tracie mauriello 01 — Transcript

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1. 0:00hi i'm tracy moriello i recently
2. 0:02completed the night wallace journalism
3. 0:04fellowship here at the university
4. 0:05i've been a journalist for half my life
5. 0:07most recently at the pittsburgh post
6. 0:09gazette in the washington bureau
7. 0:11i'm really happy to have been invited
8. 0:13here to participate in a teach-out on
9. 0:15such a very important topic
10. 0:16i'd like to start out by talking about
11. 0:18terminology because
12. 0:20one of the problems we have with
13. 0:21addressing disinformation and
14. 0:23misinformation
15. 0:25is that we don't have a common lexicon
16. 0:28what's fake news for instance is it a
17. 0:31deliberate lie meant to mislead
18. 0:33is it an honest mistake is it propaganda
19. 0:36is it simply an inconvenient truth
20. 0:39something that doesn't fit into your
21. 0:40current belief system
22. 0:41something you don't want to believe so
23. 0:44fake news has become such a really
24. 0:46weaponized term to mean many different
25. 0:48things and that makes it
26. 0:49too imprecise to be a value in any kind
27. 0:52of discussion
28. 0:53um so let's instead talk about real news
29. 0:57um that's traditionally defined as
30. 1:00new information about something in the
31. 1:02public interest
32. 1:03now there's a lot of things that fit
33. 1:05into that category right
34. 1:06new information in the public interest
35. 1:08can be expressed in
36. 1:10music it could be expressed in poetry
37. 1:13movies uh political ads for sure
38. 1:16even a billboard but i'm here to talk to
39. 1:18you about one in particular
40. 1:20um the discipline of verification is
41. 1:23what separates journalism from all the
42. 1:25rest journalism alone is focused on
43. 1:27getting it right
44. 1:29that's how bill kovach and tom
45. 1:31rosensteil put it in their book the
46. 1:33elements of journalism
47. 1:35but don't trust them and don't trust me
48. 1:37either
49. 1:38um verify it find other sources of this
50. 1:41information
51. 1:42that's what a journalist would do in a
52. 1:441999 survey
53. 1:46the committee of concerned journalists
54. 1:48asked reporters what news values they
55. 1:50consider most important
56. 1:52and every single one said getting it
57. 1:55right
58. 1:56everyone that they interviewed two years
59. 1:59before that
60. 2:00psychologist william damon and howard
61. 2:02gardner interviewed a hundred
62. 2:03journalists
63. 2:04and they came to the conclusion that
64. 2:07news professionals at every level
65. 2:09express what they called an adamant
66. 2:11allegiance to a set of core values that
67. 2:13are striking in their commonality
68. 2:15for us it isn't just about getting the
69. 2:17right facts but it's about putting them
70. 2:19in the right context
71. 2:20that involves sifting weighing and
72. 2:22evaluating information
73. 2:24we have editors to help us do that and
74. 2:26to tell us in no
75. 2:27uncertain terms when we've failed uh
76. 2:30there's a really
77. 2:31natural tension between copy editors and
78. 2:34reporters
79. 2:35copy editors jobs are to find the holes
80. 2:37in our stories the mistakes that we've
81. 2:39made
82. 2:40point out any uh blind spots that we may
83. 2:42have in our reporting
84. 2:44um who likes somebody that just tells
85. 2:48you all the time what you did wrong
86. 2:49right i do because these people
87. 2:53help me maintain my credibility they're
88. 2:56protecting my credibility by keeping my
89. 2:57mistakes from going out into the world
90. 2:59and believe me i've made my share of
91. 3:01them fortunately for me
92. 3:04we don't have enough time today to talk
93. 3:05about those instead
94. 3:07let's talk for a moment about
95. 3:09objectivity everybody says journalists
96. 3:11are biased right
97. 3:13are we of course we are aren't you
98. 3:18we're not robots we've lived lives so
99. 3:20yes we're biased
100. 3:22but the thing is our methods are not
101. 3:24we're trained to compensate for our
102. 3:26biases we're trained to be
103. 3:28as objective as we can be to be fair to
104. 3:31be transparent
105. 3:32our methods are defensible we can tell
106. 3:34you how we got this information
107. 3:36and how we put it together we rely on
108. 3:38public documents and interviews with
109. 3:40knowledgeable people
110. 3:41sometimes we go to court to get
111. 3:43documents so that we could present
112. 3:46credible information and it can be a
113. 3:47long and painful process
114. 3:49so yes real journalists are biased
115. 3:52our methods are not we adhere to a code
116. 3:55of ethics
117. 3:56that require us to identify sources
118. 3:58whenever possible
119. 4:00to consider sources motives before
120. 4:02promising anonymity
121. 4:04to provide opportunities for subjects of
122. 4:06our coverage to respond to any kind of
123. 4:08criticism
124. 4:09to avoid conflicts of interest to refuse
125. 4:12any sort of gifts or favors from sources
126. 4:14that we may cover
127. 4:15and first and foremost of course to seek
128. 4:18and report truth
129. 4:19if you want to read more about these
130. 4:20standards and there are more than the
131. 4:21ones that i've mentioned
132. 4:23please go to spj.org that's the website
133. 4:26of the society of professional
134. 4:27journalists it's worth a read
135. 4:30so i want to circle back for a moment to
136. 4:32that 1999 survey
137. 4:34you may think a lot has changed in
138. 4:36journalism in 11 years
139. 4:38and it has but one thing that has not is
140. 4:41our commitment to truth
141. 4:42no one holds journalists more
142. 4:44accountable than other journalists
143. 4:47i know this for my own research as a
144. 4:50master's student at the ohio state
145. 4:51university
146. 4:53through my research i learned that
147. 4:54journalist standards for themselves
148. 4:56are much higher than judicial standards
149. 4:59in the law of libel
150. 5:00and here's an example from august just a
151. 5:02few weeks ago
152. 5:03the first media outlets to report robert
153. 5:05trump's death
154. 5:06didn't have access to his birth date
155. 5:08only his birth year
156. 5:10so they just did simple subtraction and
157. 5:12came up with 72. he's 72 years old
158. 5:15well the president's brother didn't have
159. 5:17a birthday yet
160. 5:19so he was only 71. they were wrong
161. 5:23big deal what's the difference right
162. 5:25close enough who cares
163. 5:27well to journalists journalists care
164. 5:30it comes down to all of our credibility
165. 5:32when someone gets something wrong
166. 5:34um i'm in an online industry group and
167. 5:37the people in that group
168. 5:38were incensed they were unforgiving
169. 5:41decrying the sloppiness of these
170. 5:42reporters
171. 5:43who said that robert trump was 72 years
172. 5:46old when he was in fact 71.
173. 5:48that's because they know at the end of
174. 5:50the day all we journalists
175. 5:52have is our credibility if we can't get
176. 5:54a simple thing like robert trump's age
177. 5:56right
178. 5:57why should you trust us on anything else
179. 6:00journalists have an important role to
180. 6:01play in a democratic society and we take
181. 6:03it very seriously journalists see
182. 6:06themselves as government watchdogs who
183. 6:08keep the powerful in check
184. 6:09and provide the rest of us with the
185. 6:11information we need to make decisions
186. 6:13about our lives and our government
187. 6:14there's been a democratization of the
188. 6:16news and that's a good thing right
189. 6:18freedom of the press is no longer the
190. 6:20exclusive realm of the man who can
191. 6:22afford a printing press
192. 6:24the more information the better that's
193. 6:26what allows our society to function
194. 6:28we need more public discourse not less
195. 6:30but that discourse needs to be
196. 6:33based on real truthful information
197. 6:36creating disinformation is easy and
198. 6:38cheap debunking it is not
199. 6:41especially in this economic environment
200. 6:43where newspapers are being forced to
201. 6:45downsize because people don't value news
202. 6:48newspapers gave away their product for
203. 6:50free for too long and people don't value
204. 6:52something when it's free
205. 6:53the industry messed up so now we're
206. 6:56really in crisis
207. 6:58and we need you we need people like you
208. 7:00so i invite you to be part of the
209. 7:02solution
210. 7:02and i thank you for already taking the
211. 7:04first step by participating in this
212. 7:06teachout
213. 7:07so i leave you with three simple things
214. 7:09that you can do
215. 7:10first learn to recognize misinformation
216. 7:13and disinformation
217. 7:15second don't share it don't retweet it
218. 7:19don't repost it on your social networks
219. 7:22three support quality journalism by
220. 7:24subscribing to a newspaper
221. 7:27thanks so much and may the truth be with
222. 7:29you