the certification of november's how do we ensure fact prevails over fiction? alan rusbridger, presidential election in the us welcome to hardtalk. pleased to be here. your latest book is congress is back on track after deadly clashes inside the building between security forces and a violent group subtitled "what to believe in a of donald trump's supporters. fa ke subtitled "what to believe in a fake news world". do you several republican senators believe we are living in a fake who had previously said they wouldn't support certification have now news world ? changed their minds. believe we are living in a fake news world? i think we are. we are living in an age of mr trump had earlier urged his supporters to march com plete are living in an age of complete information chaos and all of the surveys of trust on congress, repeating unproven allegations of electoral fraud. show that the media is doing very badly. people don't know what to believe any longer, who one woman was shot and later died as they stormed to believe and who to trust. the building. but to call it a fake news world surely to undermine the three others died from medical importance of so many different emergencies. three others from facebook media organisations and and twitter have blocked journalists of integrity right mr trump from posting because of his repeated assertions that the around the world who are election was stolen. continuing to do what they have joe biden said american democracy had been subjected to an unprecedented assault. mr biden said the storming a lwa ys continuing to do what they have always done — that is, to bear of the capitol by mr trump's witness, to report accurately supporters bordered and truthfully and to give on sedition. he said the world was watching and he was shocked and saddened their viewers, listeners and readers a picture of what is the us had come to happening in the world today. such a dark moment. readers a picture of what is happening in the world todaylj think actually it's the opposite. it is really trying now it's time for hardtalk. to emphasise the importance of

journalism at its best as a method of understanding the world and getting out the truth, but the problem is that survey after survey shows that welcome to hardtalk. i am people don't really trust journalism any more than other stephen sackur. the covert 19 forms of communication. we are like pandemic is a test of living in a world now in which global public health systems. the monopoly on news that people used to have when they it also profound challenge to had a printing press or broadcasting studio is now oui’ it also profound challenge to our media and information shared between the 4 billion networks. look online and you people on the planet who can 110w people on the planet who can will find fact and fakery now broadcast and publish. locked in mortal combat on the journalism is in some trouble dangers of the of the disease, the efficacy of lockdowns and just at the point where you think, you would have thought, the efficacy of lockdowns and people would be flooding to the the safety of the vaccines. my safe harbour of a craft or guest today is alan rusbridger, profession that they know they former editor of the guardian and now a member of facebook‘s can trust. well, that of course brings me to the covid—19 supervisory oversight board. 00:01:45,257 --> 2147483051:37:38,712 how do we ensure fact prevails 2147483051:37:38,712 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 overfiction? pandemic under way information is flowing around the world as to the reality is, the dangers of the virus itself, the nature of the virus itself, the nature of governmental including lockdowns as we currently live

in the united kingdom, and of course the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. are you suggesting that on all of these measures, news and information flows are measures, news and information flows a re now measures, news and information flows are now toxid fired in some way? well, we have to accept that people, of course many journalists are accept that people, of course manyjournalists are doing a wonderfuljob in the middle of this —— toxified. i think it's almost the first time in many journalists' lives when they realise that what they write or broadcast can be a matter of life and death and many have risen to that challenge really well but, again, if you look at the surveys of who people are turning to and who they are trusting, it is not clear to me that journalism is trusting, it is not clear to me thatjournalism is trusted as much as it should be and i make the point of writing in the book, i was trying to examine why that is, to try to explain to readers whyjournalism at its best deserves to be trusted, but also to try and make journalists themselves think a bit more deeply about the reasons for lack of trust

and there are many of them. the book is fascinating and you write it as a sort of glossary with keywords that matter to the future of journalism with keywords that matter to the future ofjournalism and to be honest with you when you get to the letter c i can't remember when you are light upon the word censorship or not, but either way in your view is censorship what is required right now to detoxify the well of journalism particularly when it comes to the arguments and discussions about covid—19? is censorship what you want? no. you would be amazed to learn i'm not in favour of censorship. i am a very old—fashioned liberal. i am with john stuart very old—fashioned liberal. i am withjohn stuart mill, the philosopher who argued a long time ago that the best response to argument was more argument. i think censorship is very dangerous because it just i think censorship is very dangerous because itjust gives rise to suspicion. why are

these views being suppressed? i am infavourof these views being suppressed? i am in favour of meeting argument with more argument, of bringing as many facts and arguments out into the open so that those can be had out in the open and where there is a falsity it can be confronted with facts. i am very mindful that having edited a national newspaper in the uk for two decades you are currently sitting on the so—called oversight board of facebook. we can discuss that in detail later but just right can discuss that in detail later butjust right now on the question of what is put out on facebook, you are saying you are not in favour of removing, thatis, are not in favour of removing, that is, censoring messages put out on the world's most influential social media site, which for example sometimes suggests that the vaccine is deeply dangerous to people or on other occasions that lockdowns don't work and are being manipulated by governments around the world to damage the people's interest.

this sort of message on facebook should not be removed, shouldn't it? i think you have to look at each case on its merits. i am to look at each case on its merits. iam part to look at each case on its merits. i am part of a panel thatis merits. i am part of a panel that is looking at the covid case at the moment. i probably shouldn't talk about that, but looking at that you are in this world of looking at protecting free—speech, looking at who is speaking rather than with what kind of authority and how actionable it is. i think if somebody is out there saying "inject bleach into your arms, that's going to cure you" or "swallowed ms—dos" that is clearly dangerous and crazy and thatis clearly dangerous and crazy and that is going to endanger people. if it is people that we know our lockdown sceptics who are making the argument that lockdowns don't work or that you want herd immunity, i think iam in you want herd immunity, i think i am in favour of allowing those to remain up possibly with warnings, possibly with

the tools that facebook have and other social media platforms that can suppress the veracity of those kind of m essa 9 es veracity of those kind of messages but i think if you die than what you are going to do is suppress those arguments into places like what's up where they can't be seen and they can't be confronted. it is difficult because the very notion an oversight board will sound to some people somewhat paternalistic. you know, the whole idea of the internet in a way was to level out information flows to make them much less top—down, to make them more egalitarian in a way. then when we learn that facebook is so worried about information flows and false information flows and false information that it has to have people like you, members of the media establishment, set on an oversight board and declare what facebook should and should not take down, maybe it sounds like the spirit of the internet is being lost. the people who created facebook and other

media companies, modern media companies, interactive media companies, interactive media companies, are mostly engineers and they are obviously brilliant engineers who have done an astonishing job of building those platforms, but simultaneously they have unleashed human life in digital form. so human life is wonderful and awful, dangerous and exhilarating. there are wonderful things around digital media but there are things that i hate filled and dangerous. i think it is probably a good thing that a media company has said to people notjust from the media but from the law, from human rights backgrounds, from human rights backgrounds, from academia, would you help us think about these issues because they are highly complex. we know that the battle for freedom of speech in this country in britain has taken 300 years and they are highly complex issues, these balancing issues between free—speech and possible harms,

so the reason ijoined this board is it seems to me are most important task to help the engineers think through the model, ethical, legal and engineers think through the model, ethical, legaland free speech perspectives that are involved in what facebook is doing. it is difficult for me to condense the ideas in your book about the future of news into just book about the future of news intojust a book about the future of news into just a few simple sentences. i don't want to do you an injustice but when you write in the book for example about the brexit phenomenon in the uk and the triumph of donald trump in the 2016 election and the nature of his presidency as well, you make it plain that in your view there isa plain that in your view there is a real problem that many people voted, expressed their democratic will, based on what you described as false information. at some points you suggest it was almost a form of brainwashing. it could be that on both of those issues, the rise of drum and brexit, you

just disagree with the democratic outcome —— trump. just disagree with the democratic outcome —— trumplj was no longer editing when brexit happened but i knew as a reader what i wanted. if you are going to go to people and ask them to make a direct vote you want them to be as well—informed as possible. it seems to me obvious that what a newspaper or a broadcasting organisation's function is to give both sides of the argument, you equip them with the information they need to know in order to vote. almost the last thing that matters is what your opinion as a newspaper owner or editor or proprietor is. i am not against of course people saying this is my opinion on how you should vote, but in fact a lot of the british press did exactly the opposite. they started by saying this is how you should vote, this is what you believe, we won't give two sides of the argument and a lot of the front pages particularly towards the end became hectoring, menacing, bullying and all of this stuff about threatening mps who disagreed all thejudges

about threatening mps who disagreed all the judges who we re disagreed all the judges who were suddenly the enemies of the people and that seemed to mea the people and that seemed to me a real perversion of what news should if i may interact for a second i guess my point is you are saying constantly this is a story or problem about journalism. i am saying maybe it is just an evolving democracy and that voices that haven't been heard before are now being heard. people who felt voiceless before, some of whom, many of whom frankly are rather attracted to donald trump, in the uk may be attracted to brexit, they are getting traction now and they are able to express their views via twitter, facebook and many other social media platforms in a way that they haven't been able to do before and you, if i may say so, a liberal elite, and established media elite who didn't really have to pay attention to those voices in the past, now we'll have to do. yes, and of course i am totally in favour of that and there is lots of evidence that people are consulting many more sources than they did in the

past. i am sources than they did in the past. iam merely sources than they did in the past. i am merely making a point about the position that journalism is to have in the future. of course i'm arguing from a position in which i think journalists from a position in which i thinkjournalists are essential. i think it is essential. i think it is essential to have people in society who can say this happened, that didn't happen, this is true, this isn't true, because in a world of information tales where you have no idea what is true and what isn't true and who you can trust, then societies become unworkable. i'm not blaming the brexit result. that is not the way i would have voted myself, but i am saying that if news organisations want to regain that kind of trust they are probably going to have to think about the environment in which they work on the 21st century which is very different from the 20th century. yes. you have had a long journalistic career. even longer than mine. do you think there ever was in your lifetime a golden age when the public really did invest huge amounts of trust in

journalists? well for a start they didn't have any option. that was one of the things when i began my career where if you owned a printing press or a broadcasting studio you more or less had a monopoly on what people consumed. that is a different point, that isn't about trust, that is about monopolistic access to the reader, listener or viewer but there is a different point about trust. in the past, did people invest trust in what they read? it is about trust because if you had no other sources, those were the only sources, those were the only sources that you had and the evidence seems to be that people did invest in news organisations with more trust. now of course, as you've said, they have multiple sources. they can check the version that now for a look at the they are reading on twitter or elsewhere. that has led to a quite startling kind of trust, not only in news organisations but institutions more

generally. i want to talk about newspapers because you oversaw the most remarkable period in change in the newspaper business, and you area the newspaper business, and you are a pioneer of developing the guardian is an online brand, it has become a major international news brand thanks to its online presence. but it's sales, and all newspaper sales, the look the literal paper copy, they are flailing and dying, and they will indeed terminally day very soon, i would imagine. does that matter? i don't think it matters, whether you consume your newspaper on a mobile phone or a tablet or a computer or in print. i think it really does matter that newspapers or news organisations themselves survive, they have an institutional importance and strength and role in developing the craft ofjournalism, so i think newspapers have no option to do what the guardian did which was to accept the fate of

print was extremely time—limited and try to do their best to navigate the new world of digital. many newspapers are clearly not surviving, we have seen many go bust, but in particular we have seen a massive financial crisis in the local newspaper industry, and the united kingdom, many other parts of the world, very markedly in the united states as well. does that really matter, that people seem to not really, if one can judge from the user habits, value local news is that used to? it could matter more in my opinion, and maybe afterfour yea rs of opinion, and maybe afterfour years of donald trump in which you have a president who has almost gone out of his way to say there is no such thing as truth, objective truth, you ought to believe me then one of you believe the best newspapers in the world, the new york times, we have this world in which we don't know who to believe, and it really matters that local communities, all communities have a way of

knowing what is true and what isn't true, otherwise it can't work, we can see this with covid at the moment. if you don't believe there is a crisis and the government will have a realjob in persuading people that their responses are right. that the dress rehearsal for climate change if you like a. because local news matters, all news matters, and i suppose the book is a sort of plea for trying to regain the methods of trust that would lead people back to news that should be trusted, but we have to accept that journalism itself trusted, but we have to accept thatjournalism itself has got some way, some things about the way that is done that they have to fix. maybe the entire landscape is evolving and you are not evolving with it. there is an element of you, and you are quite open about it, that is telling people that metaphorically, they have to eat their greens, they have to

consume local news about planning and council meetings, and local political stand—offs, because it is good for them and it is good for accountability and democracy, even if, frankly, many people find it utterly boring. well, that's a lwa ys utterly boring. well, that's always been a function of good journalism i think, eat your greens, that bit. if we believe, as i do, that we are facing a crisis in climate, thatis facing a crisis in climate, that is going to affect our children, grandchildren, in quite a short time span, it is the duty ofjournalists to keep reporting that, even if people don't want to read it very much. but how do you engage them and how to make sure they trust what you were saying? these are two elements that really matter for the future,

engagement and trust, how do you rebuild it? the engagement bed, it's whatjournalist should do, journalist need to work out how to dramatically, graphically, and repeatedly write about climate change, that will grab the attention of the reader. in terms of trust, it all comes down to in the zist it all comes down to in the 21st century, transparency, is no longer to say that i am a journalist, believe me, iwork for this title, believe me. i am terribly interested when you look on these days, the best people on twitter, they don't expect you to believe them, they say here is my proposition, here is my screenshot, here is my link, if i have got it wrong, please tell me, i will correct it, i'm prepared to have that argument in public. these are 21st—ce ntu ry in public. these are 21st—century techniques of trust and i'm afraid they're very different from how a lot of journalists of a very different from how a lot ofjournalists of a certain age or mindset still work. one of the ironies or possible ironies of your career, is that having spent so long newspapers, believing in what newspapers do, you are now being paid by facebook, one of the world's bigger social media operators to sit on their oversight board

and ina to sit on their oversight board and in a sense, give a figleaf of accountability and transparency to accompany which remains highly secretive about its core operations, about its algorithms, the way it uses data and personal information and privacy. do you worry that you are being used? of course, one of the conditions for joining this board is that facebook have agreed to implement all our decisions are. but your decisions, if i may interrupt, they are all about specific cases as you have just said to me, about specific cases as you havejust said to me, specific cases about covid information, about the use of nudity online, or anything else, i about the use of nudity online, oranything else, i mean about the use of nudity online, or anything else, i mean they are important, i'm not belittling them, but they are not what really matters about the public and facebook. what really matters there is the way in which facebook, without our knowledge, in so many different ways, monetise is asked, and our personal behaviours. and we

have no way of knowing how they do it, and your oversight committee is not going to be able to delve one inch into that. step back a bit. what you haveis that. step back a bit. what you have is a giant media organisation, probably the most powerful media organisation in the world at the moment, inviting in a supreme court of people and saying we will obey your instructions about these highly inflammatory and important matters to do with freedom of speech and hate speech and incitement of violence and nudity in public health, and that is, i mean i can't think of a news organisation that has done that, or had their humility to do that to. i agree with you where i think our role is limited, but i think what i hope will happen is that once we have started publishing our judgements, we might be in a good position to have a conversation with facebook and ask if we can start looking at other aspects of how you run this company. i'm not disagreeing that it would be

prefera ble disagreeing that it would be preferable in time to get, for instance, inside the algorithm and understand how that works. interesting, you would like to get inside the algorithm. 0n the wider political point, in the wider political point, in the united states we see effo rts the united states we see efforts to change the so—called section 230 of the us communications law which safeguards facebook from being regarded as a publisher, very good news for facebook but politicians are trying to change that, the eu is trying to ta ke change that, the eu is trying to take on them and monopolistic aspects of corporations, in australia, corporations, in australia, corporations want facebook to pay for news. as a journalist, are you supporting all of these different efforts to rein in facebook? of course. this is like gutenberg, like gutenberg on speed. the cataclysm is on society after someone worked out a way to print books when monks had previously been writing them, and we have got that to the power of a billion

now, so of course there will be problems in society rearranges itself, and my only caution is to say look, stop demanding that everyone does this by next tuesday, because otherwise he will not get good results, and if you're going to do the incredibly difficult work of balancing the freedom of expression that facebook represents at its best, with minimising the harms, with a kind of organisation that we don't even know how to describe, we have not yet agreed whether it is a platform ora agreed whether it is a platform or a publisher, and that whole section 230 debate, so dealing with something vast and immensely complex, and it will not be solved overnight, and it shouldn't be, because we would make bad mistakes if you did. it seems to me that all of your m essa 9 es it seems to me that all of your messages about information chaos are going to require the next generation of internet and media users to be much more internet and information literate, if they are to

navigate through the chaos. do you see signs that the next generation will be literate in that way? well notjust journalists but society more broadly. i think everyone will have to play that role. i would like to see internet literacy, information literacy taught in schools because i think by the time you are 16 or 17, you are going to have to do play a part in deciding how you think, what you think is true, who you think you can trust, and individual citizens and their choices about what they retweet or what they share or what they suppress are going to be really important because this is all that such a scale that it's a problem not having an oversight board, but in the end, each of us will have to bear our responsibility, and they will have to begin with a programme of media literacy, probably from a very early age. alan rusbridger, fascinating to talk to you, thank you very much for joining me on hardtalk. good to be here.

hello there. there was some welcome sunshine in many areas on wednesday, but there's a definite wintery feel and look to the weather at the moment. not only do we have a widespread frost, but there will be some icy stretches around, and we have a spell of snow moving down from scotland and northern ireland ahead of that, some patches of freezing fog, as well. let's have a look at more detail then into the morning. and whilst there will be some patchy fog in the southeast of england, most of it will be through the midlands and towards merseyside. some icy patches in eastern england with those showers coming in off the north sea. and quite icy in scotland and northern ireland with that band of rain, sleet and snow moving down across the country, leaving a few centimetres of lying snow by the morning in many areas.

now gradually that rain, sleet, and increasingly snow to high ground moves down into northern england. brightening up in scotland and northern ireland, more snow for northern scotland. further south, most of that fog will tend to lift, although it could be quite great in a few places and feel particularly cold, some sunshine to come especially in wales and the southwest — another cold day wherever you are. and it will stay cold as we move into friday. the threat of more ice and also frost, as well, and maybe some more wintry showers coming into eastern scotland and northern england. a spell of light snow expected through the midlands and wales before that tends to peter out, also some damp weather in the southwest. but away from here, many places i think we'll see some sunshine. again, it's a cold day, temperatures struggling to 1—2 celsius, for example, in glasgow and also birmingham. now let's head into the weekend — slow changes to come, widespread frost on saturday morning, sunshine for england and wales, a cold day here, turning more cloudy for scotland and northern ireland, but a dampness around as well, especially in northern scotland as the breeze picks up.

temperatures start to rise in the northwest of scotland, it stays cold elsewhere with temperatures at 3—4 celsius. we got a week weather front for northern areas, still around for the second half of the weekend. high pressure starting to nudge in, and we are starting to change in the wind direction, picking up some milder air slowly but surely that'll come in from the atlantic. but that does mean the weather will turn more unsettled. we start to see the milder air coming in towards northwestern areas, wind picking up and rain moving in early next week, and eventually that milder air moves further south and also further east.

this is bbc news. i'm sally bundock with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world.

democracy unbowed — after a day of chaos on capitol hill, america's lawmakers get back to work. to those who wreaked havoc in our capital today, you did not win. violence never wins. freedom wins. and this is still the people's house. we will not be put out of this chamber by thugs, mobs, or threats. this president bears a great deal of the blame.