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September 13, 2024 • 49 mins

On this episode of The Middle we're asking you about whether or not the media and social media companies have too much sway in this election. We're joined by journalist and author Michael Wolff and Katie Harbath, a tech policy expert. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #election #Trump #Harris #Meta #X #Election #influence #media

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
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Speaker 2 (00:10):
And news organizations.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
More information on how you can support the Middle at
listen toothmddle dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the Middle.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm Jeremy Hobson, along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver.
You know, there was a moment in the debate the
other day that sets up the show we were about
to do perfectly and involved Donald Trump repeating a story
about Haitian immigrants eating dogs that was spreading like crazy
on social media, even though there was no evidence that
it ever actually happened.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, and I don't want tomit. How many hours I
spent actually looking this up? It was more than one,
trust me, Elon got me again.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Man, he got you again. And you couldn't even find anything.
So social media, as you know, uses algorithms to determine
what we see.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
That story got picked up on mainly right wing TV
channels and websites, then it got repeated by the former
president in front of a huge debate audience, and then
it got real time fact checked by the ABC News
debate moderator David Muir. In other words, social media did
the spreading, traditional media did the fact checking. We're going
to talk about that as we ask our question this hour,
do media and social media companies have too much power

(01:18):
in our elections. We'll get to your calls at eight
four four four middle. That's eight four four four six
four three three five three in just a moment. But first,
we did do a special show after the debate the
other night and heard from so many of you about
your thoughts on the debate.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Here are some of the voicemails that came in.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
Hey, this is Kevin fra Michigan, as an independent voter.
I don't think Donald Trump did anything to bring anyone
else into his realm. He's just going to be his
base voting for him.

Speaker 5 (01:45):
This is a simple employer from Las Vegas, Nevada. I
was underwhelmed by former President Trump's extensive lies, and I
thought that Kamala Harris overcame those lives.

Speaker 6 (01:59):
This is Richard for Collins. I'm uh calling you said that.
I listened to the debate, and I think after hearing it,
neither one of these people were qualified to be president.
She remained unspecific about policies. He of course started a
little better, but eventually he became himself.

Speaker 7 (02:19):
Well.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thanks to everyone who called in.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
And you can hear that entire episode on our podcast
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, on the iHeart app or
wherever you listen to podcasts. It's already our most downloaded
podcast episode ever, so that people really wanted to hear
what everybody thought about the debate. So now to our
topic this hour, do media and social media companies have
too much power in this election?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Tal or? Can you give people the number?

Speaker 8 (02:40):
Please?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, it's eight four four four Middle.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
That's eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can write to us to listen to the
Middle dot com.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Let's meet our panel.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Journalist Michael Wolfe is known for his many books chronicling
the Trump administration, including Fire and Fury inside the Trump
White House.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
His latest is called The Fall, The End of Fox
News and the Murdoch Dynasty. Michael wolf Welcome to the Middle.

Speaker 9 (03:02):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
And Katie Harbeth is also with us.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
She is the CEO of Anchor Change and Chief Global
Affairs Officer at DUCO. That's a technology consulting firm. She
also spent a decade at Facebook working on elections.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Katie, great to have you with us as well.

Speaker 10 (03:17):
Thanks for having me well.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
And before we get.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
To the phones, Michael, just big picture from your perspective,
from a media perspective, who do you think in the media,
in the social media has the most power in the
twenty twenty four election.

Speaker 9 (03:32):
You know, I would still say that probably television does.
Cable television on the Fox and the on the on
the right, the other cable safe stations on the left,
and largely because they have a singular they have a

(03:55):
monolithic audience, whereas whereas social media has an you know,
has a hit and miss, vaguely uncontrolled, you don't really know,
you don't really know who it's reaching at any given
at any given time. So your your your pillar of
influence is still television.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And just to drill down on that a little bit,
the audiences when you look at the actual numbers of
these cable channels are not that high compared to some
other media that are out there, but maybe just very
influential or they they impact all the rest of the
media because of what because what they're what they do
is seen by everybody.

Speaker 9 (04:33):
Yeah, I'm I mean it's it's it's people who sit
in from I mean, the the the the message they receive.
Television is still the medium that is sending the most
coherent message. So therefore it's the it's you can you
can measure it better because you know what people are hearing.

(04:55):
You can probably analyze it better. The the through li
the thought line is clearer. But having said that, of
course you're right that these audiences are much much smaller
than they have been in the past. And so none
of this and I think you can sort of sort

(05:18):
of put a pillar in the sand right here, none
of this is as influential as network television used to
be twenty thirty forty years ago.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Katie.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
From a digital perspective, about half of Americans get at
least some news from social media that involves algorithms. As
we said, do we have any idea how much those
algorithms involve human beings affecting what we see versus just
maybe artificial intelligence determining what we might like to see.

Speaker 10 (05:49):
It's a little bit of everything, to be honest, And
I think too, just to bridge sort of what you
and Michael were talking about as Well, even what we
see on TV is being blurred because you a lot
of people watching streaming channels and connected TV on their
television sets over the internet, and they don't necessarily have
traditional cable and stuff like that, So that makes all
this a little bit more blurry. But in terms of

(06:11):
what you're seeing on any social media platform, there's a
combination of what you as the user, has chosen to
engage with, what you are choosing to follow, and then
the algorithms are also sort of responding to that and
showing you additional content that they think that you might
want to see, that you might be interested in, and
that you want to like, comment and share with and

(06:33):
so and those criteria are determined by humans at these
tech companies, and so it is a little bit of
a mixture of both in terms of what people's information
diet is when they're online.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Well, and a guy named Jonathan Nagler, who's the co
director of NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics, said
about Elon Musk, who owns X quote, he can change
the algorithm on a whim, and he is completely free
to tweak the algorithm so it waits up or suppresses
any content that he chooses. He can decide to suppress
anything that's critical of Trump. He can decide to suppress

(07:06):
any content that praises Harris.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Is that right? Is that really true?

Speaker 9 (07:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:11):
He can.

Speaker 10 (07:12):
I mean we saw that, you know, after the World
Cup he was upset by the fact that Joe Biden's
tweet was getting more engagement than his. And there's well
reported stories that he had product teams go in and
wanted to boost his engagement. And there was a day
there where you logged into X and all you saw
was elon musk posts. The challenges is that with both

(07:32):
X and all these platforms is we have less transparency
into how these algorithms are actually working. So we don't
quite know what levers he is pulling versus not, nor
do we on many of these other ones.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Let's go to the phones and Dwayne is in Covington, Louisiana. Dwayne,
Welcome to the middle.

Speaker 11 (07:52):
Go ahead, Hi, thank you. My comment is that both
of traditional media and social media have only the power
that we give them. The main thing is what people
do when they find this information, and like you said,
if they're repeated on social media, it spreads like wildfire.

(08:12):
Because social media's goal remains get eyeballs on the page.
So I think while they do have a power to
gate keep some information, ultimately it's up to us to
take the information we get and do the right things
with it.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Great point, Dwyane, Michael Wolf your thoughts about that that
social media and media companies only have the power that
we give them.

Speaker 9 (08:33):
I don't know what that means. That's a I'm going
to pass on that because it really means nothing whatsoever.

Speaker 10 (08:44):
I disagree. I think that actually, I think we have
a lot of agency in terms of determining what our
information diet is on any given day. There's so much
news out there, and we have the choices of what
sites we go and visit, whether those are social media ones,
news ones, what channels were turning on on the television,
and so I think that in a way we do

(09:05):
have agency in terms of which places we go and
what we're choosing to look at, and then also how
we choose to it.

Speaker 9 (09:13):
I'll push back on that, glad Gladly. Actually, the whole
course of of of of modern media, that is to say,
let's say the last twenty years or the last thirty years,
is about targeting. That's why that's how media companies exist.
That's how media companies make their money. Their their reason

(09:33):
for being is their ability to target you, to reach
to reach the people whose interests they are. They they're
creating programming for and and this has become a very
I mean, that is the media business.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
It is.

Speaker 9 (09:50):
It is a very clear discipline, a very clear business skill.
That's what the media is doing. So the idea that
the media is a is broad supplying information that people
can pick or choose, or supplying one funnel of information

(10:13):
and you can and and and out of that it
reaches a lot of different people. It's just not true anymore.
That's what the media does. The media, the media business
fails if it can't target you.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Katie Harbeth.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
A lot of journalists are I mean, Michael was talking
about how you know, these these cable news channels have
they do have a lot of influential viewers.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
But the social media.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
You can't walk into a newsroom right now and not
see X up on the on the screens of the journalists.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
People are.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
What happens on there and what people see is going
to affect a lot of the media that goes out.

Speaker 10 (10:53):
Yeah, but I think that that's where we need to
be careful about not just looking at what's happening with X,
because it's certainly not just in this election, but past
elections has very much been a place to influence journalists, elites,
academics and others. But traditionally, what we oftentimes saw is
that a majority of voters were in places like Facebook.
They're in places like YouTube. We now saw pewt Internet

(11:15):
said that for folks under thirty, fifty percent of them
are going to TikTok for news and political information. And
so I think that this is it's also very fragmented
by generational ways of getting information right.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
For instance, Taliver, who's just a couple of years younger
than me, uses TikTok, but I don't Taliver. By the way,
we've been talking about Elon Musk, he did endorse Trump
in the election, who has in turn announced that he
would give him a position in the administration if he wins.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Naturally, here's a clip of the two of them conversing
just shortly after the assassination attempt on Trump back in July.

Speaker 12 (11:51):
There's a lot of opposition to people just hearing what
President Trump has to say. Part of the reason why
I was excited to endorse you as the President United
States for having a term here is that that was
just incredibly inspiring.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
He was talking there, Tolliver, about the assassination attempt on
former President Trump. And we will be right back with
more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
If you're just tuning in the Middle as a national
call in show, we're focused on elevating voices from the
middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking you

(12:31):
do media and social media companies have too much sway
in this election? Tolliver, what is the number of people
to call in?

Speaker 3 (12:38):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. You can also
write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com
or on social media and TikTok orright, I just posted something,
go comment on it and.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Before we get back to the phones, Katie Harbeth. Some
of the most powerful people on social media are what
we call influencers, and according to the research, the more
outlandish things an influencer posts, the more interaction they get,
the more followers they get, the more influential they become,
which doesn't seem very good for society at all.

Speaker 10 (13:09):
No, and this has been the challenge that we've been
having with social media and algorithms and the tension around
both companies wanting to keep people on their platforms, people
wanting to have people that are engaging with them, and
they keep moving further and further to the extremes to
sort of have those sorts of incentives. And I think
that that's one thing that you see some platforms and

(13:30):
stuff trying to rethink about different ways of ways that
you could design this and stuff like that. But at
the moment, the business considerations still continue to outweigh those
around what you're seeing influencers and others kind of post
on social media.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Let's go to the phones and Doug, who is in Princeton, Minnesota. Doug,
welcome to the middle. What do you think.

Speaker 7 (13:49):
I don't pay attention to social media except what I
hear about it on the public radio. Public National Public
Radio and Minnesota Public Radio are my main sources of
national and quasi local information. As you all know. I'm
sure local newspapers are a dying business, which is too

(14:13):
bad and there's nowhere else to get local news from
what I hear, social media isn't worth listening to or
getting information from. It's totally off the wall. And that's
basically my thoughts.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Do you watch any TV, Doug, No, No, just getting
it from MPR.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Well, thank you for that, Thank you for that call.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
I have to imagine, Michael Wolf that there are a
lot of people like Doug who are are not looking
at social media at all and aren't influenced by it
at all, and are focused on traditional media. And he's
right that a lot of newspapers that have been extremely
important in our country for so long are dying.

Speaker 9 (15:00):
Well, I mean, that's absolutely true, and it is it
is interesting that that. I mean, you could the probably
the most important voting demographic are are older people, and
older people actually have have the least interest in social media.

(15:21):
So maybe this is a completely non issue.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
By the way, I think.

Speaker 10 (15:26):
I just want to add if I just had one
point when we shouldn't separate out traditional media and social
media from everything, because NPR many of these news outlets
also are on TikTok, they're on Twitter, they're on Facebook,
they are sharing news on those and we saw even
during the conventions, so sometimes get the most numbers of
people who are following them and getting news from.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Good point.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Let's go to Paul, who's in Augusta, Georgia. Paul, welcome
to the middle.

Speaker 8 (15:51):
Go ahead, Hi.

Speaker 13 (15:53):
I just noticed in my fifty one years old in
my lifetime that there's kind of been a a loss
of focus in the media, Like newscasters on television. There
was probably a little bit of an inflating bias just
in the industry. But in the nineteen eighties, I could
see the newscasters, while they might have a little beat
a sweat of Breagan was gonna win or something, they
would try to be unbiased. It was an ethic to

(16:15):
try to be unbiased. Then Fox News comes in in
the nineties and they get out of the market share
by targeting people that weren't that were more conservative, and
so the news that bit of extense to it. And
then you see MSNBC is really going har hardcore to
the left, and then you see a lot of the
network media kind of going to the left and just

(16:35):
having so much spin and just a very negative spin
on the candidate that they don't like. Just is very
obviously obvious and folding d our intelligence sometimes as viewers,
I think and so you know, I think that's something
when Trump says that he talks about fake news, and
you know, I think that's what resonates with people. There's
so much of a bias, there's a polarized media. Maybe

(16:57):
c spin or local news still have some lack of
bias to it. But it's very very obvious to me
as a viewer that Fox has a certain spin and
then other networks have a certain spin.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
Do you think that they have power with their spin
where that where they say we're we want we want
things to be this way, or they're only going to
focus on this side of the story.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Do you think that that has an effect on the
outcome of an election?

Speaker 13 (17:22):
Oh well, I mean I certainly can. And also the
algorithms from I mean, I think so many it could
be intentional, and I think it's it may be actually
a good thing that X and Twitter has a right
ring wing spin because now you've got a Fox News
type online social media to counterbalance the left wing spin from.

Speaker 7 (17:40):
The other media.

Speaker 13 (17:41):
I think mostly it's algorithms that but there's also I
mean that that could teach you what you want to
see but after the last election, I think there were
the media companies were putting the FuMB on the scale
if people were interested in knowing was their election interference.
I mean, it's a legitimate question whether it happen or not.
I mean that was censored. So was the COVID nineteen virus.

Speaker 14 (17:59):
Questions that Actually at a point I want to bring
up Paul with Michael wolf here, because if you listen
to people on the right, they would say the whole
mainstream media is in the tank for the Democrats, and
that social media companies were censoring things, uh, involving COVID,
involving maybe national security, that because the Biden administration told

(18:19):
them to What about that whole part of the story.

Speaker 9 (18:22):
Michael Wolfe, Well, you know, I think it may be
it may be much broader than that. In the crisis,
may be much deeper, because I don't just think it
is people on the right who have who are suspicious
of media. I think everyone is suspicious of media. The

(18:44):
the you know, people in the media. You know, I
think I think we rank up there with you know,
with lawyers, as as popularity someone yes, as as some
of the real dubious people in the nation. So which
which which kind of prompts another question that maybe the

(19:05):
media has less influence as it has as as it
has become much more suspect culturally suspect in American life.
I mean, and I'll go back to, you know, years ago,
when the media was absolutely you know, trusted, when ABC, NBC, CBS,

(19:28):
those newscasts spoke to people. That was the American consensus.
It came out of, it came out of network news.
There is obviously no consensus now, and and so that
that may be a result in fact, not of the
media's overweening influence, but of its loss of influence.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
And Katie Harbeth, the media also, as we've said, they're
on all of these social media apps and social media sites.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
The social media companies are almost.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
A gatekeeper to what can get out there and how
quickly the traditional media can can get out there. What
kind of an effect do you think that has on
the on the news that the traditional media companies are doing.

Speaker 8 (20:19):
Well.

Speaker 10 (20:19):
I think it impacts, you know, traditional media what they're
choosing to cover on social media, how they're choosing to
cover it, to try to play to how people are
wanting to get information in what they're what they're choosing
to consume.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, let's go to Christine, who's in Little Falls, Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Christine, what do you think?

Speaker 15 (20:39):
Well, Hi there, I don't know. I think this maybe
blends both your last episode in this episode. But I
just feel like there's been an absence of the voice
of like, what are our branches of government one oh one?
In coverage, whether that's traditional media or social media. I

(21:02):
feel like we've heard, certainly positions and platforms from the candidates,
but I think what's been absent is this discussion of
no one presidential candidate, if we function under the way
our government is set up to function, has the power
in and of themselves to enact everything they want on

(21:23):
their platform. This is a distributive leadership model, and we're
supposed to be working from a WEI versus an I perspective,
And I just feel like I'm certainly who has not
someone who has not had my tenth grade social studies
for many, many decades, I would benefit and I think
a lot of consumers of social media would benefit about

(21:45):
the way things really happen in government, Like I think
we hear a lot what we want things to happen,
and how a vision is important but I think what
is absence like the understanding of a leader really setting
a tone or a direction for a country and yet
not being able to implement absolutely everything with the stroke

(22:08):
of a pen, unless, of course, we want the band
in those traditional and way our government has been set up.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Nobody's doing US government one O, one on on on
social media. Thank you Christine for that call up. Let's
let's get to Brittany, who's in Colorado Springs.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Hi, Brittany, welcome to the middle.

Speaker 7 (22:26):
Go ahead.

Speaker 16 (22:27):
So my perspective on this, I'm a bit younger than
most of your other callers, and I also have a
YouTube channel where I cover true crime. Obviously having a
YouTube channel, I have on Instagram, I have a Facebook,
I have all the other platforms people can follow me, right,
and I don't think there's any way to get around

(22:49):
social media being a news source.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Now.

Speaker 16 (22:51):
People aren't quite frankly, not really reading the newspaper.

Speaker 11 (22:58):
They're not reading news articles. They would rather see what.

Speaker 16 (23:01):
Their favorite personality has to say about the articles and
what their.

Speaker 11 (23:05):
Opinion is of it.

Speaker 16 (23:08):
Ironically, most of my subscribers are women over the age
of sixty, which is a really niche population to get
into I'm not sure how that happened. A lot of
them are from Australia, which is super cool.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Do you ever talk about the election on your on
your YouTube channel, Brittany.

Speaker 5 (23:29):
I do not.

Speaker 11 (23:29):
I do watch people who do.

Speaker 16 (23:32):
I tend to focus more on local crime and local government.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah huh, well, thank you for that. Thank you for
that call, Brittany, Katie Harbeth. Yeah, your thoughts.

Speaker 10 (23:46):
I don't think it's just that people want to see
it from I think people want to see it from
first hand accounts. They want to see it from people,
not sort of like faceless brands. I think that they too,
Like I was just reading a new study out from
eber Shandwick about how people consume in for on TikTok
and like the way that you're seeing younger, younger consumers,
you know, not necessarily trusting right away what they see,

(24:07):
looking to the comments to see if people are saying
it's fake or not, kind of doing real time fact checking.
Like people are living now, They're like, misinformation is a
thing and they need to be more aware of it
and thinking about what that what that looks like. And
I agree with her. I think, like, listen, the social media,
this is out of the bag. The internet is used
for Internet for news is out of the bag, and
we got to figure out how to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Michael, Well, do you see any you've talked about in
your book is the fall of Fox News of the
Murdoch Empire? Do you see any parallels between Murdoch and
some of the titans of tech right now, Mark Zuckerberg
and Elon Musk and people like that.

Speaker 9 (24:45):
Not a not a single parallel, you know, Rupert Rupert
Murdoch is a classic newspaper man. That's that's what he
lives and soon will die for. And you know the
fact that he has expanded out into other media, and

(25:06):
matter of fact, he has made many many efforts into
into digital media, all of which have been colossal failures.
Was one of them, well, just to name just one
of them. But and and even even Fox News, which

(25:28):
is which is the thing that he'll probably be most
remembered for and is certainly the most transformative media platform
that he's ever been involved in. Really he was not
that involved in that was really created by by other people,
because Murdoch is actually not that interested in television. Murdoch,

(25:50):
for better or worse, is an old fashioned newspaper guy.
I suppose the last old fashioned newspaper guy.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Why you think yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
I got a quick question for you jumping here is there.
Do you think there's a way to improve media literacy
on these social media platforms. I know X does some
sort of fact checking that I sort of trust. But
like when I waved, I waded into this like Haitian
migrant dog story the other day, it was astounding to
me the people that were going, no, it's true.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
A lady on Facebook told me.

Speaker 9 (26:19):
Well, I can answer that. No, I don't think so.
I mean, I think the nature the nature of social
media and you know, and I don't think and we
probably should address this is that it is not a
top down function. It's a uh you know, it's a
it's a cacophony rather than than anything coherent. And yes,

(26:42):
there are algorithms, and yes there are there's some you
can you can you can discuss what is insidiously behind,
but that the truth is you're talking about a you know,
a largely uncontrolled medium, which is what is attractive to

(27:08):
people about it.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Let's go to Michael, who's in Dallas, Texas. Michael, welcome
to the middle what do you think.

Speaker 17 (27:13):
Well, my opinion is, uh, you know, in my early
days as a student, I are a journalism student. I
learned this saying that if it leads, it leads, and
I think that we have to always keep in mind that, uh,
the media and even social media really has a business
objective and you know, tantalizing and h up selling, and

(27:36):
I think that's important to keep in mind. And I
you know, I saw this picture of President Biden wearing
a Trump hat, and you know, some of the comments,
I apologize, uh made him out to look like a buffoon.
But you know, if you waited, social media would go
on and on, and it actually turned out to be
a really wholesome experience. You know, there's a video where

(27:59):
President Biden was exchanging hats with some right apparently Trump supporters,
and you know, I'm not sure that that is being
so widely.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, that's a great point, Michael.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
I saw that too, and I saw the headline and
then I actually watched the video and you're right, it's
it's kind of a sweet moment where he goes and
trades a hat with a with a a Trump supporter.
Thank you for that call. Let me go, Katie, Harbeth.
If it bleeds, it leads, and it gets back to
what we were talking about. This is the more outlandish
thing that somebody says on social media, the more clicks
they're probably going to get.

Speaker 10 (28:31):
Well, I think that that I too as a journalism major,
and very much learning the bleeds it leads. You're because
again media media is also a business, and they want
people's attention and what they're going to be, what they're
going to be clicking on. So this attention economy is
not something that would just started with the Internet. I
think what the challenge is is you just have a
lot more content now and you don't necessarily have the

(28:53):
context that would come with some of these stories that
you would get with the more traditional media. As you're
as you're kind of thinking about all of this, and
I think one of the great tensions in all of
this is the tension between giving people what they want
based upon their own experience and what they're doing versus
what we think they should know. And with the veggies,
if you will around all of that, which a lot

(29:15):
of people then will just log off that website or
turn off that channel and turn on something else.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Tolliver, We've talked about Meta a bit. That's the owner
of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which reached some three point
two billion users in total.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, and the owner is Mark Zuckerberg, who says he
wants to be less political this election season. Here he
is in an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this year.

Speaker 18 (29:37):
Personally, I'm also planning on not playing a significant role
in the election. Now, I've done some stuff personally in
the past. I'm not planning on doing that this time.
And that includes, you know, not endorsing either of the candidates. Now, look,
I mean there's obviously a lot of crazy stuff going
on in the world. I mean the historic events over
the last like over the weekend, and you know, and
seeing Donald Trump get get up after getting shot in

(29:59):
the face and pump his fist in the air with
the American flag is one of the most badass things
I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah, I feel like that counts as wading into the
election saying.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Now he said he wasn't going to wait in and
then he did. We will be right back with more
of the middle. This is the middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
This hour, we're asking you do media and social media
companies have too much sway in this election. You can
call us at eight four four four Middle that's eight
four four four six four three three five three, or
you can reach out at Listen to the Middle dot com.
I'm joined by tech policy expert Katie Harbeth and journalist
Michael Wolfe. And because I don't like to make promises
on the show that I can't keep, we're going to
talk about the thing I said we're going to talk
about at the beginning. I want to bring this up

(30:42):
because I think it demonstrates just how much influenced media
and social media can have in the election. It happened
to the presidential debate earlier this week, Former President Trump
repeated unsubstantiated claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are
eating the household pets of residents in the area. Moderator
David Muir pushed back on that claim. Listen to this exchange.

Speaker 19 (31:02):
They're eating the dogs the people that came in, they're
eating the cats, they're eating they're eating the pets of
the people that live there. And this is what's happening
in our country, and it's a shame.

Speaker 20 (31:16):
I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio,
and ABCDWS did reach out to the city manager there.
He told us there have been no credible reports of
specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by
individuals within the immigrant community.

Speaker 19 (31:30):
All I've seen people on tellivis, let me just say,
this is the people on television. My dog was taken
and used for food. So maybe he said that, and
maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

Speaker 20 (31:40):
I'm not taking this from people on television to.

Speaker 19 (31:42):
Say, man, dog was eaten by the people that went there.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Michael Wolf, what does that episode say to you in
the context of this discussion?

Speaker 9 (31:54):
You know, well, I'm wondering if that will be in
the end the historical memorable line from that that debate,
and does that does that.

Speaker 21 (32:08):
Go?

Speaker 9 (32:11):
Will that hurt Donald Trump or will that help Donald Trump?
The mere fact that this is the line that everyone remembers.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Katie Harbeth, what do you think.

Speaker 10 (32:25):
I think that. I don't know if I think we
will remember this like we remember binders full of women
from the Romney debates back in twenty twelve and stuff
like that. I think what's different in this case though,
is the how we've seen things that will start online.
You know, going all the way back to two thousand
and four with blogs and stuff, you saw how things

(32:47):
online could move throughout the media ecosystem. People of influence
pick it up and all that. But what we've seen
in the Trump age with twenty sixteen and continuing on
to today is how much faster those things are getting
picked up by influential voices and being respread. Elon Musk
did the did the same thing around there, which can

(33:07):
cause you start to have this blurring. Then it's not
just the algorithms that have power. Then these are people
that have large followings online and offline and people listen
to and have positions of power that can then make
people be like they're considered trustworthy. And so then that
can impact this probably a heck of a lot more

(33:27):
than algorithms can.

Speaker 9 (33:29):
What does that does that make people trust trust the
media less? So even that instance in the debate, so
we've now had that that was uh uh. You know,
the sixty seven million people who watched that that that debate,
a good number came away certainly I think, feeling Okay, yeah,

(33:54):
that's preposterous, And whoever would say that who could believe
that except Donald Trump? Therefore, let's extend that out. You
begin to question everything or many things that you hear
in the in the media. So again, I would come
back to that to the point that I have been

(34:15):
coming back to, which is which is that the that
the media is not what it once was and right
now it is actually in its own particular existential crisis.
Do people believe it? Do people actually actually have the
opposite opposite? When you hear something in the media where

(34:36):
you don't, that doesn't influence you, quite the opposite, You
distrust it.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Let's go to Larissa, who's in Aurora, Illinois. Larissa, welcome
to the middle. Go ahead.

Speaker 21 (34:47):
It was right along those lines where I was just
kind of horrified to find out that our politicians are,
you know, falling for these satire sites. I just do
people fact checked. Isn't that part of what the media
is supposed to do for us? You know, if it's raining,

(35:11):
the reporter isn't supposed to say, well, what do you
think is it raining? They're supposed to look out the
window and see if it's raining.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, good, good point, Larissa, Katie Harbath, you know you
spent time at Facebook dealing with elections.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Did you is there much of a fact check aspect
to the work there from the company's perspective, I mean yeah.

Speaker 10 (35:33):
After twenty sixteen, the company established partnerships with a whole
bunch of fact checkers, and in fact, you know, if
they mark something as false, it gets a label, it
gets the reach gets reduced, so you don't even really
see it that much on the platform. But there's actually
been some mixed research around these fact checks and labeling
things as false. Does it actually cause people to distrust
what they see online even more? And so there's a

(35:55):
lot more of psychological research that has to be done
because it's usually not as simple is just telling somebody
somethings false, because sometimes that actually makes them dig in
their heels even more.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Interesting, Right, that is very interesting.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Let's go to Tim in Dallas. Tim, Welcome to the
middle Go ahead.

Speaker 8 (36:12):
Hi, first, real quickly, I wanted to say, I'm originally
from Steubenville, Ohio, and we're a meat and potato state
and we will eat many things in the Buckeye State,
but we drove a line in household pets.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Okay, I got that out there.

Speaker 8 (36:28):
Yeah, as far as your subject goes. With all due respect,
I think the emphasis might be a little misplaced. I
work with I'm sixty one. I work with a lot
of people, really, all people who are from twenty to
their early thirties. I'm absolutely appalled that when I've asked

(36:48):
them who they're voting for, and it's my opinion, but
I'm appalled that they're mostly voting for Trump. And the
thing they have in common is that they're getting the
news from chick talk X places like that. I don't
try to convince the otherwise. But what I believe the
problem is is not so much a biased media tried
to hoodwink people. It's the fact that people who are younger,

(37:12):
and I'm talking about you know, younger than thirty five,
they have not been taught to think critically. Anybody with
two brain cells to rub together would look at the
so called story about the dogs in Ohio and they
would say, Okay, that's clearly not going to be true.
And all you have to do is look it up

(37:33):
online and you'll find out that it's been debunked. Younger
people just I hate to say they're great people, but
they just don't They just don't want to think about things.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Okay, I'm going to let you stop right there, Tim,
because you know that we have a lot of young
people that call in. I don't want you to walk
too far into the lions den on that. But let
me go to our guests and see what they think
about that.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Michael Wolfe.

Speaker 9 (37:58):
Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, I would I
would say, we're talking about the uh the the eating
dogs and eating household pets, not because of social media.
We're we're we're talking about it because of mainstream media,
because of the because because Trump talked about this in

(38:21):
front of sixty seven million people on ABC. So I
think it's important to to to parse that this was
a social media, social media thing of little consequence. It
became of consequence because of a television network.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, go ahead, Tlliver.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
I was just gonna say, our producer Harrison is twenty
eight never fact checked a thing in his life.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Ever. That's not true in fact all the time.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
But by the way, while you're while you're with us, Tolliver,
I know there's some comments coming in online.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, exactly, Margo and Wyoming says, one of the things
everyone has failed to bring up is that under Reagan,
the FCC took the fairness clause out of reporting. This
allowed media outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC to
report one side over the other. It also allowed commentators
such as Rush Limbaugh to thrive. I think it's really
hurt our country. Ralph and Hollis New Hampshire says it's

(39:19):
important to differentiate between reporting and providing commentary with a
biased perspective versus crossing the line to frequently reporting false facts.
Is right wing and certain social media more prone to
the latter. I'll bring that question to Katie since I
cut you off.

Speaker 10 (39:33):
Oh no, it's okay, I'm listen. I don't think one
side is more prone to certain things over the other.
I think that there you've actually seen some reporting. I
don't want to both sides it, but like I just
I think it's not necessarily ideological around this. I do
want to make a point though about I actually think
I trust younger people online more than I trust older

(39:54):
people if I'm one hundred percent honest. And the one
question I would actually have for those younger voters that
I'd be really curious about is if some of this
is rooted in the economy, because I think that how
somebody who's in their sixties is and where they've been
and economically where they might be, versus where somebody in
their twenties is and what they're facing themselves around home

(40:15):
ownership and things of that nature. That would just be
one I'd be curious to dig into the issues versus
it just being them blindly following whatever they see in
social media.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Let's go to Will, who's in Little Rock, Arkansas. Will.
Welcome to the middle.

Speaker 22 (40:28):
What do you think, Hey, thanks for having me. So
I used various social media and what I see more
is siloing off of certain groups on the Internet. So
you see on Twitter, I think it breaks to the right.
Of course, people are being bombarded with so much information
that they're unable to tell fact from fiction. So to

(40:50):
the extent that factchecking even works, I think in the
legacy media and in social media, I think it just
doesn't work like it used to, and so you can
try and correct, but I'm not sure that you can
correct past a certain point of misinformation.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
So siloing off of people into different parts of social media.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Do you spend much time on social media? Will?

Speaker 8 (41:19):
I mean sure?

Speaker 22 (41:19):
I think I still use x formerly known as Twitter,
because at one point, it was a truly great place
to get live news from around the world, and I
still use Facebook, and it's a shame that neither of
those places are really great places to meet online communities anymore.
There's this idea of the death of the Internet, and

(41:40):
I think you kind of see it. Everything's kind of
being consolidated into these ever increasingly more hostile in groups
on the Internet, and it makes it difficult to truly
connect with other people.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Will thank you for that, Michael Wolf.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Do you see a difference between the sort of siloing
of people on social media and the siloing of people
and in traditional media and cable news and the newspapers
that people read in the in in just where people
decide to get their news. Are we ever going to
have a situation where we have something that's trusted across
the political spectrum that has a huge audience like we

(42:18):
used to.

Speaker 9 (42:18):
Are we ever going back to the network news? No,
we are never going back to the network news.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Isn't that a big problem for the country.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
I mean, not that not the network news in particular,
but just that we don't have the same trust of
the same source of news.

Speaker 9 (42:36):
Well, No, I don't know if it's yeah problem. I mean,
it's a it's a difference. Things change, it's it's uh,
the media has transformed, it has always been in a
state of transformation. And and now I mean, you know,
the the circu and now actually you can go on

(42:59):
on I think and say the the social media and
the Internet is in a state of transformation. Uh. You know,
Google has just been slapped with a with a with
a with a mighty anti trust judgment. That will that
will transform the company and therefore transform the Internet. So

(43:22):
I mean, this is a you know, technology, and that's
that's what media is. Doesn't stand still. And this this
conversation probably won't be that relevant a year, two years,
five years from.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Now, because we won't be getting our news or using
the same sites as we do because because.

Speaker 9 (43:47):
The nature the nature of the of the of the medium,
the nature of the technology will have will have changed.
The problems may well be worse then, or we may
we may characterize them as worse, but they won't be
the same problems as we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Okay, right, let's squeeze one more call in. Daniel is
in Aurora, Colorado. Daniel, Welcome to the middle.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Tell us what you think.

Speaker 23 (44:13):
Hi, So I'm nineteen years old. You know, I've been
using social media for news information my whole life, and
I feel like that social media is more of a
tool for voters to inform themselves about elections rather than
corporations to sway elections, you know, because each post that
put that's put out on social media has an equal

(44:34):
chance of reaching a user, and it's up to that
user to fact check it and use that information as
they choose.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Great, Daniel, thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
And I also appreciate you calling in because you're nineteen
and I said we had younger.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Callers, and there you are. Katie Harbeth. What about Daniel's
point there.

Speaker 10 (44:52):
I think that's partially true. I don't think it's easy
for just anybody to start an account and post something
and have it and have it go viral. But one
of the things, you know, I always kind of cringe
a little bit when we talk about people think that
there was this great golden age when it was just
the three networks, like this is all a conversation about
power and accountability, and that in those days, it was

(45:13):
three networks that really had the power over what we
all saw. Now that's been a lot more fragmented, and
we don't like the tech companies having that type of power.
We don't like the governments having that type of power.
So one hundred percent agree with Michael. I don't think
it's just the media environment going through a great transformation.
I think it's sort of our entire societal ecosystem and
our information environment and how we think about the right

(45:35):
checks and balances and holding one another accountable while also
having our own individual agency of needing to double check
what we see and read online.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Well, and Katie Harbeth, do you expect any checks and
balances when it comes to government regulation of these social
media companies or are they just going to sit back
and wait for the next ones to come along.

Speaker 10 (45:55):
At the federal level in time for this election. No,
we've seen a lot of laws at the state line. Well,
there's a lot of regulation that's happening overseas. But I
think the thing that we need to think about into
Michael's point about how things are going to be different
five years from now, AI is going to fundamentally change
how we consume news and information over the next five years.
That is going to be a place you will see regulation,

(46:16):
But regulation always trails where the technology is going, and
I think that's going to be something that we need
to pay attention to. My mantra for this time period
is to panic responsibly, Like let's be aware of the
negative things that might come from all of this, but like,
let's also make sure we can separate out the signal
from the noise of the impact it's actually happening.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Yeah, Okay, I'm gonna before we wrap this hour, I'm
going to take a hard turn Michael Wolf while we
have you and ask you something that is not necessarily
exactly about this, which is, you have obviously spent so
much time following the Trump White House, you wrote the
bombshell book Fire and Fury in twenty eighteen, as you
watch this campaign in its last two months, do you

(46:55):
think that Trump and his team expect right now to
win this race.

Speaker 9 (47:01):
Well, I should give myself a little promo and say
that's a question. That's that that we address constantly on
on the podcast Fire and Fury podcast available on iHeart Please,
we'd we'd love to have you, have you listen in.

(47:22):
But I absolutely think Donald Trump believes that he is
absolutely going to win, and he may.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Be right, uh there. Well, we'll leave it there.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
I want to thank my guests, journalist Michael Wolfe, who's
obviously got the Fire and Fury podcast, has also got
his latest book called The Fall, The End of Fox
News and the Murdoch Dynasty, and Katie Harbath's CEO and
founder of the tech policy.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Firm Anchor Change.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Thanks to both of you for joining us, and next
week we're going to be looking at a topic that
offers a big contracts between Harris and Trump. That is
NATO and its value and importance to the United States.
Will be joined by longtime CNN Moscow correspondent Jill and
former US Ambassador to the.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Czech Republic John Shaddock. So be sure to tune in
for that.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
And be sure to call in at eight four four
four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three
three five three, or you can reach out at Listen
to the Middle dot com, where you can also sign
up for our free weekly newsletter.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Middle is brought to you by LONGNOK Media, distributed by
Illinois Public Media and Urbana Illinois and produced by Harrison Patino,
Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes, and John barth. Our intern
is Anka Deshler Our technical director is Jason Croft. Thanks
to our podcast audience and the more than four hundred
and ten public radio stations making it possible for people
across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm Jeremy

(48:36):
Hobson and I will talk to you next week
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