The Trusted Web Podcast

Online Anonymity is to be cherished according to Ed Bice, CEO of Meedan, a global technology not-for-profit that builds software and programmatic initiatives to strengthen journalism, digital literacy, and accessibility of information online and off. In the same breath, however, Ed also calls for a fresh look at how rapidly fake news and damaging disinformation can spread as a result of articles and news pieces not being fact checked and verified. How can we as online users strike that crucial balance between online freedom and making sure that we can trust the information at our fingertips?

Ed and his team develop open-source tools for creating and sharing context on digital media through annotation, verification, archival, and translation. He has spent most of his professional life operationalizing idealism. He is optimistic that our digital evolution, and the changing face of journalism and publishing will trend us toward a world that is networked for understanding. Just as markets have gone global, so too, our digital social networks will go global in the coming years and decades.

Join us as we explore the various uses of social media and the changing face of digital journalism.

Links mentioned:

Meedan.com

Alan is the founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project. Established in 2008, this educational nonprofit helped launch the category of news literacy. Following his three-decade journalism career,  Alan has also received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize among a dozen other national and state reporting honors. 

The News Literacy Project provides educators with resources and tools to teach teenagers how to discern fact from fiction in the digital age. More than 19,000 educators in all 50 states and 108 other countries have registered to use the virtual classroom NLP provides.

Alan and I share a passion for a more truthful internet, and we both choose the route of building a whole category as an important way of achieving it, in Alan’s case: news literacy. Today we discuss what parents can do, the difference between misinformation and disinformation, and how we’re at an inflection point with the internet. 

Links mentioned:

NewsLit.org

Checkology.org

Informable App

Is That a Fact? Podcast

The Sift Newsletter

For many people Fake News started to be associated with primarily right-wing, Russian issues. This is where today’s guest, Nolan Higdon, steps in. In order to better understand Fake News, we need to understand its history. Nolan’s book ‘The Anatomy of Fake News’ provides a very comprehensive understanding of this. He believes that although we can’t ever get rid of Fake News, the solution is to be better informed.

Nolan Higdon is an author and university lecturer of history and media studies. Higdon’s areas of concentration include youth culture, news media history, and critical media literacy. He sits on the boards of the Action Coalition for Media Education and Northwest Alliance For Alternative Media And Education. 

Tune in to learn more about data collection, subsidising the press, what needs to be taught in the classroom, the Streisand Effect of hiding information online – and the parallels with the wrestling industry. 

Links mentioned

‘The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education’ by Nolan Higdon

“The Internet can be an overwhelming place”, as today’s guest Molly McKew simply highlights. Molly has spent years working in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, including as an advisor to the Georgian President and National Security Council and the former Moldovan prime minister, and as the strategic director of a project to strengthen independent Russian language news and media in the Baltic states. With her expertise in understanding information warfare, I had to bring Molly on to the show to learn more.

Her articles have appeared in Politico, the Washington Post, Wired, Lawfare, and many more. She is also currently a senior advisor on disinformation to Stand Up Republic Foundation, where she is the lead author of the Defusing Disinfo blog.

Join us as we explore radical conspiracies, the impact of living in separate realities, the implications of freedom of reach, and why we need to keep on learning from other countries to move forward.

Links mentioned:

GreatPower.us

Twitter @MollyMcKew

Misinformation is not new, but the internet has helped scale its reach now more than ever. In today’s episode I’m joined by journalist Steven Brill, who is also the Co-founder and Co-CEO, NewsGuard, Inc, a tool that provides detailed trust ratings for 6,000+ news websites.

I’m excited to be joined by Steve as he’s a true expert when it comes to hoax sites and knowing what platforms like Facebook need to do to be held accountable. Join our discussion as we discuss transparency, the tell-tale signs of hoax sights, the spread of misinformation in US vs Europe, and what he’s learnt at NewsGuard.

Steve is also the Founder of Court TV, The American Lawyer Magazine, American Lawyer Media, Brill’s Content Magazine, Journalism Online, and The Yale Journalism Initiative.

Let’s build the trusted web together!

Links Mentioned

NewsGuard Tech Plugin

NewsGuardTech.com

www.TheTrustedWeb.org/Podcast

What if you could simply trust all information on the internet? I’m on the mission to build a Trusted Web for all of us on planet earth. Because to save the world, we need to fix the internet. With this special thing called blockchain timestamps; all content you consume will be transparent and accountable. Welcome to the new default on the internet. Thank you for being part of this journey and let’s build the Trusted Web together.