Welcome to In Reality the podcast about truth disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Up to this point, Eric's assumption about artificial intelligence—and he's not alone in this—has been that it will only make the information environment worse. More chaotic, more polluted by mass produced slop that only reinforces our partisan belief bubbles. Add to that the scary possibility is that AI would become a superhuman tool of political manipulation, able to strike up one-on-one conversations with voters about whom the AI knows everything and win them over with subtle manipulation.

It so happens that three scientific papers have come out just last week that challenge this alarming scenario. All concluded that AI models in conversation are indeed much more persuasive than conventional methods used to sway voters—like, say, political ads. But they are most effective not because they are especially manipulative, but because they are better at marshalling facts to support their case.

Today’s guest is Kobi Hackenburg, an Oxford University PhD candidate who authored one of the papers and who has long studied the question of AI’s power to change minds. Among other things, Kobi and Eric will dig deeper into why factuality works so well in these experiments and other, more insidious techniques, like microtargeting, don’t. We’ll speculate about how AI might be used by political campaigns in the future, And whether we should be cheered ar that, at least in this experiment, people seemed surprisingly open to changing their minds when confronted with contrary facts.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
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Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, long-time business journalist and executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

What has it meant to be a professional news journalist during the past 10 years? In an era of gleeful hostility to the press, how do reporters cope? How do they avoid becoming the story? How do they handle unprecedented fear for their own safety, and the challenges of covering an administration that sometimes demands followers refuse to believe their own eyes?

Our guest today is Steve Peoples, senior political writer for the Associated Press and a 14-year veteran of presidential campaigns. Few reporters have a clearer view of how the relationship between presidents and the press has transformed in these hyper-partisan years.

We recorded this live at a session of my virtual University of Chicago course, Presidents vs. the Press.

Our focus in this class was on the coverage of President Biden, which we are still processing 10 months after he left office, in particular how the press missed the signs of his cognitive decline. Steve is candid about the cause of that failure and about the job ahead for journalists in the age of Biden’s successor, Donald Trump: We cover the dangers of groupthink in the newsroom, the pressure journalists face to skew coverage to maintain access, and why fact-checking in real time is now a core responsibility of the press.

We hope you enjoy the episode...

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Two weeks ago, as we recorded this episode, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting closed its doors. As you no doubt know, Congress this summer voted to claw back money it had already approved to support the Corporation’s work. That work included, among other things, the distribution of federal funding to local public broadcasters, so the voiding of Congress’ promise leaves local stations to fend for themselves. Today’s guest stands at the center of this wrenching transition for public media. She’s Jennifer Ferro, the president of KCRW—Los Angeles’s flagship NPR affiliate—and the chair of National Public Radio’s board of directors.

Jennifer and Eric talk about how KCRW is reinventing itself for a generation that doesn’t own a radio, about the threats to public journalism that go beyond funding—from TikTok to political polarization—and why she believes her real competition isn’t commercial news but the erosion of trust in professional journalism itself.

We also discuss the accusations of political bias at NPR, the lawsuit between NPR and CPB, and what’s at stake when Americans live in separate, sealed information bubbles...

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg—longtime journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

On this show we often describe the news and information system as an ecosystem, and it’s a good metaphor. The media landscape is complex, interconnected, dynamic—and, right now, deeply out of balance. The guest today, Courtney Radsch, has spent her career studying the system from many angles: as a journalist, a scholar, and now as director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute.

In ecological science, a keystone species is one on which other elements of the system depend. Courtney argues that in the information ecosystem, journalism is the keystone. Without trustworthy gatherers of news, the rest of the ecosystem—commentators, podcasters, social media influencers, informed citizens, ultimately democracy—can’t exist. Courtney and I will discuss why that is and why “information resilience” is the key measure of system health. We’ll also talk about where reform should begin—at the individual, institutional, or systemic level.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. The cliche about disinformation is you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. What that formulation ignores though is that the facts that we regard as true, the opinions we hold as core beliefs are built on top of the stories we tell ourselves.

Stories are the way we humans make sense of the world we observe and always have been. And every group is entitled to its own stories. Actually, groups are defined by their stories. My guest today, Brian Wienyski, has made it his life's work to understand the stories we tell ourselves. He's the executive director of Harmony Labs, a nonprofit that maps how stories and media influence the ways Americans see the world, whether those stories are told on TikTok or the BBC or streaming media or movies or whatever.

In this episode, Brian and Eric talk about what his findings reveal about polarization, about how entertainment and news feed on each other and what strategies might actually help bridge divides.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with host, Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

One of the hard things to face about the news ecosystem in this country at this time is that no one is coming to rescue us. There will be no Clean Air Act to take the fabrications and misconceptions and provocations out of our tragically polluted newsfeeds. If you want to consume news in a healthy way, not be misled, not trap yourself in a bubble, better understand the world at this moment, you have to take the initiative. On your own. It’s up to you.

This is not, god forbid, an exhortation to “do your own research’ on social media. That will drive you deep down some rabbit holes. But it’s an exhortation to think clearly, effectively, scientifically about what you read, or watch, or listen to.

Michael Starbird is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, who realized that the best way to teach students but how to think. His book The Five Elements of Effective Thinking, is about developing the habits of mind that make you much harder to mislead. And believe us, there are lots of people who want, for all kinds of reasons, to mislead you.

Michael and Eric talk about how to judge scientific claims when you’re not a scientist, as most of us aren’t; how to separate evidence from noise, and why being open to change is not only a personal virtue but a civic necessity.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the flood of claims, counterclaims, and outrage in your news feed, this episode will help you see a way forward.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Even in America, there is at least one sign that tribal loyalty doesn’t always dictate political outcomes. Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina—Republican majority states all—have elected Democratic governors. For a healthy democracy, Eric think that’s a good thing.

Which is why Eric finds today’s guest so interesting. Rob Sand is the state auditor in Iowa, the only Democrat to hold statewide elected office in that state. He’s now running for governor. That ambition in that state requires him to run what must be one of the most bi-partisan campaigns now underway in the country. We’ll hear today how he plans to persuade Republicans to cross party lines and vote for him. We’ll hear what personal qualities he thinks can bridge political divides and how, in his own life, he manages to avoid being trapped in the filter bubbles that make the American media ecosystem so toxic to civilc discourse.

Rob’s campaign is a long shot, to be sure. But it’s an experiment worth running. Imagine an election in which the deciding principle wasn’t let’s choose the lesser of two evils, but rather, may the best man win. What a concept...

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Any listener to In Reality is aware of the crisis in local news. It’s a five alarm fire. It’s the news desertification of rural America. And so, we can admire the problem forever.

But one of the goals of this program is to highlight the people who are attacking journalism’s problems of trust and sustainability. So let’s do that. Eric's guest is Erin Millar, the journalist-turned-entrepreneur behind Indiegraf, equipping news entrepreneurs with the tools and services that media businesses need to grow and thrive, but that most startup newsrooms haven’t the time, money or expertise to assemble on their own. If you think of Indiegraf as a media business in a box, you’re not too far off.

In the process of building Indiegraf and its clients, Erin has some definite ideas about how local newsrooms can build trust, how advertising is an important part of not just revenue but also trust, and why reports of the death of local news are not just exaggerated, they are missing the trend.

We think you’ll get a lot out of this. Maybe even hope. Now here’s Erin Millar.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com