Fake News Travels Fast

It Really Works

Fake News (false news) moves faster and deeper than the real stuff. The reason is economic. According to a study done last spring, social media rewards views. More eyeballs see the false stuff. The motivation is profit. The effect can be devastating.

Marketplace reporter Molly Wood interviews Sinan Aral of the Harvard Business Review. 

Sinan Aral: There's a story from Barack Obama's presidency where a false tweet that indicated that he was injured in an explosion wiped out a $130 billion of equity value in a single day. These types of stories can have consequential impacts on our democracy, on businesses, on our national security. And so it's a problem we really need to concentrate on.

According to the study that came out of MIT, Twitter leads among all platforms for spreading false news. Is it a coincidence that the president prefers that platform above all others?

Even more disturbing, "A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find, "A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best."

Journalists, people who check sources, must be free to counter the tsunami of misinformation posing as news in our news feeds. They cannot face it alone. We need to be more informed as consumers about false narratives. Those narratives need to called out.  Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google will need to do more to stem the tide of misinformation. If they are unwilling to do that, consumers can boycott and regulators must regulate.

Public Radio Dreams

Unsettling Dreams

I've had a series of unsettling and recurring dreams about my radio experience. 

The first one was based on true events. They were in commercial radio. The dream would revolve around not being prepared for the next event. In most cases the first stop set and beyond. What would happen in my dream was at the end of a music set or news segment. Nothing was prepared to go beyond that point. No music was pulled. No stories were set up to run. None of the spots for the stop set were pulled. This actually happened at two of the stations I work for. On my first shift, I was shown the board, the log and left to my own devices. The first break was a nightmare. The result was a really unsettled air shift for at least the first hour as I struggled to get ahead of the breaks.

The solution, I learned, was having the previous shift pull at least an hour's worth of material for the next shift. In some cases more than that. A great idea! I implemented the policy as soon as I moved up the management ladder.  I also required talent to show up an hour before their shift. That policy generated a lot of resistance. There are many who don't want to put in the effort. I still dream about getting in front of the control board and nothing is ready to go.

Nobody's Calling

Dream number two deals with on-air fundraising. In that dream I've spent weeks preparing for the fundraiser, setting strategy, tactics, goals, produced content (on-air and off-air) and lined up talent. The drive begins and nobody calls. Again, the dream is based on experience. In those early days of fundraising the audience was fractured and disloyal. Because of that, there weren't many listeners who qualified as core listeners. as a result, the on-air requests for funding would become more desperate as it became clear the goals were not going to be met. Reasoning and rationality outside the dream state revealed two problems. The programming created barriers to listening and so did the fundraising. I knew this, but that didn't stop the dream from recurring. I stopped dreaming about this after I stopped participating in pledge drives.

It's Baaaack?  

Recently I've had this dream where audiences are falling away. Public radio is losing its audience. Stations are going dark. Millennials and Boomers are listening less and as a result are less willing to support the programming. The core is getting their information fix from other sources, and they expect it to be free. Social Media is fracturing the audience. Creative people become discouraged and move on. The content, for the most part, is still great, but nobody is listening. 

Good thing this is only a dream. Like in the first two dreams, this is still a fixable situation. Like before, collaborations, partnerships, and creative solutions will allow public radio and media to continue to serve its audience and the community.

Growth Starts With Taking Risks

It all starts with knowing your audience.

Enlightening Information  

Understanding the audience is a quest for me. It began when I began in public media. 

The quest began with failed fundraisers. I was thrown into the fire of fundraising early. It seems like days after I began as a volunteer. Actually, it was probably a few months. The question was, why aren't the phones ringing? 

The quest was to better understand our audience, and through that understanding, gaining information on how to grow that audience. A larger audience might mean a growing relevance in our community and the ability to get listeners to invest in the programming. Some research was available within the public radio community. It was the early days of researching the audience. We found the audience to be incredibly small and fragmented. I questioned, "How can we consider ourselves to be a community service if nobody is listening? Are we a service if nobody is being served? 

A Heretic?

I was deemed a heretic, impure, a philistine, an outlier. At one station there was even a palace revolt. Still, many of us were thirsting for more knowledge. We wanted to understand more. It was going to take a change in mindset to putting the audience first. 

There were many more inside and outside the system who resisted any sort of understanding of the audience. The reasons varied. Most of them boiled down to a resistance to change.

The really cool parts of the research were the possibilities the information presented and that those changes might result in actually serving the audience. We were empowering change by increasing our understanding assessing the risk. Nothing was ever a slam dunk, but we were motivated by the information we garnered to move ahead anyway.

Real Growth (It's All About Audience)

Real growth comes from innovation. The research informed our decisions, but did not hold us back from trying new things and forming new partnerships with our community. The stations that provide the space for innovation continue to grow because of their continued creativity. Community service grew because of the focus on audience service. The stations I worked for that allowed creativity continued to grow long after I left. The innovation created by the talented staff shows everyday on the air. Today they are giving themselves a running chance for continued relevance in the changing media environment because they are willing to learn and to take risks.

The Point

The motivation for this blog came from two articles I read yesterday. The first from John Barth in Transom, "Ten Signs of a Daring Public Radio Station."  Take time to read it. It's a checklist of the things a public media outlet should be doing to keep relevance as its audience evolves. The second came from an article published by CNBC, "These are the top 10 most relevant brands to millennials."  I'm still in search of nuggets of information.

Surprised?

Two findings stand out in the Relevant Brands article that changed my thinking about millennials. Social Media is not included in the top of the list. They are in the top 100, but not the top ten. The most surprising was that Kitchen Aid is at number three ahead of Apple, Google and Samsung.  Kitchen Aid has remained relevant by innovating new products while still maintaining dependability and quality. They are connecting with millennials with their innovative use of Social Media. Kitchen Aid continues to connect with posted content on innovations, new products and creative ways to use their products.

Dare to be bold. Hire good people. Inform your staff while offering room to try things. The best thing I did was having really talented people around me while fostering their creativity.

BTW - We have two Kitchen Aid mixer. Does that make us hip?

They're Still Listening...You're appealing to their values!

Knowing Your Audience

PRPD rolled out the Core Values of Public Radio between 2002 and 2005. I thought it was a big deal then, not because I was on the PRPD board for a couple of years, but because the research was able to define why listeners chose to listen and support public radio. 

According to the latest research shared by Jacobs Media in their 2018 Tech Survey at the PRPD conference, Core Values continues to be the top reasons for listening. I'm assuming this is across all platforms.

Core Values are the top six main reasons for listening.

  More credible and objective programming  78%
  To be informed about the news  72%
  Enjoy learning new things  71%
  Deeper news perspective  70%
  Respects my intelligence  68%
  Balanced perspective  65%

Favorite Program made the top ten. So did presentation style.

Some long held beliefs about radio programming, that listeners tune in because its a habit and because it offers companionship and because it's free, are pretty far down this list. 

For wonky research driven, audience first types like me, Core Values crystallized the reasons for the high loyalty of public radio's listeners. It's good news that those values still hold true. 

The results of the Tech Survey confirms that Public Radio continues to serve it's audience.

Always Expect a Cow

Avoiding Surprises Behind the Wheel

I spend a lot of time these days talking about speed and inattention. Last year the United States led the world in distracted driving accidents. 1.6 million were due to use of  mobile devices. With so many other dangers on the rode, taking your eyes off the road for three seconds is foolishness.

When I was a reporter in Wisconsin, I used to travel to all the small towns around WNRR. Working there was my first experience as a journalist. I would gather police reports and write stories for the morning drive program. One story really stood out.

A driver in Little Chute was traveling at a high rate of speed up and over a hill at night. Just the other side of the hill were four cows. There was no way the driver was going to be able to stop in time. The police estimated he was traveling at over 70 miles and hour. The report focused on the death of the four cows. I had to ask about the driver. "Oh yeah, he died too."

In a way, it's like taking your eyes off the road. The driver that hit the cows couldn't possibly see what was on the other side. If he were driving slower (the speed limit was 50) he might have been able to avoid the cows. It might have been a near miss.

The video below demonstrates what happens when there's a combination of inattention and speed.




Slowing down five or ten miles an hour as you approach an intersection or come over the crest of a hill can make all the difference, that is, if you are paying attention.

Legislating Facts

Newspeak is Here

A free and open press helps protect us in a democracy and prevents the takeover of our government by a totalitarian regime. If Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani have their way, the free press won't be a problem. They're doing their best right now to undermine a free and unfettered press. Giuliani comments, "They will have their facts and we'll have ours" and "Truth isn't Truth," only scratch the surface of what the neo-conservatives have been saying for over a decade. These same arguments have been part of the political scene for a while. Newt Gingrich and Kellyanne Conway talk freely about alternative facts. They want to cast seeds of doubt. No matter the legal outcome, they want to cast its legitimacy in doubt.

Once the press is marginalized, they will be free to legislate the facts.

Nations Built on Lies

Earlier this year Poland made it illegal to speak about their collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War Two. The new law imposes a prison term of up to three years for anyone who asserts that the anyone from the Polish Republic is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes.”  According to Robert Kinzer who wrote this piece published in the Boston Globe, "The purpose of this new law is entirely political. It wins cheers from chauvinistic nationalists, of whom there are evidently many in Poland. That provides votes to politicians who rail against the world and picture their nation as an innocent victim of history." Since Kinzer wrote the article, it looks as if the law will be watered down or reversed after international condemnation.

Not the First Time

Kinzer points out in his article that this is not the first time a country has tried this and it is easy to imagine what it would be like if other countries tried to change history by simply lying. His list includes:  

Austria: It is illegal to say that Hitler was born here, that most Austrians were thrilled when he absorbed Austria into the Third Reich, and that he was welcomed with delirious enthusiasm when he visited in 1938.

France: It is illegal to say that our troops supported Rwandans who carried out the 1994 genocide, and then, after their defeat, moved them into the Congo, where they have been rampaging ever since.

Great Britain: It is illegal to say that British imperialism was one of history’s most monstrous projects, brutally looting nations and sparking much of the chaos and hatred that now shakes the world.

Israel: It is illegal to say that our country sits on land that once belonged to Arabs, or that we chased them away in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to make room for victims of a crime that Arabs did not commit.

Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, and Ukraine: It is illegal to say that our citizens joined Nazi death squads and concentration camp detachments in extraordinary numbers.

.United States: It is illegal to say that our country was built on the bones of slaughtered Indians and enslaved Africans.

Rewriting History - Altering the Facts 

Altering the facts can happen subtly. Civil War history was rewritten with the help of a wave of nostalgia created by Hollywood through "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind."

It can also be very unsubtle. The BBC recently published a report on the most dangerous places to be a journalist. These are places that do not allow a free press. The government wants to have total control over the flow of information. At his rallies Trump places the journalists in a pen in the middle of the crowd. He then singles out journalist in the pen encouraging violence against them. It is clearly an attempt to intimidate the press while inciting his base.

Most Dangerous Places for Journalists

North Korea is not on the list because they have complete control over the flow of information. It is interesting that Russia and the Philippines are in the top five. Two countries led by people Trump admires.  Murder isn't the only way silence journalists. Putting them in jail is another. According to the BBC 272 were put in jail in 2017. The BBC says, Countries with the highest numbers of journalists imprisoned for doing their jobs are: Turkey with 73 journalists, China with 41 and Egypt with 20.

Given the president,s propensity to lie, it does not seem far fetched that he is altering  the facts to suit his purposes. In fact, that is what he is doing now, and the pace of lies is increasing. The New Yorker reports, "In his first year as President, Trump made 2,140 false claims. According to the Washington Post, in just the last six months, he has nearly doubled that total to 4,229. In June and July, he averaged sixteen false claims a day. On July 5th, the Post found what appears to be Trump’s most untruthful day yet: seventy-six per cent of the ninety-eight factual assertions he made in a campaign-style rally in Great Falls, Montana, were “false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.” 

The founders of this country thought a free and unfettered press so important that they put it in the Constitution ahead of the right to bear arms.  They understood that information could provide a check and balance against the excesses of the powerful.  Think of it this way, There are facts and there are opinions. They are not the same thing. When people say they have differing facts, they actually mean they have a different opinion based on their perspective. It is not the same thing.

Public Media v Social Media: Advantage Social Media

It's Addictive

Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users

How do you compete against something that is deliberately addictive? Does Public Media stand a chance when the deck is stacked?

In programming sessions we used to talk about how we had just seconds to draw in the listener before they would tune away. Once the audience is drawn into Social Media, they may never come back. A recent Pew study found that 45% of teens admit to face time with their screens all the time.

Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018

As an instructor I talk with teens about their media use. Most of them never listen to the radio. As Social Media addicts looking for the instant gratification of the like button, they haven't got time, and Public Radio isn't nearly as exciting.

Among adults, 59% say it would not be hard to give up Social Media, but that comment seems to be contradicted by the study published by the BBC. Indeed, among adults who grew up with Social Media, Millennials 18 to 24, 51% admit that it would be hard to give up social media.

Social Media companies are using color, sounds and unexpected rewards to drive compulsive behavior. A Social Media developer quoted in the article said quitting is a lot like trying to quit cigarettes, he went through withdrawal. I don't think anybody has said that about Public Media. Of course, we often talk about the news junkie during fundraisers. What happens if Social Media has a stronger allure?

Endless Scroll

Why is this so different? Listeners used to tune out all the time. If they were loyal to Public Media, they would always come back. One of the advantages of the of the newer technologies is the endless scroll. Users can thumb through an endless scroll of content. Public Media is just one of an almost endless stream of content. That's a shift from when we were a high quality choice among a few options. The competition is fierce, and the likelihood that we may never be seen or heard is increasing.