citizens are complicit in the spread of alternative facts. we reject news we simply don't like the danger we become lost in that fog of unknowability if truth is pushed into a wood chipper, leaving us to say, i don't know what to believe, then alternative facts have just -- haven't just fought truth to a draw, alternative facts may have already won. >> sean spicer our press secretary gave alternative facts to that. but the point is - >> what do you mean, alternative facts are not facts. alternative facts are not facts. they're falsehoods >> reporter: on the first full day of the trump administration, the president directed his aides to sit on a disprovable lie about his inaugural crowd size, a touch point in an era when facts are under attack

of course, twisting the facts is nothing new in the politics. >> it depends on what the meaning of the word is >> that sound a lot like this. >> the truth is truth. i don't mean -- >> no, it isn't truth. truth isn't truth. >> but the scale is new. as of december 10th, the president made 15,413 false or misleading claims in office, that according to washington post what's also new the scale of the campaign against the press. >> just remember, what you are seeing and what you will reading is not what's happening. >> in a pew survey this year 30% of republicans had a great deal or fair amount of confidence that journalists will act in the best interests of the public, compared with 76% of democrats, a 46 point gap. >> if you just listen to the main stream media, it's pretty much slanted left. >> facebook is the number one network for disinformation

organized propaganda campaigns were found in the platform in 56 countries this year. in the u.s., facebook users shared the top 100 false political stories over 2.3 million times in the first ten months of this year. among them, trump's grandfather was a pimp and a tax evader, his father a member of the kkk and nancy pelosi was diverting social security money for the impeachment inquiry, clearly both false. >> we don't stop people from posting on their page something that's wrong. >> reporter: mr. trump is leveraging the polarized political climate. >> there are four things actors do if they want to attack their enemies or defend themselves against criticism. you can think of them as the four ds. >> number one, dismiss, attack critics to erode their credibility and invalidate the facts. >> fake news.

>> mr. trump has used the word fake on twitter more than 800 times. number 2, distort. if the fact are against you, make up your own facts >> there are many places like california, the same person votes many times, not a conspiracy theory, folks millions and millions of people. number three, distract i'm rubber you're glue defense, if are you accused of something, accuse someone else of the same thing. >> the phone call was perfect. the word that weren't perfect were joe biden with respect to his son. >> number four, dismay, threats and intimidation. >> we are going to take a strong look at our country's libel laws >> one fear, if both sides normalize disinformation as a political tactic in fact, in the 2017 alabama senate race, a group of democrats did use online disinformation in the campaign against roy moore, circulating false eftd evidence that russian

twitter bots were working to elect moore. >> my big concern when it comes to disinformation is that we are going to see more and more people trying to do the same thing that the russians did in 2016 >> joining me now is the executive editor of the washington post mark baron and the executive editor of the "new york times," dean mackay, gentlemen, welcome to "meet the press. >> thank you for having me >> peter baker wrote recently, there are days in washington lately when it feels like the truth, itself, is on trial well, help us make sense of that >> i mean, it's true of course, it's ridiculous to say that truth isn't truth of course, that's a ridiculous construct. i mean, our job and it's a hard job, but our jobs is to sort out fact from fiction and to very aggressively work to make sure that people trust us and understand that

that's our job i mean, marty has a very extensive fact-check operation as do we and those things didn't exist three or four years ago and they're an acknowledgment that one of the jobs as a news media is to sort through all of the bs, if i can say that, and come to some -- and come -- do the deep reporting that we all grew up doing, to come so some sort of understanding of what's actually happening in the world. i think that's one of our largest new jobs. >> marty, you actually tweeted a quote from a column with a question that i actually think crystallizes the challenge you did this tweet about year. how do you tell someone i'm trying to treat your fears seriously but your facts don't exist. how as an individual and how as a country. this is a challenge. it reminded me of sharia law

there's nothing like that. there's no facts here to support it >> well, look, we live in an environment where people are able to spread crazy conspiracy theories and absolute falsehoods and lies that's made possible by the internet and social media, feel are drawn to sources of information, so-called information that confirms their pre-existing points of view. that what's contributing to this environment that we have today >> dean pointed this out about the increase in fact checking that both of you as news organizations, we have been doing more of it but you chronicled over 15,000 false or misleading claims just by the president why do you believe that's important and are you concerned at some point 15,000, aren't people numb to it? >> well, they might be numb to it that's concerning. we still have the responsible for determining what's true and what's false and in particular

holding our government officials accountable for what they say and telling people whether they're telling the truth or not telling the truth. that's fundamental to the responsibilities we have a journalistic institution. >> here's a challenge to both of you, i want to put up this poll number, when folks were asked in a poll where do they go for trusted information, among trump supporters, they cited the president himself, 91% of trump supporters said that's where they go for accurate information. fact-checks be damned here. >> that's true and i think that's the way the president would like to have it. he has described you sees a the opposition party that goes back to the presidential campaign. he wants us to be perceived as the opposition party so people will dismisses anything that we -- anything that we have to say. he wants to disqualify the mainstream media as an arbiter of facts and truth and disqualify others, disqualify the courts, historians,

disqualify scientists, any independent source of information. >> do we have to market the truth? what i mean by this is, he's out there a lot, essentially, delegitimizing our professions we don't fight back like a candidate. we don't fight back like a campaign do we need to start campaigning around the country to say, no, no, here's how facts works, here's what journalists are, if i utter a fact on tv on purpose, i get fired. >> journalists took for granted and believed that people believed everything we said. they believe that if i file the story from afghanistan, that we were there they believe -- we believe that everybody thought we were in war zones and we believe that people trusted us and we went through generations of just assuming everybody believed us. what i think we're going to have to get very aggressive at is to be really transparent, to assume nothing and make sure people know where we are, how we do our

work, to show ou work more aggressively that's a different muscle for us to my mind, that's a form of marketing our journalism when the post did their great project last week about the build up to the war in afghanistan and the lies, they put their documents online they put them online so that i could read them, readers could read them and could see that it wasn't just three reporters or, i guess, in this case, one reporter sitting in a room making stuff up. the stuff was there. that is not something that we knew how to do ten years ago we did the same thing when we broke the story of trump's taxes a year ago, we show you the stuff. and i think that's a form of marketing our journalism i think that's a form as well as doing what we're doing now which is to be out in the world talking about what we do and very aggressively defending our institutions, defending the truth, and defending our important role in democracy. >> marty, you go out of your

way, i believe you -- anytime one of your journalists are name-checked publicly in a demeaning way, you always publicly go out there and defend them and it seems as if you don't want to miss anybody that happens too. why? >> well, i think we have a responsibility to stand up for our journalists when they're right. if we're wrong, we should acknowledge that as well when they're unfairly attacked and an individual uses vile language to describe our journalists, i think it's something that we have to fight against. and i want to do that. >> i want to read you guys a letter to the editor that we found in the lexington herald leader it was a fascinating attempt to try to explain why some people support president trump. it's because people have been trained to believe in fairy tales. the more lies he tells, the better they feel show me a person who believes in

noah ark and i will show you a trump voter. this gets at something that my executive producer says, voters want to be lied to sometimes they don't always love being told hard truths >> i'm sure i buy that politicians have lied to people. i don't want to keep flogging marty's terrific afghanistan story, but that was about a generation of political leaders who lied in the most aggression way which was to say a war that was failing and leading to american deaths was succeeding i'm not convinced that people want to be lied to people want to be comforted and i think bad politicians sometimes say comforting things to them and our job is to jump into the breach and to jump into those conversations, to do the deep reporting, to say, look,

i'm sorry. what i have to say may be uncomfortable, but that thing that you just heard that made you feel good is a lie i think that's our job. >> coal jobs is what comes to my head and you're like, it's not going to happen, right, marty? >> yeah, i think we have to be careful. i don't want to be dismissive of the people who support the president. they're owed our respect and they have mine but they feel that this so-called elites in washington have not paid attention to them. they don't understand their lives, their concerns. that they -- they're not being heard. and they feel that the president is actually listening to them and addressing their concerns and so they tend to believe him and they're deeply suspicious of so-called elites, people who are described as elites, and so they turn to him. >> dean, this is something my late father was one of those folks, those new yorkers, they

think they're better than us he would say that every once in a while. do you feel that as -- at the "new york times" that because a lot of people don't listen to the "new york times" reporting because they say, i don't understand your life so why should i believe what you report do you think you have to get the "new york times" as in touch with manhattan and brooklyn as they are with rolla, missouri. >> i grew up in a poor neighborhood and had never been outside of louisiana and mississippi until i was about 17 years old. when i go home and my family teases me that i'm now considered one of the great leaders of the elite, i do think, however, that we have to do a much better job, i agree with what marty said, understanding some of the forces that drive people in parts of america that maybe are not as powerful in new york or los angeles. we have to do a better job

covering religion. we have to do a better job understanding why some people support donald trump i agree we can't dismisses everybody who supports donald trump. i think we have to get out in america much more than we do and talk to people and sort of figure out ways other than the traditional diner story. we need to go deeper and i think both of your institutions have gotten better at this just to stew in and let people talk. i often talk about religion because i grew up in a very religious family and i think, look, people in new york and los angeles, the places i've lived in, not everybody, but people in the worlds we travel don't always see religion as the powerful force that it is and i think we have to do a better job understanding that i think we cannot dismiss everybody who supported donald trump and everybody -- and we cannot dismiss them. first off, that's not

journalistically moral it's journalistically moral to reach out, understand the world and to be read that's our job. >> what's the correct frame when we describe what our journalism is is it objective? is it fair what's the term you prefer what do you think is the correct framing to describe what our journalism is, i guess, in these mainstream news organizations. >> we should be fair, we should be listeners more than talkers and we should be willing to listen to everyone and i also think that we need to be fair to the public which means that when we've done our reporting, when we've done our jobs, when we've been thorough, then we need to tell people what we've found. we can't disguise it we need to be direct and straight forward and tell people what we've actually learned. and so i believe in being fair in the sense of being open minded, going into a story but being fair with the public at the end, once we've done our

jobs, telling them what we've found. >> i like to -- go ahead >> i was going to add, i agree with all those too empathetic, great journalists are empathetic, they listen and try to understand. that's not pandering and i think the most powerful word for me is independent it means independent of everybody, by the way. except our principles and our readers. >> all good words there. i use a phrase these days, don't round the edges. say what you see thank you both much appreciated have a great new year. >> thank you when we come back, the anatomy of a lie, how a story can gain currency in our new media landscape.

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that will makeout washington insiders very uncomfortable: term limits. you and i both know we need term limits, that congress shouldn't be a lifetime appointment. but members of congress, and the corporations who've bought our democracy hate term limits. too bad. i'm tom steyer and i approve this message because the only way we get universal healthcare, address climate change and make our economy more fair is to change business as usual in washington.

welcome back when president trump spoke to president zelensky in the infamous july 25th phone call, one of the favors included crowd strike crowd strike was to look into the 2016 server. and determined that russia is responsible. mr. trump has suggested that crowd strike is a ukrainian company. that it was ukraine not russia that interfered in the 2016 election the claim, itself, has no places if fact. clint lock fe is a security analyst and author of "messing with the enemy" and will help us understand how unfounded allegations spread we are calling this anatomy of a lie. all successful lies begin with a kernel of truth. simply crowd strike hired to investigate dnc server hack. quickly, why crowd strike not

the fbi? >> crowd strike is a cyber security company, one of the best in the world and one of the best for america and they work for groups like the dnc and many large united states companies and even international companies. and they have great cyber forensics and the ability to investigate and determine attribution. they're also a resource for our defense, our u.s. community department of defense. they would all rely on a company like this. >> this was taken for fact got it by the spring of '17, this is the first time that the president started to question crowd strike he tweeted something, an ap reporter asked, crowd strike what did you bring up crowd strike that's what i heard. it's owned by a very rich cranen this is not true but how do we get to the seeds of doubt here? >> we saw in the first part, you take a fact to propel the lie. this is essentially how you make that falsehood to where you want it to be the answer, the story they want

out there is ukraine meddled in the election there is also entities that want that story, too, russia, where crowd strike is one of the biggest measures >> take a look at this date, this is april of 2017. let's go to the next slide that we have here this is president trump last month in november on fox and friends where essentially he starts to put it all together. the democrats, national -- they gave the server to crowd strike. it's a ukrainian company that's what the word is. 2 1/2 years later, he still perpetuating this and they asked, you know, there's not a lot of truth to this but he says it anyway. >> yeah. if you want to propel your lie, just keep issuing falsehoods the truth has one voice. lies are infinite. it wears out anybody trying to rebut them. >> the president says these things and it gets covered

>> you can do all of this in social media, you can write 1,000 stories. but the thing that powers all of these narratives the most is when a very influential real human being uses those narratives and advances them. >> it's not just human beings, it's news organizations or we can put news in quotes here. i want to single out two in particular, rt and sputnik they seem to be the launching pad for this specific conspiracy. >> that's right. there are four attributes you look for in terms of spreading some sort of propaganda. be there first, repeat it over and over and over again. the human mind can't resist repetition it's got to come from a trusted source these are trusted sources for some people, and block out all rebuttals. if you can narrow people in, you can put people in an information cocoon. >> if you do push back and you don't have the facts, then you can do this. let's go to the next slide

ask questions. what is going on we're not sure what the deal is. maybe where are those servers? i've never seen them why aren't they looking -- why didn't the fbi go into the dnc offices and here we are. >> you can make lies faster than you can refute them. just continue to ask questions, question more. also, the motto of a certain russia state sponsored actor, the audience will walk away. >> as of november of this year, the nrcc, which is the republic campaign arm for house races, use crowd strike, and you said this is a russian effort to get -- to sort of smear crowd strike specifically, why >> if russia can disable crowd strike, if they can take away their customer base or make people say you don't believe what crowd strike is doing or saying or providing evidence

for, they're taking away one of their opponents and using the american target audience to do that >> this is amazing the world that we have to live in now and have to figure out when we come back, the art of spreading disinformation in putin's russia, and it echoes right here in the good old usa sometimes, the pressures of today's world can make it tough

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i'm a verizon engineer, and i'm part of the team building the most powerful 5g experience for america. it's 5g ultra wideband-- --for massive capacity-- --and ultra-fast speeds. almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. that's 25 times faster than today's network in new york city. so people from midtown manhattan-- --to downtown denver-- --can experience what our 5g can deliver. (woman) and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places... it's pretty crazy. ...just imagine what it can do for you. ♪ we've seen how a russia propaganda technique can be used to get an untruth into the media bloodstream.

it's one of many models from putin's russia that has found its way into our system. we have the author of the future is history and former u.s. ambassador to russia, he's the author of from cold war to hot peace, currently a professor at stanford university. i began by asking them about one particular russian technique let me put up something here that the rand corporation wrote about the russia propaganda model and i want you to explain how this is implemented. this is how they describe it they disseminate an interpretation of events that show their themes or objectives. the propagandist will discard it and move onto a new explanation. the multichannel and continuous messaging makes russian themes more likely to be familiar to

their audiences, it's almost like done in realtime. give us an example of how you experienced it >> i think that the biggest thing to understand about it, it's less about what you would expect which is pushing some sort of one interpretation, one line it's more about creating sound. you're supposed to come out feeling like there's no such truth. >> we're starting to experience it firsthand here. and that's -- trump has a very good instinctual feel for it sometimes he says things that are the opposite of the facts in front of us and sometimes he kind of goes, yeah, whatever and sometimes he says, maybe that or maybe this and then in the end we feel like, all of these versions of -- i hesitate to call it realty, are equal, equal distance from the truth, and there's no -- there's nothing to

latch onto everything is mush >> mike, i know that -- i want to bring up two examples of just within russia and i think it was when you were there both of these, when soldiers without insignia on their uniforms at the time, vladimir putin repeatedly denied they were russian and a year later he started to boast that they were there, and then of course there the airlines flight 17 that was shot down over ukraine and all the various explanations in country that the russian government did explain how effective it was internally >> internally, i think they've done very well in terms of mastering disinformation and i agree completely with masha said, the goal is not necessarily to present one argument versus the other all the time, it's to say there are no truths, there are no facts, it's all relative. i've heard vladimir putin say that directly when he met with

barack obama one time. secondly, however, when there are facts, it's too put out arguments that say those are the wrong facts and so the two examples that you just used are an illustration of that second tactic and i would call that related to that another tactic what aboutism, to change the channel, to say, well, you did that there, what about this over here and that is another tactic that they use to confuse the terrain and to make people -- to be confused about the facts that there are no facts and that there are no truths in the world. >> i want to add something to the story because i think it's a really great example when he said after a year when he started boasting that there were russians on the ground, he wasn't admitting something that everybody knew he was saying i assert my right to say whatever i want whenever i want to. sometimes it will be true, sometimes it won't be. but i'm king of realty, right, and what are you going to do about it it's a power move when he lies and it's a power move when he

tells the truth. only he chooses when he does what as for the media, yes, he -- russia had a -- not an incredibly healthy media, but had some independent media when he became president and the first thing he did was he moved to take control of broadcast television and then he moved on -- national broadcast television, and then local television and newspapers and now 20 years later we have no independent media. >> and, mike, you know this a lot about putin. here's a quote that was attributed to him that he thinks -- he said the following, when he was asked about how he thinks the press works, putin said, here's an owner, they have their own politics and for them it's an instrument the government also is an owner and the media that belonged to the government must carry out our instructions and media that belonged to a private businessman, they followed their orders. >> that's his view, that's his view, and that's why one of the first things he did in the year

2000 was to seize control of two of the national television networks so they were completely controlled by the government he understands the power of media. he has begun to export his ideas through multiple channels, both digital media and television >> there's a phrase that i was reading in this research that struck me and it's called toxic cynicism that that is what is in russia right now and that is what he hopes to export to the west. >> and i think we have a lot of it here native born. we have it in the white house. >> we didn't need help now he added an accelerant >> that's it i think he and trump share a basic sense of the world and their sense of the world is that nothing matters, nothing is true -- >> nothing is on the level nothing is on the level. >> yes everything is for sale and money equals power and power equals money and it's unitary.

there can be no checks and balances there can be no systems. any kind of formal relationship was always a lie. >> mike, what -- you were involved, you've met with a lot of dissidents that are trying to deal with putin in russia, what breaks him if he breaks? >> well, i think an effective thing is just to keep revealing facts, especially about corruption people want to know about the facts and i would say the same thing about our country too. i think sometimes there is a kind of on the one hand, on the other hand that we present with various political debates in the united states and here -- now i want to purpose on my professor hat, all estimates are not equal. if you have one set of high p

hypotheses that has no evidence, reporting on those two hi hypotheses is a distortion of the fact russians keep going back to the facts as their best weapon and we as a society need to go that itself you don't get your own facts you have your own arguments, opinions, but two plus two needs to equal four for democrats and republicans every day, not just mondays, wednesday and fridays >> you can see my entire conversation on our website on meetthepress.com choosing the news you use depending on your political beliefs. ♪ yes i'm stuck in the middle with you, ♪ no one likes to feel stuck, boxed in, or held back. especially by something like your cloud. it's a problem. but the ibm cloud is different.

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63% of democrats and democratic-leaning voters say they believe journalists have high ethical standards while 36% of republicans say the opposite. voters are choosing news from sources that reflect their own political views. in 2004, 48% of democrats identified themselves as cnn viewers. by 2018, that number had gone up to 56% meanwhile fewer republicans watch cnn and viewership has dropped in that time span by 6 points 46% of democrats call themselves ms nbc viewers republican msnbc viewership has dropped 14 points. less than a quarter of democrats identify themselves as fox news viewers last year. but viewership for the network went up 14 points among the republicans to 58% this siloing of news sources helps explain why democrats and republicans have become so divided. all politics is no longer local,

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welcome back our panel is here, former host now of 1a on npr, co-founder and editor at large of tech news and analysis website, author of a popular column in the "new york times," a staff writer at the new yorker and, resident fellow at the american enterprise institute. good to have you all i want to start in your world of tech one thing we haven't touched on as much is social media. we talked about it on the sides, but sort of the role social media is playing in this

misinformation campaign. mark zuckerberg and jack dorsey are having a debate. >> while i worry about an erosion of truth, i don't think most people don't want to live in a world that tech companies judge to be 100% truth. >> jack dorsey disagreed with him, it's about paying to increase the reach of political speech has ramifications that today's infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. >> yes that's the two sides of it and google sits in the middle and it's trying to figure out a way between them you know, mark's idea, he's conflating free speech with paid speech and it's confusing to people anybody can say anything on their platforms -- on twitter, for example, donald trump continues to tweet but he his campaign doesn't get to do paid advertising and that's a very different thing.

what's really interesting is that it's been around forever, you look at george washington, all those days, this was partisan crowds. when you get into the social media space, it becomes weaponized, it becomes amplified and anonymous. and then you can repeat lies and they take a virality and create an engagement that leads to enragement do it again. >> this to me is -- look, this is not knew. linden johnson is created with saying i don't know if it's true or not just say it and make them deny it social media just makes it where the space between what's first reported and the fake part almost just got reversed. >> it's faster it's amplified it repeats and repeats itself and it's not controllable in a different way. >> i think that social media, what you described about engagement and enragement, which

is very true, it exposes part of the problem and maybe part of the solution for those of us who consider ourselves journalists i think one of the issues that i have with the way we're fighting back against this is we're trying to fight back with information, but journalists are not in the information business. we are in the trust business trust is an emotion. you compete head to head, you connect heart to heart and it speaks to the fact that people are seeing information that provokes an emotional response trust is emotional too it's like love, you don't remember when you fell in love, but that emotion is broken and i think part of what we have to do is acknowledge that there is a heart piece of this, people are trusting these lies and misinformation and a lot of them are just damn lies but they work. they give you comfort. they make you feel like the world hasn't changed in ways you don't understand and it doesn't mean we affirm the lie, it

doesn't mean we don't speak the truth. if we're ignoring the human part of this, none of what we're doing is going to work >> it's the cultural connection that the right has decided it doesn't have with mainstream media. it doesn't matter what we report you don't understand my life, so why should i care? >> and that disconnect is decades old. >> sure. >> what gives us this perfect storm of alt truth is a few things, you have technological change, confidence in these big institutions has -- then you have president trump, right who kind of plugs -- benefits from both of those changes and use is it to amplify his message. what you end up with is this place where no one can really agree on the very basic material governing our democracy. >> i think the important thing is to recognize, this isn't

organically happen this comes in the context of a war on the institution of independent journalism, a war on the notion of truth that has served the political interest of -- you know, institutions in the country. i think fox news has wage add purposeful campaign over decades to convince people that other people's news wasn't the correct news in fact that they were the only -- >> in fairness -- this goes back to alexander hamilton, though. >> we have the president of the united states who says that the media is the enemy of the people i'm not familiar with any president who has ever spoken in this way, who has waged -- as marty pointed out in your first interview, i think importantly so, this was a political strategy there is a calculated campaign going on that there's -- the result of which is here now. there are new tools and a whole human nature to this we're seeing russian propaganda make its way into american

politics because russia had paid money and made it a focus of its effort. >> they lost the cold war. they won this one -- >> you're in past tense. >> because they continue to do it it's not a battle. we're not fighting against them in the proper ways by the ukraine thing. it's very clear, this is a lie crowd strike is in california. trust me, there are americans who are running it. >> now you have the president of the united states amplifying this. >> it's algorithmic. you're being targeted. it is exactly -- they can whisper 1,000 different lies in a million different ears it isn't hard. they amplify and get it so that you can't find the truth. >> i want you to address what i think is an ecosystem problem on the right. i want to put up something that my colleague put here, it's a bit of an ecosystem here, you'll

get something starts on 4chan, there's the reddit of trump, and then it starts inching into the mainstream, then it gets to drudge, might have a provocative headline link, rush might say it in his fun little way, then it makes its way into fox news and your facebook feed how do you create more accountability in the conservative ecosystem for basically dealing with propaganda >> well, it's hard work. i think it begins by trying to instruct young conservatives in the cannons of journalism. the distrust of institutions is long standing among conservatives has led many of them to no longer believe in the idea that you need kind of evidence in order to forward a fact or they don't believe in certain verified sources, credentialed sources of information. one other change that i think makes all this more difficult is

it used to be you could go to the supermarket and see the tabloids and you see the weekly world news and the alien has predicted who's going to be the president this year and you move past it. maybe some people get a chuckle. maybe some people believe it it's a minority of the population today you can't ignore it because it's everywhere. and the second you go on one of these platforms, social media in particular, you're confronted by it. >> i think, though -- i hear you in terms of the distrust among of conservatives, you're right about that i know a lot of conservatives who are god-fearing people and remember that the bible says it's better to tie a mill stone around your neck than to lead a little one astray. they read the book of proverbs i think there's a part of conservativism that speaks to the value of truth and personal responsibility i think it is crazy that there are people who say, oh, it's too

hard, there's so much going on out there, there's so much information. we want a world war against the nazis where we invented a new bomb and you won't dsubscribe to your local paper, really >> it goes to what is the responsibility of the citizen here >> don't be gullible. >> it's impossible to fight it it's addictive, it's repetitive, it's propaganda, and it is in ways -- they don't have to -- >> i feel like i'm watching the head and the heart debate here the algorithm is strong. >> it's strong it is doing things in ways that has never been possible through a newspaper. nobody is reading newspapers and shouldn't be this is great to be able to get this information on your phone and with conservatives, there's a great book called anti-social that showed this chain you don't need the chain anymore. it's rudy giuliani saying -- they actually lie -- kennedy on

your thing, it's just a -- >> there's no penalty, that's the issue. there's no penalty >> beyond no penalty, there's an incentive. this ecosystem is so well embedded now in how one party is communicating with its core of people that it's a chain that works and i agree with kara. i think not only can you not break it, but their goal is to get people to say i don't care their goal is not necessarily to persuade the unpersuadable that ukraine intervened in the 2016 election they're goal is to get people to say, i don't know. when you think about the 2020 election and we're talking at the very end of 2019, this is going to be the major driver really when you think about persuading people who tilted this last election in 2016 a handful of people who might

have voted for barack obama and somehow also for donald trump. people who aren't necessarily living in the information world that we are. and i fear that group of voters is a group of voters who are saying, i can't possibly think of objective truth. >> this is also a political tactic, matthew. we are aware that there are some politicians who want to come on this show because they're hoping fund-raisingal moment to use for and i'm like -- the minute i got wind of that, we won't put folks on it's like, yeah, it's fun to get chastised by the mainstream media. >> this has a lot to do in the change of the nature of your institutions you used to join an institution to be molded by it, to be part of this history that preceded you and will go after you. now, institutions are platforms for the individuals. and this is what makes -- this is the reason why the platforms are the locusts of so much

attention whether it's media attention, cultural attention or government attention they are the guardrails. social media knocked down the other guardrails the platforms themselves are the guardrails and they're going to be the heart of our politics for the next decade. >> and they're unregulated >> a libertarian society, we're seeing the perils of it. >> there are a few things that give me hope, young people young people are savvy to the very things you're talking about. they've decided that there are certain social media that they can trust more than others and the other is the fact that i got to say in three years, the one thing that has never failed is telling our audience if you let this conversation devolve into stupidity, there's nothing i can bring you back. >> that is all we have for today's special broadcast. thank you for watching all year. all of us here at meet the press

wish you a happy and safe new year we're going to be back next week which is also next year, 2020. if it's sunday, it's meet the press.

breaking overnight, another person has died in the texas church shooting. officials speak out on the late press conference we've got the latest this morning, we have more information on the man suspected of stabbing five people inside a rabbi's home local officials are calling the attack an act of domestic terror. a legendary civil rights activist and georgia congressman reveals a major health scare and how it will impact his future in the house. a florida grandmother is tased by police after they descend on her home looking for her grandson what prompted the action that left the 73-year-old shaken and angry. making dreams come t