Censorship Through Noise

McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss his piece ...

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McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss his piece on disinformation in the 2020 campaign, Trump, Twitter, and the social media wars, and his advice for young reporters.


Show Notes:

–McKay’s piece The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President

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  1. Bryan D

    I was pleasantly surprised to learn about this interview yesterday. I had read both Coppins' piece on the Trump disinformation machine and the piece about The Dispatch. In fact, as a loyal Atlantic reader for several years now, the piece about the origins of The Dispatch was how I initially found out about this start-up facts-based conservative media outlet that has quickly become my favorite place for news and political analysis.

    Thank you and keep up the good work!

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    1. Bryan D

      To follow up on my praise...in recent years I'd been struggling to find quality news and political reporting from the center-right view. I'd been reading a lot of quality center-left content from the likes of The Atlantic but had been itching to balance that out. So much of the affordable (or even free) conservative news is shallow, partisan drivel at best and I wasn't having much success. Your work has been serious and thoughtful and lacks partisan indignation that turns me off from so much of the 'news' out there. Thank you again!

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  2. Randy Scott

    Any chance of a veepstakes update next pod? Do the recent racial tensions + Biden's "you ain't black" gaffe = pressure to nominate a black woman? Is Keisha Bottoms' star rising on her handling of things in Atlanta? David, did her press conference ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO7z6m2os2g ) strike you as the right balance of all-caps STOP POLICE BRUTALITY and all-caps STOP THE RIOTING? So many questions ...

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    Kevin Johnson

    This was really great and illuminating. It illustrates another problem with the press, though, narratives as news. At the top the guest mentioned Ferguson riots comparing them to current ones. He didn’t note that the Ferguson riots started after a vicious lie stating that Brown was executed in cold blood. Recently a WSJ report noted that white police killed “an unarmed black teen” leading to those riots. The NYT often refers to the late Michael Brown with these words as well. When reporters include Brown in the “racist police killing innocent blacks” narrative, that is disinformation (perhaps unintentional.). “Hands up, don’t shoot” was a lie in the case of Michael Brown, but that major fact (confirmed by a black AG working for a black President) has been “memory -holed” in order to promote the favored narrative. CNN commentators held their hands up live on tv promoting this lie. It’s true that the Ferguson police were found to have many bad policies, but the shooting of Michael Brown was found to be justified as self-defense. If journalists continue to let such lies stand, even if not literally repeating the words, those of us who remember won’t believe them in the future.

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  4. David Ehrlich

    At time marker 16:30 it was an interesting point to start talking about the digital propaganda warfare that Russia used last election, deep-fakes, implanted surrogates in the riots and the ability of shrewd operatives to guide the American voter with wild claims.

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    1. David Ehrlich

      Sorry, 40:30 which is -16.30 (time left)

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    JDW

    I'm putting this comment here not because of this podcast. Just a suggestion. Sarah has a lot of say and should be duking it out with David and Jonah. By being the moderator, she is over restrained. I'd pick Steve who seems the calm cool collected managerial type. I respect when he chimes in no doubt. I think though Sarah would be even more dynamic if she were not the moderator.

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    Ray Salemi

    While discussing The Dispatch business model, I thought I'd share a personal insight as a subscriber.

    I don't know what this means to The Dispatch team, but I don't feel that the site is really all that conservative. It espouses the sort of common-sense worldview I've had all my life and had despaired of finding reflected in the media.

    Make of it what you will from a market perspective, but I thought you'd like a data point.

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  7. Teddy41

    I enjoyed the McKay Coopins interview and found it informative. The only way to be informed is to be well read and familiar with the source documents of American government and to have the historical knowledge to put current events in context. Without the intellectual spade work needed to build an emprical framework to understand ongoing debates there is no way to seperate the "signals" from the "noise." This is, of course, a challenge for the average citizens with everything that competes for our attention constantly swirling around us Regardless, there simply is no short cut to wisdom.
    One minor quibble with the interview: I think someone who writes an article about misinformation in a magazine that published an article on Georgia's experiment in human sacrifice should be pressed, or at least asked, about the traditional media's responsibility for creating an environment where disingenuous reporting thrives across the political spectrum. I understand the goal is illumination rather than confrontion, but I think it's a valid question that can be asked without aggression. And the writers at The Dispatch are well positioned to ask those questions given that, in their case, they have been critical of Trump and his media enablers so would not be engaging in "whataboutism" just to defend Trump.

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    Ray Salemi

    I think my advice to a young person of any profession but especially reporters would be to not put much stock into Twitter. Blizzards in a snow globe are not news.

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      Jake

      Blizzards in a Snow Globe would be a great band name.

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    Bob Miller

    Nothing is written

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      Pastorfbt

      If that's a shout-out to Lawrence of Arabia good on you 👍

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  10. Melissa

    I think the beef I have with the rampant misinformation that grows and is specifically planted by the President on social media platform is that I, as a completely regular, common, plebeian American citizen with no interest in conspiracy theories and no enthusiasm for violence, am regularly bombarded with conspiracy theories and violent speech that originates on these platforms. I can't search for a news item on Google or read the news on NYT. I opened Spotify to search for a podcast that I remembered had "first" in the title. They suggested I might like. . . Nick Fuentes' podcast. I search for "Minnesota" in my Google news feed. On the top headline I see Jacob Posobiec's tweet of something I didn't need to hear. I open up the NYT live coverage feed to find out what is happening in Minnesota and it's tweet.... after tweet.... after painful tweet. I look in the news headlines about how the US is doing with the coronavirus and I learn about what the president tweeted about Joe Scarborough. I can't read the news without this pile of filth that originates and is propagated by social media. I don't deserve this and the rest of America doesn't either. I won't mince words when I say that I've been stricken by grief as I have watched the events of the week unfold and I have been over the past months as I have watched from abroad what has been happening to my country. The rampant deceit propagated on social media adds insult to injury, day after day after day.

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      Jake

      So true. I’m one of the people with a “regular” job they mentioned in the podcast. I want to be informed. I want to understand the truth. I want to learn how effective politics works. But I don’t have the time to find the good articles; the well-written and well-researched articles; the articles not written merely for ad clicks. So I retreat to sticking my head in the sand and disengaging. Maybe that’s what a large part of what The Machine wants to happen.

      I am extremely grateful for my friend turning me onto The Dispatch at the beginning of this pandemic. It’s exactly what someone like me needs. I don’t agree with everything they do (like continuing to provide ink for Twitter), but that’s a relatively small complaint.

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        Ray Salemi

        I think the mistake people make is to look for perfect information. If one picks one or two reliable sources, maybe one with a left slant and one with a right (say the dispatch.com and Axios.com) then one has all one really needs over breakfast.

        Truth of the matter is the 24-hour news media crams 15 minutes of information into 24 hours. There's little more information than what one gets over morning coffee.

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          Jake

          Agreed on that. It’s just hard for folks to figure out what constitutes a reliable source. Smooth sounding arguments abound all over the place. I’ll have to check out Axios as I have not heard of them before. Have a great weekend, Ray!

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