Wednesday 9th December: Why disinformation won't disappear after 2020

December 09, 2020

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

It's tempting to breathe out a little and relax now that the liar-in-chief is on his way out of the White House. The reality, however, is that while Trump slotted neatly into the role of disinformation pedlar he could only do so because systems were in place that allowed him to do so. He may be gone but the behemoth of online misinformation is still lurking.

This long read from Jane Lytvynenko for BuzzFeed News is a sobering look at the effects of a year-long campaign of disinformation. If you're anything like me it'll put the fear of god into you about what comes next: "Although social media companies made attempts to combat the false information... DiResta said that enforcement gaps allowed Plandemic to amass some 8 million views in just a few days. Believing the large platforms had censored a whistleblower, the video’s audience brought it to smaller, alternative sites that chose to leave it up."

So while one vector for that disinformation is gone, others are rearing their heads all the time. We might like to think that publishers finally found a way to cover Trump over the course of 2020, but we all need to get much better at countering disinformation from many different sources.

The three-way standoff between publishers, platforms and audiences continues as Google has started enforcing its ban on 'heavy ads', with one such instance occurring on the NYT homepage. Google argues it's to protect users, publishers argue a strong revenue base allows them to inform and protect audiences. This will never end.

We know there's an audience for kid's current affairs magazines, but on the news that Time's youth-focused title is "nearly" profitable this article takes a look at the other youth-oriented news magazines that haven't fared so well. A nice little snapshot of part of the industry.

What is a “news and information ecosystem”? How do we know if it’s “healthy”? This research project breaks down what a sustainable news landscape looks like, and the implications it has for public and political wellbeing.

This week's podcast:

This special episode includes the audio of our launch presentation for the Media Moments 2020 report. We examine one key stat of each section within the report, from diversity and advertising to platforms, trust and more. In the second half, the team is joined by a panel featuring The Atlantic's Jemima Villanueva, Permutive's Aly Nurmohamed and The Week Junior's Andrea Barbalich.

The Publisher Podcast Awards submissions are closed - now the work really begins. Between that, this newsletter, the podcast and our other projects and full-time jobs, we can sometimes feel a little exhausted. If you want to kick in to buy us a brew, we'd really appreciate it ☕