in the background. You have also a nice, beautiful I don't know if it was a globo or whatever American flag and American type of signage in the background behind her, giving her more of a polished look, more polished interview look as opposed to where you're interviewing potentially the next president of the United States. You just have a background of a diner. So that's much improved from seeing an interview, and I'll say that it's a bit different from the Trump interview. And when we look at the content of who's doing interviewing and so you look at some of the images from the interview, you can see also, you know, the people that are interviewing her. Looking straight ahead. There was a live audience. Audience was a bit smaller, which I thought was nice and appropriate, but the studio environment was nice yeah.
Speaker 1:So what did you think about it?
Speaker 2:How did you feel?
Speaker 1:about it. Yeah, I think there were mostly students in this audience. You could tell that it was framed almost like a talk show format, which seemed a little bit more comfortable for her, even though she was spaced at a distance from her interviewees, unlike the Trump interview where they seemed a bit closer together. Where Rachel Scott and Trump seemed to be closer together, she was spaced out a bit more here. I'm sure, though, that logistically it was easier to cut from camera to camera and get some of those close-up shots because of that reason where you had a little bit of space to work with, where you can actually be a little bit more accurate or more aesthetic with the framing of course, and I think that the interview was pretty smooth there was no confrontation was pretty smooth. There was no confrontation.
Speaker 1:Unlike the Trump interview, this one seemed to go rather smoothly. Again, she did kind of evade where she felt about the reparations issue. I think that some journalists were a little bit I wouldn't say annoyed, but they probably thought that she could have answered that question a bit better when it came to that. She also talked about economic building, which I think was important, an issue that a lot of people wanted to hear from her because the critique was that she wasn't speaking to media enough or that media was not reaching out enough. So here we have members of the media really trying to ask her those issues that they felt would resonate most with black society. So I think that was a positive about it and of course, yes, the aesthetics you have the American flag in the background, which does make her look more presidential, she looks more comfortable, she is herself. So you know, just size comparatively, there really isn't someone right next to her to do that with. So she kind of stands alone, looks very independent, looks more competent in that way Visually.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying, you know, mentally or emotionally or anything like that, but visually just looks like she can stand on her own. And that there's. You know, it's not like an appendage, where I think in the CNN interview it almost looked like that because of the way that she was framed in such a diminutive way. It just kind of seemed odd. Here she was able to kind of be high lit in a way so that she stands out and she looks bolder. So I think that worked well for her. So I think, like you said, whoever was on her team or nabj's team, they said okay, let's do a bit better job here. Learning from the experiences of the trump interview and in CNN interview, let's see if we can elevate this interview a bit more.
Speaker 2:And I think they achieved that when you're looking at the aesthetics Right and that way you can focus on the issues at hand. And again, we're non-partisan. I don't know whether she gained any voters or not and we don't care about that. What we do care about is that the people that had jobs to do that were communications in nature did their jobs well, and I think in this case they did so. We're going to give them a round of applause from CPC and Dr Colin Campbell. Yeah, give them a round of applause.
Speaker 1:They also talked about the conflict as well, the Israeli Hamas conflict, I guess. More accurately, they did ask her about that too. So, again, asking her some of the harder questions Now, journalism critique could they ask her? Tougher things be more pressing? Sure, I don't think I'll discuss that now, but as far as you know, tackling some of those issues that people have been talking about and the issues that they wanted to hear answers from her on, they were able to address most of those.
Speaker 1:I do think there are other areas that they could have pressed her a bit more on. I'm not sure if they went over questions. I would think that they didn't, though, because there was also a lesson to be learned from that. If you remember, there was a radio station that asked Biden some preview questions and they got in trouble over that, of course, when dealing with issues of journalistic integrity. So I don't think they did that here, but I also feel like there probably could have been some tougher questions when it came to economic struggles, war budgeting, things like that, foreign policy.
Speaker 1:So we will see, as the campaign, of course, Election Day is just a few days away, less than a month away We'll see what happens with other members of media and how they try to speak to Vice President Harris, how they try to phrase questions, and we'll see if there's any kind of progression or evolution in the way that they connect with her and communicate various messaging when it comes to issues that a lot of voters are paying attention to or are curious about, when it comes to her standpoint and her point of view. Oh, wow, all right, yeah, so I think that she also did another interview on a streaming platform, which we will talk about in another episode. So she's continuing to do these interviews, I think with a little bit faster pace as the day of fate is approaching.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, indeed yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. Very interesting, though, and I wonder if people think media are doing a good job. We know that right now, media are one of the just one of the least trusted institutions. Right now, when you look at various issues dealing with law enforcement or media or health care, something like that, media is kind of ranking low. It probably is still above Congress. I think I have to look at the latest polls on that but I wonder people's feelings about how the media are interviewing politicians, if they feel that they're doing a good job, and I think that when you're seeing more politicians on the campaign trail we just saw former President Obama on the campaign trail today as well that they're trying to get the media to steer. They're trying to steer the media to their messaging. I do wonder about that Same with former President Trump as well if they think the media are really effective in carrying their message and I bet you it does go along partisan lines. I'm not really sure about that.
Speaker 2:You know, and the question that you have there is significant because you know whether or not you trust media. It's a question of also what do you consider media? A question of also what do you consider media? Are you thinking traditional media CNN, msnbc, fox News or you're talking about the blogger down the street or the TikToker that has news and information for you that they've generated themselves, that aren't necessarily educated or traditionally trained journalists? So it's a question of when you start looking at how people are getting information and they sometimes are being failed or they're receiving information that is not true and does that make them learn to not trust media and are they lumping all media together?
Speaker 2:When you think about media, are you thinking about the news organizations?
Speaker 2:Or are you thinking about news organizations and what you're getting from social media, from various sources? Because news organizations may have millions of views. Someone on social media may have millions of views. However, the news organizations on cable or on broadcast TV are ruled by, at least to some degree of integrity or journalistic principles, whereas some of the bloggers or some of the micro bloggers or content creators are not ruled necessarily by the same degree of integrity when it comes to fact checking and ensuring that they're providing good information and timely information and that they're not presenting something in a subjective fashion. And that's where I really wonder if people, when they say they don't trust the media, are they saying they don't trust the traditional media, or are they saying they don't trust any media, where now you're thinking about social media as well where you have influencers like Elon Musk, who has 195 million followers and he takes a day to expose all of his truths to the general public, of which many of them may or may not be factual in nature.
Speaker 1:You know how does that work yeah, you know, I did want to jump into Elon Musk and his use of X, but before I wanted to go into that, I don't know if you saw that Ray J, randy's brother, who was famous for a special video that was released. Really he was Okay podcast. So speaking of various content creators in a journalistic sense, the podcast, or the piece of the podcast I saw he was well-dressed, had on a suit, he even put on a pair of glasses I've never seen him wear glasses before and he asked his audience, almost like in the third person, he said I'm sure some of you are wondering why Ray J is in the news. So now he's placing himself in the space of journalism as almost a journalist. He's trying to present himself as a journalist with a background and, I believe, a desk that he sits at, and so now people who may not know about some of the journalistic standards that are supposed to guide the industry may consider him on the same level as a Gayle King or a blitzer or something like that, depending on how often you watch him, your access to the subject matter that he might be interested in, right, I mean. So that's that can be a little bit, you know, definitely a little bit jarring, I would think, for some people to really discern what is real journalism and what is not real journalism.
Speaker 1:So when we think about Elon Musk, for example, and just how he has taken over Twitter remember he sold it or he bought it, rather, in 2022. He bought it for, I believe, $44 billion and now he has, some people said, wrecked it I know several people who have logged off or signed off or canceled their accounts because, in his view, he is encouraging freeophobia than there was before, when it was under Jack Dorsey and his, his collaborators. It seems that Musk has kind of taken it over and has used it as his own personal platform, even though right now I think it's estimated to have about 540 million followers around the world. So you know, estimate what a half billion, almost followers. So there are a lot of people on there and they have the he has what almost 200 million followers or something, I can't remember how many.
Speaker 2:I believe he's close to 195 million, according to this article that was reflecting on his day where he had 145 tweets.
Speaker 2:And it goes back to what do people consider media when you're looking at what's the media? Because, of course, you had Rupert Murdoch of the day and the Ted Turners that owned media networks that share news and, to a certain degree, they could influence the content of the news. But now you have a guy that owns maybe one of the what could be considered one of the largest media networks in the world, which is X or Twitter, that can now directly influence, not superficially fire somebody, hire somebody, suggest story ideas, but to change the narrative by banning people or giving people access, or more access, to his network that has more constituents than many countries have residents. How does this really shape the narrative? How does this reshape the way? As communications professionals, what do we need to do to level the playing field? What are we to do?
Speaker 1:I think as individuals, it would be tough to really mitigate the influence of a platform that has so many followers. I think that, as an individual, we can only do what we have time to do or what fits into our finances, and that is still following journalistic standards, of course, ignoring or being very mindful of spreading misinformation or disinformation. We know that that is a huge problem within media, especially now in the advent of social media and where everyone can just set up a camera and just say what they want, which is why we have so many different conspiracy theories floating around, where we have so many people that give their points of view that are sometimes accepted as truth before they are verified. And so you know, because of that, in the academic space we have classes that deal with media literacy in countries like I believe it's Sweden, I can't remember if it's Sweden or Switzerland it's one of the SW countries I want to say Sweden where they teach media literacy at a very young age. They teach children to have critical thinking skills so that they can discern what's truthful and what's not in media. Here, the steps to understand what is veridical in our news or not takes more steps because we aren't really given those skills or trained in those skills from young ages. We do it as an adult.
Speaker 1:I've taught media literacy as a college class but of course, growing up it was before social media, so they didn't have that. I really haven't heard that as a part of standardized curriculum to teach children how to discern true messages in media and mendacious statements in media. It's a little bit troubling because, again, anyone nowadays with a smartphone or a tablet or a laptop can set up a camera and stream news well, stream content, rather not news content from their device and treat it like news and then it can be accepted like news and, of course, when you have a platform like X, accepted like news. And, of course, when you have a platform like x, where people are tweeting or posting all kinds of information.
Speaker 1:It's up to the consumer to understand what's real and what's not, and a lot of us may not even have the time to do that because we're so busy with trying to maintain other parts of our lives. Some of us may be too lazy to do it, some of us may not have proper ways to do it, so we accept what we're seeing a blurb, a headline, a quick video that may even have fake elements within the video, like deep fakes or fake audio. There's so many ways that videos can be doctored and people accept those as truthful videos. Again, technology is even going to get better. With that, where lip syncing and accents and tone of voice will be so accurate, it'll be almost impossible to detect whether or not something is truthful or if it's totally fabricated. So I think, to answer your question, I think we have to be vigilant, we have to call out perhaps what is fake as far as journalists are concerned.
Speaker 1:If we are really trying to be responsible, maybe we would create our own channels, our own streaming platforms so that we just produce news that we know that is up to a specific journalism standard of truth and integrity to combat some of the dross that's already out there. Again, it would have to be a lot of us, right? You have legacy media too, but they also have their own interests. You know, like media, we're talking about corporate media, so they may have their own, their own biases when it comes to what news is covered and how it's covered. So and we already know that some of the broadcast companies have their stations produce all of the same content or their these must air segments where they have to show news that every other station within their network is showing. Of course, that shows a bias, right, that takes away some of the diversification of news, information and information sharing that's out there if you have all of your stations producing and airing the same content simultaneously. So, again, it comes down to the individual. One person combat it?
Speaker 1:No. Could we collectively do it as individuals? Yes, but it would take a mindful effort to do so.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's great that people have us out there now, because we're going to tackle some of the fake news stories out here that are hitting people at some of the most vulnerable times where they're seeking news and information, but they're getting them from the wrong places. All right, there's this recently we talked about. We kind of helped to debunk and look at the Trump statement where he alleged or his vice president, his running mate, alleged that Haitians were eating cats and dogs, immigrants were eating cats and dogs, and that was a fake news story.
Speaker 2:He actually said during the debate trump himself yeah, have you heard the song, by the way, derrick? No, no, I have not heard. The other day there was a song about that.
Speaker 1:They're eating the cats, they're eating the dog. Oh, I did hear that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did hear that they took. They took his voice and they put him in. Yeah, I want to look that up and see if I can find that before we're done here. But we have another fake news story today. Yeah, and it has to do with the hurricanes and the technology that some people believe may be influencing the hurricanes, and I'll leave it to you to pick that up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this news came out of. Well, let me put news in air quotes. Let me just say information came out about, I believe, helene, and, of course, the next hurricane to really wall up the West coast of Florida and the Gulf region, hurricane Milton, where these massive weather systems are passing over Florida, and you have members of the public who are saying that these weather systems may have been purposely created to sway elections or to devastate certain areas. So take them out of the electoral process because, as we know, it's less than a month away, and so what they're saying is that there are these ionically charged particulates that are being put into the atmosphere to create these high or low pressure systems, which then create massive clouds and then grow into these Goliath weather, hit landfall.
Speaker 1:But, of course, that devastation was only exacerbated because of the fact that Helene had already hit several days before, and so you had people in Florida who were reeling and really suffering from being hit by these hurricanes massive power outages, hundreds of thousands of people out of power. I think it exceeded a million people without power in that area. I actually have relatives who live in the Tampa area and they're okay. Fortunately, they used a generator to get through the storm, but I did receive a text yesterday saying that they're okay, so I'm very thankful for that. But I did receive a text yesterday saying that they're OK, so I'm very thankful for that.
Speaker 1:But you know, of course we, you know this is not to overlook that I believe it might be more than a dozen people who perished in the hurricane. So of course we feel for them that the loss of life as a result of the hurricanes Helene and Milton, but the information that's being put out there about scientists putting these ionically charged particles into the air, of course is not true. Now they do have technologies called cloud seeding that they've used, I believe, in certain parts of Africa or other parts or, excuse me, china, I believe, has used cloud seeding, see I don't know about.
Speaker 2:And what's the? What's the? What's the name of the popular city for vacations now in the Middle East?
Speaker 1:Dubai.
Speaker 2:Dubai. Yeah, I believe so cloud screen too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that now, so that that is a.
Speaker 1:That is a technology, right, that's true, but it's used for smaller weather occurrences to create rain, to create water, to cause precipitation, but to create a hurricane.
Speaker 1:That's not true, and that would take a much more massive undertaking to do something like that. But that is what's being put out there in order to sway voters' minds, and so this is the misinformation, and now, at this point, it would be disinformation because it's been widely debunked. So people who still share that as truth are really out there, motivated by disinformation, to really give false messaging to the public, and I think that's obviously a disservice to people who are consuming content out there, especially people who need help, especially people who want to make informed decisions. Putting this information out there is really deleterious, I think, to the public, but yet it will still exist people putting out false information, and again, we have to combat it, I believe, as journalists, but to to really do it in a more, uh, a stronger or bolder way. Maybe there need to be policies put in place. I don't know what those policies are, but I do think there needs to be some type of regulation for putting out news that can really harm the public at large.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, agreed, agreed. And speaking of the public at large and fake news and information that needs to get out there, I think we have something that might be-. Is that a?
Speaker 1:fake news of the day. The cloud seeding stories are fake news of the day.
Speaker 2:Nope, I think we need this. Let's see if I have it.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, can you hear that? I don't hear anything. No song, so he does more like. People love springfield. Please don't eat my cats. Why would you do that? Eat something else. People love springfield. Please don't eat my dog. Here's a catalog of other things to eat.
Speaker 2:So this is one of the things that came up when I looked for that song.
Speaker 1:Even like this song. Right, I know it's a joke and it's a scoop for a parody, but at the same time he's telling people of Springfield not to eat pets, almost like it's a given that that's actually what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he encouraged them to not do it, but it's not happening. That's the problem. It never happened. Now again we did talk about this in a previous podcast that there was some woman who seemed like she was dealing with some mental issues, who did not live in Springfield, who was not Haitian, who may have eaten a cat, I think, but again, nothing to do with this migrant population that is looking for a better way to live in the town of Springfield called Springfield, ohio, where they have been largely welcomed in that town because they needed more people to boost the commerce in that town. It was a fading town.
Speaker 1:A lot of businesses boarded up and what the Haitian migrants did was rejuvenate some of the economic activity in that town under illegal status I don't want to say visa, I don't know the technicalities yet, but it was a legal process in the way that they came.
Speaker 1:So these weren't like undocumented or what some people like to call illegals, which we know is again a charged word, but people are saying it. These wouldn't fall into that category. These are people who were given a distinct protected status, legally protected status, to go to Springfield Ohio to reside there, boost the town, create businesses, be entrepreneurial, where of doing that by people who are severely misinformed. And so this song again, I get that it's funny, but it almost assumes it plays on that stereotype and for those people who actually believe it, they may think oh, this is a song that is actually a plea from people who are still deciding to consider pets as food to not do it. The song I was talking about was more making fun of the former president for even saying that it was just like he. You know, just using his terms, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. And then they played, you know.
Speaker 2:House Beat.
Speaker 1:In Springfield.
Speaker 2:They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats eat the cat, eat, eat the cat. Oh, we did it. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. Eat the cat, eat, eat the cat. They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. Eat the cat, eat, eat the cat. Is that the one? It's kind of a catchy beat if you think about it?
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:Seeing rants, so don't push me. Ain't Donald Trump? All right, you got the whole rap to go along with it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a whole rap. There's a rhythm and I think there might even be a. That's a hip hop song. I think the one I heard is in that spirit, though where it's just him. You know his quotation, but it's just, you know a nice rhythm, you know, yeah, that inspires trick, sikori dancing, right. So uh thank you for that. That doctor, that that phd level word. So yeah, uh we.
Speaker 1:So we have our fake news of the day and again, you know, it's really sad the speed at which misinformation and disinformation could be put out to a public that may not have the depth of understanding whether it is intentional or it's just because they don't have the skills in which to navigate these spaces that are meant to mislead people. So we have to be on a constant alert, Derek, and I know that that is important to you as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, certainly, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So with that we'll wrap up our 20th episode of the Capital Press Club Legacy podcast, and that's my man, derek Kennedy. Derek Kennedy, and we're out.