a phone out, a 02 years from school, children in the island community of east and the excitement is over the arrival of their teacher fransisco. be nice because there's only one school and k is coach. he knows infancy school is the only teacher. the fact that these children are able to have an education at all the result of years of hard work from the local community . here in keynes, coaching at the store this year, the us government announced $33000000.00 to increase access to education. part of the broader strategy by dividing administration to address the root causes of migration from central american critics in hunter is however, born that ramp and government corruption means that forward assistance too often goes astray. we understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter when you call home, we open, you can use and car and fast that match it to you. the hello am i am the lies in london. just

a quick look at the main stories now and off to 4 days of fighting and international goals versus 5 the conflict between israel and the palestinian on group as long as you had no close as a resolution. on friday, a 6 come on to linked to the group was killed in his writing. this all struck in apartment building and central gaza. 33 pa, the things are now dies and slicing started on choose day. one is right, is also have been killed. people in gauze or been describing the moment is reading this sounds hit the huns. now in this one, the lady was sitting peacefully at home, we received notification to evacuate. we had no idea of what was going on, my son's wife, grandchildren, and i rushed of the house, leaving behind everything i heard the manage to cover my head with the scarf. these right is 53 shelves from an f, 16 war plane, although not a one more row. i received the cool and there was a man claiming to be from these really intelligence appendix. he told me to one the residents in the butler and said, he's watching,

take them all to the main road. we will destroy the entire quote. so they launch the 1st missile. he called me again say i know the strike is coming long as some other one is following to buy them as far as from gaza. the latest. oh, as a witness, as simple as a single, it was written, it strikes at many cities of the gauze and strip, starting from the north bay plaza and the tunnel and, and a few injuries, wary for the by the ministry of health. dispute goes off from different a slides east and west north and, and, and south, where i'll give you my days where it is strikes, no casualties were reported as well as the mid cities of the goals us through the say a lot and no casualties. also what he quoted on the southern cities will because a sub both of them finished. so what we're basically talking about reciprocal goals . eh, have been targeted, a quote and focused on has gone through the former prime minister and wrong con, 2 weeks fail, facing multiple challenges including corruption. thursday, the supreme court ruled as arrests on law, full cons, detention early of the sweet spot, widespread protest by supporters government is about to find

a way to take the 7 year old back in the custody moves that would likely cause more instability, attackers, presidents, and the opposition alliance and making that final pitch devices before sundays presidential in parliamentary elections is expected to be the country's most highly contested vote. that's being held against the box on that list. to leah economic crisis, licensed opinion falls, put the opposition candidates come a collection or just the head of incumbent pressure of type other one. as you know, a barbara has more than this from ankara. they do understand this is going to be the have the, the most ties raising the more than history of to again this explains that you get a sense of anxiety and 10 said over the last few days. now as far as the opposition is concerned, it said it is confident it is going to be at its development. it's confident is going to win the election and stuff and it's up to full turkey at the same time. you have present that as a play of the a quantity defending that track record over the last 2 decades thing that they've

been doing the best in show that to, to has a better life. special events sent us for the to talk is people with more national subject to being present the selection of the about with less than 48 hours before the voting day. it is going to be perhaps more about who's going to be able to win the hearts and minds of the swing voters, and particularly the new votes. as a stock, wondering from the united nation is more than a 100000 children. they say in haiti, or risk of starving to death because of escalating gang violence. about 80 percent of the capital pose of friends is now controlled by gains and vigilante groups. the un estimates more than $600.00 people were killed just last month. kidnappings are reported every day. hays use government is appeal for international assistance to deal with this. on the us authorities say there's been no such if people crossing the southern folder following the listing of the title 42 low on thursday night. and i just, i shouldn't allowed authorities to turn away migraines at that for the,

during the pandemic to avoid the risk of code. 19 spreading migrants will now face new measures that are coming to effect from next week. i will bring you uh, some analysis on that story. the news out that's coming up in less than 16 minutes time with myself will also be if my correspondent john home and who's are pushing on this story from suicide. juarez and mexico. now we leave you with the boston line with steve collins, that's next the the hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question. are journalists in the media undermining our societies? let's get to the bottom line. the with so much may have in the news business these days, it's hard to keep track of who's in and who's out and where different media outlets stand on the issues in case you didn't catch it. america's biggest news host tucker

carlson is out at fox news, but he's now in a twitter, which he says is the last place on earth where you can find free speech. other household names have recently been fired, and major companies like cnn are trying to re brand themselves. and some famous news platforms like by speed, have just pulled the life support plug on themselves despite the disruption and a lot of innovation, confidence, and trust and media. is it a real crisis point? so is the news suppose to enlighten people and broaden their worldview or go narrow and just reinforce people's biases? is this the new normal? today we're talking with a journalist who's had a front row seat to all the changes in modern day journalism. ben smith was in the launch team and political. he worked as the top media writer for the new york times, and he created the news department advised speed. and recently co founded a brand new news organizations center for were in full disclosure. i also work, he's just come out with a book, traffic genius,

rivalry and delusion in the $1000000000.00 race to go viral. that tells the story of the social media revolutions impact on the news business. ben, it's great to have you on my show. it not only tells the impact of social media on the news business, and also it talks about the social, you know, the impact of social media on society. and i'm really interested just to start with . the big question is, this is what has led to the toxicity of our times has social media really undermined our democracy? and i mean, i guess the way i see it and thanks for having me on steve, is that, um, is it social media and facebook in particular were totally bound up with the searches of populism? in the 2010. i mean, i'm not sure if you can see, i mean that you can't really run the counter example if there hadn't been facebook . but i do think, and the thing that i, you know, found in reporting the book was the extent to which, particularly the trump movement in the united states. you know, took these really deeply understood facebook digital media kind of followed its energy to the absolute logical sort of end point, which was in some sense,

donald trump. so donald trump, who, you know, tweeted and all of this stuff is the winner in the social media environment. but as i look back in history, the one who was the 1st when it was brock obama and what it brock obama's team see in the social media team that other, you know, progressive democrats fail to take hold up. but, you know, you have to sort of put your head back to this world in the early 2, thousands where you know, where facebook is, where college kids hang out. the internet is a set of blogs that are, you know, and the establishment critical of a mainstream media that has with notable exceptions. gotten the rack for ron isn't really on the internet is a bit lost. and there's all this energy for us to rand howard, dean and then around brock obama, and it's really like it's a place for young people. and so it's almost obvious the brock obama kind of young progressive in united states is going to kind of ride this energy between similar things happen in letting them in columbia actually. but all over the world, sort of like young people, finding their voices on the internet, which was,

which was the presumptive lee there space and went abroad. and when obama visits facebook in 2011 after his victory, you know, it's what it goes without saying that this is where democrats hang out. of course, it is really right such an interesting. it's almost like anthropological treatment of the early days of social media. you focus on buzzfeed and joiner pereta, you focus on nick denton who created gawker, arianna huffington, and others around her, the founded have post and i'm just interested in that moment and you were there watching all of this come together. in fact, you weeks for the, i don't to call you, the forrest gump of it were hired by one of them. but you knew all of these characters, what did they get right? what did they get wrong? you know, they were among the 1st just to see this way of coming. and there was, you know, there was a huge, particularly if you, on a friday really saw social media was going to be, this was, i don't know already did both of the founder of us, it was going to become the central distribution platform. nick that and who founded docker saw the power of the internet to kind of strip away the artifice that it

media. but i think also both to some degree thought they could control these forces and monetize them. and i think that turned out to be a lot harder than they thought. so when you saw this, i mean your early blogger, i wasn't really blue, were on the water. that's a note. i wrote a kind of us, now i the, i read the book and everything i did in the washington note was exactly the opposite of this. i wrote long walk, a foreign policy pieces that nonetheless found an audience in that time, folks. so it wasn't all bad, but i wasn't chasing traffic, you know, per se i was chasing people who i thought would be thoughtful about these issues which was a different strategy. but i'm interested when you saw gawker and i was afraid of goc or i never wanted to meet that nick denton, or any of his people because they were scandal monitors to. yeah, i mean, his philosophy was that, you know, the, the, that the possibility of the internet was to publish the things the journalist said to each other in bar is not the things they said on the internet. which by the way, i think you do not give yourself enough scandal longer and credit is some of what

you do. and you were saying stuff that other people were afraid to say about american foreign policy at a moment of washington consensus. but all the big publications were in one place and it was a place for outside hers. and those that are blogs which were basically be early social media. we're a place where outside or is kind of throw a spitball establishment. and i think in early gawker and this side called decibel to be like kind of the iconic thing, they can't tell the folks which is what it was. it was a feminist box still exists, but in its heyday in 2007 launch. the 1st thing they did was put out a $10000.00 bounty for an unread touched photograph of someone in one of these magazines. and they got a picture of people with it where she still has crackles and smile lines which have gotten photo shopped out. and it's kind of a emblematic of that eras mainstream media, which was photo shopping out a lot. and this sense that the internet could tell you what was really happening. and i think it was all, it was all in some sense kind of very small scale people learning how these, how, how human interest and attention worked on the line and watching it through the truth, through traffic until this wave of social media came and,

and kind of massively amplified these tactics, these ways of thinking, you know, one of the things that occurred to me when i was reading your book, which i'll tell everyone in the audience it read it, it's, it's a fascinating journey into it into this time. and also what went wrong, but in the days of walter cronkite or the big, you know, national network stations, or national radio stations and or whatever it may be. more people were listening to those in math and, and, and while they were, you know, not designed for small tribes just like you basically were forced to, if you were going to get any news to have a wider aperture to get fed a lot more than you might otherwise want just for yourself. but as media broke apart, people were fed more and more of just what reinforced their views or what they were comfortable with. and you described this beautifully in the book and, and i'm asking myself is that is what one of the main drivers that has led to the political fragmentation in this country. where people really don't give

a damn about someone on the other side of a prospective review or a political party. i mean, i'd love to hear how technology has, has basically disrupted, you know, our knowledge of the world. yeah. i mean, i think, you know, one of the, probably the wrong, the thing we were honest about it, but i see it where i started in 2012 was we had this theory that when people started sharing news publicly in these public spaces like facebook, they would be their best sell, they want their friends to think they were nice people, they would share appeals for hurt birth, quickly relief, and thoughtful atlantic articles and, and thoughtful bussey news articles in our slogan for a while was know where it was. i mean, we have a bit method both feet, head 10 pretty yeah. we have but also definitely like silly means include animals, but certainly not like hateful saudi politics. like what kind of a person would go out in public and act like that. everybody will think you're crazy and obviously we were totally wrong about human nature. and so at some level there. but now i do think, and i think they were both,

both the sort of broad moment how much anger there was and for which social media was a vessel. but then also there were specific technical things, the platforms did to amplify tibbetts and you know, and they weren't trying to get donald trump elected or whatever they were trying to move. the amount of time you spend on the platform from, you know, 4.7 minutes to 4.9 minutes. and the way they would do that is find what you were most likely to engage. and in this metric of engagement into the interaction, wound up amplifying things that you awesome things that were incredibly divisive. things were racially divisive. where if you comment, i hate this, it's racist. the machine says, wow, this person is very meaningfully engaged with this content. let's so it's a more people and i think that really, that in particular, that so 2015 to 2017 period on facebook. there were elements that drove these divisions deeper. that said, you know, a lot of that has passed, right, like and so donald trump hasn't been on social media for awhile. and it's not like things are that much better as well. i went to get to the trust in media crisis in

a moment. but i remember when donald trump ran, and after he ran and you know, you were responsible, in part, you write about it. releasing the dossier which, that a lot of the paranoia about russian manipulation of donald trump. it also, russian manipulation of the kind of the american political sandbox, if you will. and i guess the question i have is, when i read it, you know, i don't know what the russians did or didn't do in terms of feeding toxicity in america. we were doing it on our own right. there was an awful lot going on just by the algorithms that facebook was releasing, where the other people were doing that had nothing to do with foreign perpetrators . am i right? yeah. and in fact, there was, there was a british government report a couple of years ago that made pretty clear that i think a lot of commentators, i mean the, the, the russians did try to go on facebook and make things worse. but they were massively overwhelmed by our own ability just to make things worse and by facebook . facebook was amplifying this stuff, but also it was in the politics. it was in the culture down terms on cable news.

and a lot of this stuff to it wasn't solely a facebook phenomena. wire democrats, so bad at it. well, i mean, i do think, you know, there was this moment when it seemed like obama liberalism was the thing the internet was good for, you know, sort of huffington post era. and i just think that if you know you follow the sort of passions, you follow the traffic to its logical extreme. it is often telling people what they want to hear. whether it's true or false. lying to provoke a reaction, saying that rage of things for both reaction provoke i guess with the platform to call engagement. actually when i went to meet steve band and they're worried about it in the book and in trump tower in 2016. and he made a real study of social media, his studies huffington post, he had run breitbart, had just moved to the trump campaign. and the thing that he was, he was very interested investigated. and he was very puzzled that we hadn't just back to bernie sanders to the hell. what, why would you not just follow that traffic? follow that energy to become to him what right part has been to donald trump. and

what was your answer? you know, that we had journalist ec standards that we were, you know, i mean it's a, this feels like a very lame answer, honestly. like what we're just trying to do. our jobs, as journalists were, you know, we think the fees and state we shouldn't, we're not going to try to bring it down these institutions for fun. when you look at, i mean, you and i have talked about this offline before, but when you look at american attitudes and i think these numbers are reflected globally, frankly, we're talking yeah, global audience. and a lot of the things i find interesting about your book in the u. s. case or also true. you're still around the world in the port ization is going on. but, but you know, basically more than 5053 percent of, of folks have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of the media. and, and you've got basically 20 percent very ambivalent that 26 percent are somewhat favorable. this is a lot of people do not trust the news. they do not trust us. they do not trust the media and i'm interested in culpability and liability you. i think this has got to be the most sympathetic treatment of true monsters that were out there taking

advantage and writing this in my view. yeah. but how do we heal ourselves after the buzz feeds huff post doc or? yeah, well i'm, i'm, i'm obviously more sympathetic to the monsters. i think that it is general. i think the media loves to exaggerate the media's own role in these things. i mean, these technological platforms have a lot of influence, the bigger social forces. but if you look at, but it's also obviously across institutions, one of the things that definitely media did was another thing that social media and some sense for that to be best. that was breaking down institutions and trusting institutions. whether it is the cdc, whether it is a newspaper, whether it's, you know, banks, i mean, i, or government i often, by the way, way did that by revealing what these things were really doing. i mean, it's a complicated picture. it's not like it's not like the news organizations that we look back fondly in the early 2, thousands and late nineties were doing such a bang up job covering the a rack or it was just that it wasn't so evident to everybody. and so i think it's, i think, very hard to put that in the back in the bottle. i mean, obviously,

you know, we're partners and a new new thing and we're trying to figure it out. but i don't think there's some what we talked about semaphores for minute. forget that i work there and you work there, but i mean, how is some of for going to address some of the gaps that you've written about between essentially content and substance and the thrill of chasing traffic? yeah, well i mean, i think one thing for better for worse, i think people are sick of this sort of that sort of stuff going on facebook or twitter and seeing this chaotic kind of confusing but like lively and fun, nothing. everything says fun anymore. but i think actually consumers have moved on and are interested in help navigating this cas at and, but they, i think they are not basically the, a lot of people are not about to go back to trusting, faceless institutions. they want to know who they're hearing from. they want a level of transparency about who you are, where you're coming from. what are the facts, what are your, what is your opinion, which is what we try to do, really schematically at that before. and,

and i also think that people are there's, we're not all going back to being all in one place. right. i mean, everyone, the whole world on facebook and twitter yelling at each other. i think people are looking for smaller spaces, more intimate conversations. they can trust, you know, in that trade off between views and the quality. yeah. if some of the 4, would it become big, do you think it will be falling into, into the trap of, of views. you know, i mean it's a, it is a tricky thing in journalism because you obviously want people to reach you. and i think good journalists have a sort of a 6th sense for what are people interested in. they want to write that story and pick it that scab. and yet you also know that often the thing that will be most widely, rather mrs. and new on the internet, the new york son, the great 1st kind of break out new newspaper in the united states. it's big moment was when it published a series on how flying mammals have been found on the moon. a series of scientific reports and sold out for days. i think there's always an impulse in media to tell

people what they want to hear. and i think you have to resist it. and what happened when, when traffic came around, when all of this new flood of data, it's some sense. suddenly we're like flying with instruments. and if you wanted to, it could really take you to indulge your worst instance. you were a twitter of saying that i and um, are you, did you go through any kind of withdrawal? are you still on twitter all the time? you know, i last to either later to, i mean i last we did 26 minutes ago or something, but it probably was about headquarters dying. i mean, honestly the thing i just as i'm a news junkie and the thing that strikes me that social media, if it has lost its basic utility for saying, hey, what is happening in the world. and i think people are going elsewhere just to that very basic, like what, what's going on, twitter, if you spend a lot of time on twitter, it is sort of, in a perverse way. fascinating to watch it fall apart. it's like some kind of disaster movie, like it is very compelling. but if you can't go there and say, hey, what's happening to that? that's just not what it's for anymore. you know,

donald trump is going to appear on cnn. why do you think he's doing this? i mean, he's, donald trump has always said he, you know, denounce the media but in a way use that conflict and those positions as a spring board for more attention. and his sort of conflict with the media has always generated attention. and i think, you know, cnn is incredibly, sort of to, to me, shocking degree, unpopular with republicans. it's viewed as sort of the animated the way a lot of democrats, who, if office of us and i think trump is putting on a show, showing his own strength relative to his competitors, to run the status. in particular. let me ask you the question and i hope i can get it out correctly. but when i started my own blog, which is around the time that you started yours, i sort of felt like there was a cartel and intellectual cartel of the editors at op ed pages at the major journals and bracket the washington new york times wall street journal and while a lot of them were saying yes to me and to my colleagues at the think tank,

we were still getting told no, and it, and it bothered me that we're being told now. and i wanted a place to put these ideas, which is why the washington no, it became created. but i thought they were lazy, homogenized news organizations that were leaving a lot of interesting stuff on the cutting room floor. and so i saw a market opportunity there to basically cover things that the mainstream press was like john bolton's confirmation was about you at that time. but without going, you know, to down that rabbit hole. i guess the question is when you look at the major media today, the new york times has bought a lot of bloggers. they bought a lot of the, they've hired a lot of the people, including formerly yourself, who are of the social media world. what are the vulnerabilities today of the new york times of washington post and others that have tried to become hybrid. so these, since you haven't, i think the times and it's a trick, you know, the times is big to i did not expect to write a book about the internet that was in part about the new york times. but certainly the times above all, i think is one of the you'll raise one of the winners. leasing one of the huge

winters of this era. i do think they for veteran, for worse, took in a lot of the ideas. a lot of the people from the internet, i mean, part of the challenge is a lot of those ideas and people are inimical to the core ideas of the new york times. and if you sometimes look at the new york times say, wow, why are all these people fighting each other? it's because they hired a bunch of lunatics from the internet and everybody disagrees about everything. and a lot of us have, have since left. but i don't know, but i think it is. and you know, in both of us have a similar arc of thinking that the establishment media media is basically being outside there's to it and you know, waging the sort of digital campaign to change it. and then i think to some degree, finding ourselves in this apocalyptic landscape where, like, wow, okay, like very effective challenges to these institutions. they're all sort of in ruins . and, and, and i think at least in my case thinking huh, like, we've got to find ways to build trusted institutions and rebuild them. i think for another new moment where people are looking for direct connections, particularly individual voices. or the i'm seeing of, i mean,

really strikes me about your book. and it bothers me frankly, is that you focus on these key individuals who saw, you know, the matrix edward differently than others. jonah per ready, nick denton, a technical error. nick, you know, arianna huffington and others, but that one of the people who was very dissatisfied with sort of the dock or montrose of sexual pictures and you know, in your window. and so, you know, basically, scandal monitoring was. peter's deal is a rich 1000000000 error, basically to so we're talking about individuals have massive impact on the news, habits of american society or global society, or an individual who gets kicked off and has enough power to bring down one of these news organizations. are we living in this world kind of super gladiators? we're most this don't matter at all, were just victims or winners accidentally. but it's all about these individuals who figured out how to a mass, incredible power. and what does that say about american democracy and the economics

of news today? i mean, i do, it does the, i, i totally agree with these in these immensely powerful figures. the alignment being the main ones, right. i've kind of gotten interested in news as a hobby and what would like to crush their enemies and elevate their friends and like have some series. and yeah, and it's, i mean it's a great, it is a great story. but also, i think a big threat to the industry weren't the souls burgers of the new york times where the grams at the washington post, those same kind of characters. well, they were entrepreneurs who were in the news business. i mean for better and for worse, right? as opposed to people who, who made their money, who made billions intact and had actually incentives, legitimate grievances with the coverage and thought, well, i'll just like, throw a few pennies this way to destroy my enemies. i'm having somebody read the feature of this is massive inequality and well, right now let me ask you a more serious question here we have um, where are your anniversary out of a now? just or a journalist being killed in palestine to mean i walk with and it's made me think

about how journalists are treated all over the world. we haven't engaged kavitsky has been taken and detained in russia, wrongfully we have, i think over 60, that had been killed over this last year. and so we sort of looked at the broad profession of journalism and i, i know a lot of journalists out there and they really admire you. they look up to you as setting a certain standard out there. is there anything we're not doing to remind governments both democracies and, and are talk, receives in a way differently about the important role of journalists in journalism, unhealthy societies? i mean, i do think that journalism is a real threat to power that, you know, the internet made a foreign correspondents used to be kind of harmless if you're the russian leader and some american journalist is sending off despatches to appear in the print paper in english who cares now as a, visible to your own citizens, social media amplifies that too. i mean, you know, and autocrats aren't wrong. i think to see this is a threat to them and to power, but i, but i do certainly think that the, you know, where,

where democratic leaders are attacking the for us project. currently, trump, you know, helps you know, gives ex extra space for, you know, whether it's moody or put in or, you know, whoever else to crack down on, on the press. well, i'm going to thank you for joining us, ben smith's editor in chief. it's similar for an author of traffic genius rivalry and delusion in the $1000000000.00 race to go viral. we really appreciate you being with us. thank you so much. thank you. is this. so what's the bottom line? i got to say we're not much different than lab wrapped in a massive media science lab. we get poked and we get provoked with different algorithms designed to elicit certain responses. and we love it. but despite all the technical innovation, the rise of citizen journalist and a blogs and platforms like tick tock, instagram, facebook and twitter, you rarely get exposed to a range of different thinking. they feed you what you want to hear. sure, it's great to be comfortable connecting with others in our identity and political

tribes. but it's not great to lose the ability to pop out of our filter bubbles and to have our biases challenged and sometimes across the aisle and even reach an understanding with everyone else. the way the media works nowadays is a real problem when divisions within a society push up the market value of mega social media companies. and when social cohesion is not good for business, then we know the future is going to be riddled with clashes and with controversy and choking democracies. the lab rats, we've all become need to find a way out and set up new rules. or else we remain really frustrated little lab rats . and that's the bottom line, the, the palestine. this once of very different place from today to cities became connected to the interior in an award

winning film which is 0. well, here's historians and i'd witness accounts that portray early 20th century by this time as a thriving fibers moved to reach it was molten investments were excess, moving from one city to another, palestine 1920 on al jazeera when the telephone took control of that kind of standing august 2021, its spots a message and a special report report, 101 east makes the chinese entrepreneur with the other one on how do we know what's happening in our region? we know how to get to places that others can know as far as instead of going on the way that you tell the story is what can make a difference. the hello and i am.