Show notes
SummaryIn the first episode of Misguided: The Podcast, host Matthew Facciani speaks with legal analyst and professor Barbara McQuade about the rise of misinformation and disinformation in the modern media landscape. They examine how technology accelerates the spread of false information, the erosion of public trust in institutions, and the role of transparency and community engagement in rebuilding that trust. McQuade highlights the need for both systemic reforms and individual action, emphasizing education and digital literacy as key tools for combating misinformation. The conversation ends on a hopeful note, recognizing the potential of younger generations to reshape the digital information space.Barbara McQuade’s new book: Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.Sisters In Law PodcastThe ContrarianBarbara McQuade on Threads and BlueskyKeywordsmisinformation, disinformation, media evolution, public trust, social media, community engagement, digital literacy, government transparency, combating misinformation, critical thinking, Barbara McQuadeChapters00:00 The Evolution of Media and Information03:46 Misinformation in the Digital Age05:57 Trust in Institutions and Public Confidence10:01 Restoring Trust: Transparency and Local Engagement12:39 The Role of Community and Local Media16:22 Systemic Solutions to Combat Misinformation19:22 Individual Actions Against Misinformation24:22 Hope for the Future: The Next GenerationTranscriptMatthew Facciani (00:19)Welcome everyone to Misguided the Podcast. I'm your host, Matthew Facciani.I'm a social scientist studying how social and psychological forces shape our understanding of the world. On this show, we explore the latest insights from social science to uncover why we believe what we do, how misinformation spreads, and how we can think more critically. I'll share my own research and engage in thought-provoking conversations with experts from diverse fields, scholars, journalists, technologists, and more to examine the ever-evolving information landscape.This podcast was inspired by my book, Misguided, where misinformation starts, how it spreads, and what to do about it, but it goes beyond those pages. Here, we dive deeper into the complex forces shaping our beliefs and decision making, exploring new ideas and perspectives in every episode.Matthew Facciani (01:10)If you're curious about the psychology of misinformation, the influence of social media,or how to navigate today's complex media environment, in the right place. Before we dive into today's conversation, let me introduce you to my guest, Barbara McQuade. She's a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, legal analyst, and former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. You may also recognize her as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, co-host of Sisters in Law podcast, and a contributor to the Contrarian Newsletter.She's the author of Attack From Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, a book that examines how the evolving media landscape and the rapid spread of misinformation are eroding public trust and institutions and what we can do about it. In today's episode, we'll discuss how misinformation and disinformation thrive in the modern media environment, the legal and societal consequences, and practical steps we could take to build a more informed society. I'm thrilled to have Barbara on the show, let's get into it.Matthew Facciani (02:14)before diving into the topic of misinformation and disinformation, I'd love to hear about your journey through the evolution of the information environment. So in your book, you mentioned interning with one of the very first online news companies back in the late 80s, which I found really fascinating. And then over the 90s and 2000s, you've done a lot of interviews on television and various media platforms. And now most recently, I know youhost your own podcast, Sisters in Law, and you've even joined this new subsack newsletter, The Contrarian. So I'd like to ask you from a big picture, how have you seen this media landscape evolve and what insights can you share about navigating these changes?Barb (02:58)Yeah, I think for me the evolution has been from maybe more care for accuracy and thoughtfulness into prioritizing urgency and speed. And that's something I first saw when I worked for this company. It was called Dow Jones News Retrieval. In the mid-80s, it was a summer internship. And at the time, you the idea that people would use their computers to receive news seemed kind of far-fetched. The goal was to...provide news, world news, political news, US news, all kinds of news, that people who were investors would find valuable. And so they would pay for that resource to get up to the minute most accurate, timely, urgent information that they could use to inform their investment decisions. it comes at the expense of taking the time to think through things, of writing a longer piece that could provide morecontent and nuance to things. And so, you know, that and then, you know, today's world of news received via the internet, I saw that evolution even as I worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office where we would get requests for comment on a story. And we might say, you know, when's your deadline? And they'd say, you know, 10 p.m. or something like that. And you'd have all day to kind of think through what are the stakes here? Who are the stakeholders? We have victims.Will a comment in any way harm them? Are there other ongoing aspects of this investigation that could be harmed if we speak? Are there fair trial rights of a defendant that could be affected if we were to comment on this thing? We need to talk to other stakeholders, other investigative agencies. And so, by the end of the day, we were either able to say, I'm sorry, we can't comment, or to provide something valuable to provide context and information for readers. Now...by the end of the time I served as U.S. attorney, you would get a message saying, would you like to comment our stories going live in 10 minutes? And you'd can't get you a comment that quickly. They say, all well, we'll get it in the next round. And so there's this urgency to get an answer. And then the first version of the story did not contain your response. And so that might fly around the internet without any response from you. So I saw this evolution. And I think my move to podcasting,and to the contrarian is an effort to get away from that fast and short is better model. I understand it has a place in society. People need to know breaking news when it happens, but just because something is new does not mean it is important. And so I hope that my work in my podcast, Sisters in Law and with the contrarian gives me space to spend a little more time on substance so that people can think aboutnews and not just react to it.Matthew Facciani (05:46)Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. that connects to my next question. So connecting this to misinformation. So how have those experiences in this evolving media landscape affected your thoughts on misinformation and then how misinformation can spread through these newer forms of media? And what can we do to kind of counteract that?Barb (06:04)So I think that speed and that expectation of instantaneous news fosters a home for disinformation and misinformation. And just to clarify how I use those two terms, I use disinformation to mean the deliberate use of lies to advance some sort of agenda and misinformation, sort of its unwitting cousin, know, somebody who reads something they believe to be false and then shares it online, further advancing that false claim, but they do so innocently without realizing.that the claim is false. But technology now allows people to send any content, unedited, unreviewed by any sort of gatekeeper, across the world to reach millions of people in an instant, and we can do so anonymously. And so that really opens the floodgates for disinformation. And as we've seen, there are people out there who will exploit that. The Russian Internet Research Agency in 2016, by creating false personas online ofpurportedly American users saying all kinds of things to sow discord and undermine public confidence in the elections and disparage candidates to just this election cycle when we saw a Russian group using artificial intelligence to create fake web pages that look like the Washington Post or Fox News and then fill those pages with false content that advanced Russian interests, know, undermining Ukraine in the war and sharing its views in the presidential race.So the technology, I think, is really facilitating and driving that urgency. But I think one of the collateral consequences is that it really is sort of a petri dish where disinformation can really grow and thrive.Matthew Facciani (07:47)Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The speed and the scale that miss and disinformation can be achieved today is really staggering.It can be really overwhelming when you look at the Internet and you see so much stuff, this information overload, and a lot of that connects to erosion and trust in what we see online and just erosion and trust in general. that connects to the next thing I wanted to ask you about, because in your book you highlight this connection between misinformation and the decline of public trust in various institutions. And I want to ask you first,what key factors or benchmarks should we consider when assessing the trustworthiness of legal and other institutions? What can the average person look for to see if these institutions are doing what they should be doing?Barb (08:31)Yeah, well, there are indices. Joyce Vance at the contrarian is putting together a democracy index to help measure in a quantifiable way some of the erosion of our democratic institutions. But there are survey groups that survey public trust in courts and in the executive branch, in the president and other things. And we have seen all of those measures dip to an all time low. And I believe that there are a number of things that may contribute to it.But disinformation has to be one of them because America is not alone. This is something that has been happening worldwide. And one of the goals of disinformers or people seeking to seize power is to confuse people and to undermine trust in the status quo. So, you know, right now there's all kinds of false claims out there about the Los Angeles wildfires. There are claims that this person or that person is a suspected arsonist. There are claims thatlook, here's a guy looting and in fact he's just removing property from his own home. Or there's even a conspiracy theory going around that it was the government that started the fires using lasers to start the fires. All kinds of things. And what's dangerous about that is it's not just sort of fun and games fantasy. It has real world consequences because first responders say it causes people to lose trust in government and lose trust in them.We saw this during hurricane recovery in the fall with Hurricane Helene. There were all kinds of false claims about FEMA that they'd used up all the money supporting undocumented immigrants or that they were turning people away and they were bulldozing homes if you filed a claim. All of those things caused people to refrain from seeking help when they really needed it or filing a claim or even harassing and threatening the workers who were there to provide relief. And so all of these things can havevery detrimental consequences to society. And I think that there can be measures of things. But the key indicators I think we should be looking for are government itself needs to be speaking. Government itself needs to be transparent so that we can understand what's happening. We need to see behind the curtain. Certainly there's some information that needs to be protected and classified. But I think the more government agencies can explain their work, the better off we'll be.I think that, for example, the work that the Department of Justice did to charge Donald Trump with both stealing government documents and interfering in the January 6 election is very laudable work. But if I am to fault them, I think it is their failure to communicate to the public all of the things that they were doing. I think if Jack Smith, perhaps, had spoken more about his work, sticking to the confines of his documents. He spoke just when he issued indictments and that was it and said, I'll speak through my documents.But it's very difficult to push back against a firehose of false claims when all you do is speak through your filings. And I think that in the future, government agencies need to do a better job of informing the public about what they're doing in an effort to fend off some of that loss of public confidence.Matthew Facciani (11:32)Yeah, absolutely. Transparency seems like a major factor that can improve across various institutions. Just people want to know what's happening behind those curtains. And I think there is some defensiveness because of the criticism they receive and disinformation campaigns. But ultimately, transparency, think, would help a lot. Are there any other factors that you think could help regain this trust that's been lost? Is there anything that...these institutions, legal institutions or government agencies, what else can they do to try and regain this trust that was lost?Barb (12:05)Yeah, I'm a little worried about the future of our federal government, frankly, in the next four years. When we have a president who has come in and propagated so many false claims about the very government he seeks to lead, I worry about how we're going to restore trust there. I suppose what they need to do is do the jobs the Constitution and the laws outline for them to do. Certainly there can be policy differences on all kinds of issues like...immigration and law enforcement priorities. But we see Pam Bondi, the attorney general nominee, saying things like, we need to investigate the investigators and prosecute the prosecutors, the bad ones. We need to stop the weaponization and politicization of the Department of Justice. Those things contribute, I think, to that loss of public confidence. And so I'm a little worried there, but I think our state governments can be a placewhere we can turn for service and for a restoration of public confidence in what's happening. State governments, I think, can do a number of things. Many of these rescue operations are being run out of state and county governments. I saw firefighters talking about what people should do. Those kinds of credible voices, and sometimes the more local the voice.the more credible because people will say, I know that person or that person wears the badge I see on the car that drives by my house. Those people, I think, can be good spokespeople. So getting out and communicating to people, I think, is very important and explaining what they're doing and what they want the public to do to protect public safety, I think, can be very helpful.Matthew Facciani (13:46)I've definitely heard several people talk about how all politics is national level, like so much of people and how they consume media looks at these national headlines, just focusing on the federal level or the presidency. Whereas they can have much more of a direct impact on their local communities, right? And actually see the policymakers in action and actually maybe even get to meet them at the local level. And hopefully, you know, having a community thatconnectswith these policymakers and government officials at a local level will help build trust kind of from a bottom up approach too, if we can have more of those community partnerships and collaboration. I guess that's…
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