our top story this hour: dramatic developments in two separate court trials in the us, involving figures who have been close to president trump. a jury finds his former campaign manager, paul manafort, guilty of eight charges relating to tax and bank fraud. president trump has called it a "witch—hunt". and in new york, the president's former lawyer, michael cohen, pleads guilty to tax evasion and election campaign finance violations. we'll have all the latest developments on both cases here on bbc world news. and this story is trending on bbc.com. danny boyle has announced he'll no longer be directing the nextjames bond movie. he's blaming "creative differences" for his decision. the next bond film is due for release next year. stay with bbc world news. more to come. now, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. never before in the history of humankind have we had so much information, so many facts at ourfingertips, and yet much of the stuff we think we know is wrong. what on earth is going on? my guest today is bobby duffy, social scientists, opinion pollster, and managing director of the ipsos mori social research institute. how can we, the people, make informed decisions if we're not properly informed 7 bobby duffy, welcome to hardtalk.

great to be here. you and your company have spent many years surveying attitudes and opinions of people around the world, i think at least a0 countries, and your conclusion is mind—blowingly depressing. it seems you've concluded that much of what we think we know is wrong. why is that? yeah, so the study is based on over 100,000 interviews we've done over the past ten years asking people about social realities. so everything from immigration rates to crime rates, how they're changing, pregnancy rates among teenagers, the proportion of the population that are muslim, and then very mundane facts like how old your population is, how many people are aged 65 plus, and what we find across countries, all sorts of different situations, people have a very wrong view of those realities, in all sorts of different ways.

i mean what we — the underlying themes that seem to explain most of it is that a lot of the time our estimates of realities are more about emotions than actually a knowledge of the facts. so it's well proven in lots of psychological experiments that we focus on negative information, it takes up more of our brain. so there's been lots of great experiments that show when you show people negative images, the brain reacts differently and in a stronger way to those negative images than positive images. so this is a fear factor of sorts. i mean you call it negative factors, but primarily it is fear, i guess, people respond to fear in a way that they don't respond to neutral or positive news or facts. yeah, that's right.

that's a big part of it. that negative reaction leads to those sorts of fear reactions among people and it takes up more of our mental space. so we think that crime rates are going up because we generalise from that very vivid story that we hear about one particular gruesome crime. and that's always been the case — there is a second... sorry to interrupt. but are you saying that's something that is hard—wired into our brains, that it's a sort of psychological, physical reality and it's not something that's the result of manipulation of, for example, a media that much refers negative news to positive news? yeah, well, first thing to say is journalists are humans too. so they have that same negative bias within their minds. but what i do in the book is to separate the explanations into what we're told and how we think. and it's both of those things together, it's both of those interacting. so it is what we're told and how we think.

before we get deeper into the public policy implications of this mismatch between what are demonstrable facts and the way we perceive reality to be, before we go further into the public policy impacts, let us just ask a very basic question. you say you know this because you've surveyed people all over the world. i am very mindful that in the recent past, companies such as yours, which live and die by the accuracy of their polling and their surveys, have been shown to get things wrong repeatedly. so how do we know that you're reading publics around the world right? first, on that political polling point, there's been lots of reviews saying polls are not that inaccurate on elections and they're no worse than in the past. what we've had or what we did have was a run of very tight elections where you got a kind of 50—50, or with president trump's election, you actually had a popular vote where hillary clinton won...

yeah but, i don't want to spend too long on this, but surely it's time for a little bit of humility. i mean, companies such as yours, i believe yours in particular, ipsos, in the us, on the eve of donald trump and hillary clinton, i think you gave a 90% chance to hillary winning. sure. the people remember that and then when you come up with these highfalutin analyses of what people around the world are thinking, we wonder whether we can take it seriously. you can. we're talking about very different things, very different questions. i am not talking about razor thin differences between an outcome in particular states in the us, i'm talking about big differences. so to give you a couple of examples, we think that immigration is twice the level that it actually is. we're not talking about a percentage point here or there, it is, taking the uk as an example, it is about 13% of the population, our immigrants, whereas the average guess is around 25%. in france, the actual population of muslims, the proportion that they make up of the population in france is around 7% or 8%,

but the guess in france is 30%. and they think it's going to be 40% in the next two or three years. so there's a big difference. is there any evidence that the mismatch between perception and reality is either increasing or decreasing? because i began this particular conversation by suggesting that humankind has access to more information today than ever before, and i think that's sort of irrefutably true. but the question is whether access to information is making us better informed or not. is there any evidence to suggest the disconnect, the false perception, is narrowing or is as bad as ever? that's a great question. because we can't answer it that well, going into the distant past. but there is this very useful tradition in us political thinking called political ignorance. so they did ask some basic facts about politics and society, all the way back in the 19405

and 19505, and that was updated in the 19805 and 19905, and what they found is that it's almost exactly the same now as it was then, our level of misperception of things like the unemployment rate, or kind of surveillance facts around who's in charge of the senate, those types of questions, where people are just as wrong now as they were then. i think the point is, this is not a supply of information issue, this is about how our brains work. we talk a lot more these days about things like confirmation bias, which is where we look for facts that reinforce our already held views... but isn't that precisely why many observers of information flows are so worried about the impact of the internet, the digital age, and in particular social media platforms, because it is so easy for us all to create a sort of personal echo chamber, where we only tap in to information

and news sources which confirm our preconceived ideas? exactly. so the underlying causes within the way that we think are constant over time. but the environment has changed so much. i really do think this really is our biggest cultural threat right now, is that sense of us either creating our own individual realities by what we choose, or having them pushed at us through algorithms that we don't even see. and that is a massive challenge, the way the splintering and fragmenting of what you and i understand as an accepted reality of how the world is is a massive threat. so as you actually are about to leave your post after two decades at ipsos mori, is this the moment where you, as a respected analyst of this public opinion and information flow relationship, is it where you say things are so bad that we need to consider new forms of regulation,

even forms of censorship to ensure that people are not fed manipulative and false information? there is no one solution to this. this is multifaceted. it's about what we see, what wer‘e told, and how we think. you cannot solve that through regulation. i think there's a greater role for regulation within this space, but it does raise really difficult questions about who then is telling you what the truth is. you can actually start to legislate the truth. so it gives people a lot of pause to say that regulation is the only button to push. i think in some ways what we haven't done is equip people with the tools for the critical thinking that they have to bring to this themselves. we have got such a different environment, but we're teaching people for a time long gone. we're teaching people in schools and in work environments,

and elsewhere, for times that have disappeared and we have a completely different environment and we need to catch up. do you think, and i'm particularly mindful of my children's generation, late teens, early 205, who are the new adults, and who have grown up in a world where social media defines so much of how they receive information and, frankly, how they think, do you think the time has come to recognise that the responsibility for, if one can put it this way, fact checking, second sourcing all information lies notjust with the platforms — the so—called publishers of information, but also with the consumers of information. we all have to be much more self—aware, better educated about where our information comes from, and second—guessing how reliable it might be. that's exactly it. whatever we do, whatever tools we come up with, whatever regulation we do, there's always going to be a space where our skills have to be better.

because you cannot protect people from this entirely. there are some very simple... but you can do better than the social media platforms have done thus far. yes, absolutely. the point about fact checking is that it is very retrospective. and the fact checking community, moving on to second generation and third—generation fact checking, which is much more about building it into the system. the problem with fact checking after the fact is that it's already gone. people already have that in mind, and then it's incredibly difficult to claw that back. the idea is to get in first, stop it before it happens and get in first. the real, real challenge with that is we are onlyjust seeing the start of how people can start to fake information. as soon as people start to be able to fake really reliable looking videos of people saying things, of world leaders saying things that they didn't actually say, which we're very close to... well, i've seen some of those. i've seen barack 0bama, for example, in virtual reality form, appearing to make a speech,

saying things that no real barack 0bama would not say in a million years. and yet it looked entirely real. that's profoundly dangerous. that's going to be on an app soon. there are some very clunky versions now. there are some high—end versions that people can do. the way things are moving, that will get there very fast. let me shift this a little bit. you're getting into areas of trust. i mean we haven't used that cliched phrase about fake news very much. there's now so much talk of fake news and there is a whole question of trust these days, do you think that people, on the whole, according to your surveys of a0 or more countries, invest less trust today in so—called experts, whether they be scientists, academics, leading thinkers, is trust being eroded in that way? not straightforwardly. not in the way that you will see in these very simple narratives about a crisis of trust.

i've been doing this type of work about people's opinions for 25 years. i've done more sessions on the new crisis of trust than anything else over that period. we always think trust is in crisis, partly because we have this rosy retrospection thing. we have politicians. i'll get to brexit in a moment. it's a very germane, specific example. famously during the brexit campaign in the uk, one of the leading exit campaigners, michael gove, said this, he said, "people in this country have simply had enough of experts". our data says that trust in scientists, trust in professors, trust in civil servants has gone up hugely since 1983. we've been tracking trust to tell the truth since 1983 in the uk, and trust levels for all those professions have gone up. media, journalists, has stayed absolutely static,

very, very low, but static, the same for politicians. this idea that trust is being destroyed is, in some ways, abdicating responsibility. it's not about trust and the sense that people are giving you something. this is about leadership and showing leadership. so then let's get to real—time politics. while you have been writing this book, perhaps the most dominant political trend notjust in the uk, the united states, but throughout europe and in many parts of the democratic world, has been the rise of a nationalist, populist movement. you could manifest it in trump, or in brexit, or in viktor 0rban, or a whole host of other phenomena across the world. does this in your view, and with your research, fit with the notion that emotion is becoming more and more important in politics, and fact—based rationality, if i can put it that way, is becoming less important? i think yes, to a large degree, because of the changing context, the changing information context, about how you can get messages to people. there are big caveats on that

in the sense of that rosy retrospection point where we think everything was rational, deferential, and trusting in the pastjust wasn't the case. we have had fake news examples going back millennia, for centuries at least. i am just intrigued by this balance where, in a sense, you are suggesting that right now we're in a phase where emotion is trumping evidence and fact in political debate, whether you see that as something very much contemporary, happening now? what i think is the contemporary theme within that is less populism, more polarisation. more the sense that people do get more embedded in their own camps within this, and there has been great work showing this in the us, the extent to which democrats and republican supporters, the overlap in their opinions is just moving further and further apart. there's fewer and fewer elements of overlap, and that is partly the result

of this individualised realities, and how actually, the internet, maybe surveillances its business model, but confirmation bias is the currency that it uses for that, just showing us what we want. and that is the issue. yes. do you think there is a groundswell of anger with establishments, and do you struggle to explain that in rational terms? because if one looks at, for example, economic growth, the 2008 crash was a fundamental problem, but the trajectory of growth over the last... well, the generation that is currently sort of running countries and in power, during that generation, growth has by and large continued.

poverty has been reduced. you look at the work of people like steven pinker and hans rausing, and in most countries things are getting better and not worse. and yet this anger, particularly at establishments and elites, is at play, and it is hard to understand. yes, and it comes through in every country we look at, more or less. everyone thinks the murder rate has increased in their country, the majority thinks it has increased or stayed the same, but when you look across the countries that we looked, the murder rate is actually down 29% since 2000. the same with deaths from terrorism. this is notjust big issues that people can't get their heads around, like global poverty, which some have looked at brilliantly. is this things within your country that people get wrong. and it's always with that negative bias that things are getting worse. it is within that trait, and it's partly because we edit out the bad from the past. 0ur brains can't help it. we forget the bad things that happened to us in the past, and it's almost like a protection system. it actually helps our mental health in some ways. you forget how bad it was.

and that makes you think that the current in the future is worse than it actually is. i want to talk a little bit about brexit. it is a hugely emotive subject in the uk. but i am very struck by something a psychologist, daniel kahneman said before the vote, and it was clearly a very close vote, but he said irritation and anger, ie emotion and feeling, may well lead to brexit. and that was a prediction. and when one looks at what has happened since, is that the way you see it? that brexit was driven by those feelings? yes, absolutely, so that was incredibly prescient by him, two weeks before the referendum. he was over here and he said... that is what he sensed from people, is just that irritation and anger. but from people like him, and i dare say... well, i will ask you, were you a remainer? yes.

it seems to me there is a condescension in that notion, that the 52% who voted for brexit were driven in some way by irrational feelings. it is that really is what you are saying. no, not irrational — emotional. it's not at all the same thing. the idea... but because the whole situation, conversation we have had has been premised on this notion that people's feelings are often based on false perception, it is a very easyjump to go from your analysis that people voted for brexit on these feelings to assume, as you have said through so much of this interview, that those feelings are based on misperceptions. misperceptions of reality, but not what is important to people. it is the cultural aspects of brexit, which are just as important as the economic aspects of brexit, the sense that the country is changing too fast for people to be comfortable with. whether that...

how that relates to the actual reality of immigration doesn't matter. it doesn't make it an invalid feeling, that actually things are changing too fast for me, and actually i would prefer to have less immigration, even if i am wrong about the level of immigration that there currently is. so no, it doesn't at all condescend to those types ofjudgements by people. the cultural factors are really important. well, to continue with the brexit thought just for a moment longer, because you wrote about it quite extensively, you suggest that since the referendum, the way people have staked out their positions, either remain or brexit, has become almost tribal in its focus on identity. and again, sort of leaving fact based debate behind and becoming very much about identity politics. and if that is true, then all of this talk about... which comes by and large from remainers, talk about of a people's vote, a second referendum after the government finally nails down some sort of deal that it can take to the british people, put it back to the british people for a final vote, the idea that will produce any sort of resolution is surely going to be nonsensical. because the tribes,

the identity politics, is far beyond that sort of resolution. yes, absolutely, but it is not... i would agree with that, but it is also, and i would definitely agree the cultural factors are so important to people in this. but it is also about the future, as well. and the trouble is, there are no facts about the future in these types ofjudgements. you cannot say that you are right or wrong about what's going to happen as a result of this. so it is notjust about these camps that are completely not talking to each other, and never going to move. we have already seen some elements of movements within them, and people are not entirely set in one identity. and in fact, what we tried to cover in the book is actually, if you are looking for a time when people were set in their political identities, it was much in the past, where when we used to ask

are you a supporter of one particular political party? doesn't matter which one it is, but do you feel like you are a supporter of that one party? used to get 70%, 80% of people agreeing with that, in the 19405, 19505, 19605. and now it is down to 20% among millennials, and the generation coming through since 1980. if anything we're in a more fluid party political context, and that is where you will get party political movements coming up, as in italy, as in france, as in lots of countries. is this a dangerous time for democracy, given this disconnect you see between reality and perceptions of reality? yes, yes. it is definitely a dangerous time. and we need to think differently about how we do democracy with people. and this is not at all about condescension, or that people are not taking any account of the facts or that people cannot cope with the facts.

but democracy does depend on a well—informed public. if the public is not well informed, we are all in big trouble. but they can be informed, to some degree. so the use of deliberative democracy, the greater use of deliberative democracy, where people or a selection of people are taken through these arguments, the potential for that for the future of democracy is very high. notjust because we know much more about how people think and the biases that people have, but because of the very technology that is causing the problem in the first place. people are not unwilling to look at information and to consider their views. they will not flip their world view, but on particular issues, we have done lots and lots of studies where you take people through really quite technical things, or quite identity based things, and they will listen and they will adapt.

so in a word, you don't fear for democracy? i think i do fearfor democracy, but i think there's things we can do. bobby duffy, we have the end there, but thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much indeed. hello. well, in the last few days it's been pretty warm across the uk, with temperatures in the high 205 across the south. we've got another fine day on the way on wednesday across central and southern areas of the uk. you'll probably see scenes like this from tuesday, lovely weather there around the docklands in london. but there is change on the way. this weather front will cool things off over the next few days, but initially, the cooler air will be reaching scotland and northern ireland. but ahead of it, we still have warm air coming in all the way from the azores, from the subtropics

here, so that's why it's so warm outside. in fact, temperatures overnight around the mid—teens across much of the country. now, the weather front will be moving across the uk through the early hours of wednesday morning. it's already been wet across scotland, parts of northern ireland too have seen quite a bit of rain, and that's just about moving into south—western scotland now. to the south of that, it's dry. where the skies clear, there might be a little bit of a chill in the air, 13 degrees for norwich. but generally, where we have the cloud, it's around 15, 16,17 degrees. so this is very warm and humid air over us first thing in the morning. here is the weather front. this is a cold front, or a cool front, you can call it in the summer. behind it, the cooler air comes in, much fresher air, so scotland and northern ireland in the afternoon will be quite a bit cooler. you can see those yellow colours here indicating those lower temperatures in the north atlantic, mostly around the teens — 17 in belfast, only 1a in stornoway, but to the south, we've got temperatures in the high teens.

and then this central bit here, around northern england and wales, that's where the weather front is moving through, so the chance of catching, i think, some rain during the course of wednesday. now, wednesday into thursday, these weather fronts, in fact a succession of them, start moving through the uk. and then, behind it, and the forecast has been the same for the last few days. we have this much fresher air coming in off the north atlantic and iceland, so that cooler air starts invading the uk on thursday. 0ne weather front moves through the south—east earlier in the day, so possibly some rain. again, more weatherfronts and showers moving into scotland and northern ireland, and also a bit of a breeze. these are winds in miles per hour. you can double these, so winds gusting perhaps to 30 mph there off western scotland, but cool already on thursday. you can see temperatures in the low 205 in the south, in the mid—teens for belfast, glasgow and for edinburgh. how about the next few days? well, it looks like the temperatures might pick up a little bit, but not awful lot, and cardiff might be up to 19 by monday, possibly 21 in london by monday, but it will be quite changeable. bye— bye.

hello, everyone. this is newsday. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: president trump's former campaign chief, paul manafort, found guilty of eight criminal charges, including bank and tax fraud. president trump gave this reaction. this started as russian collision, this is absolutely nothing to do — this is a witch—hunt, and it's a disgrace. and it doesn't end there: the president's former lawyer, michael cohen, pleads guilty to tax evasion and violating election campaign finance rules. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: