StarTalk Radio - Science and Journalism, with Christiane Amanpour

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the intersectionality of science and journalism with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Eugene Mirman, reporter Azmat Khan, conflict journalism expert Judith Matloff, Bill Nye, Sarah Rose Siskind, Natalia Reagan, and Brian Sack.Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us:Paul Sikes, Stephanie Judd, Michael McBride, François Fraser, Dan Yoder, John WardNOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free.Photo Credit: Brandon Royal Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide. Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight we're featuring my interview with celebrated international news correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

So let's do this! So my co-host tonight, comedian Eugene Merman. Eugene! Hello! You voiced the prank-loving middle child, Gene, on the animated series Bob's Burgers on Comedy Central. Been doing that from the get-go. Yeah.

So thanks for coming back. Also joining us for this topic, we got investigative journalist, Asmat Khan. Asmat, welcome. You're a visiting professor on First Amendment issues at Columbia University. You're also a contributor to the New York Times Magazine and PBS Frontline. Christiane Amanpour, she's a chief international anchor for CNN,

and she's host of Amanpour and Company on PBS. And she's covered news and conflict around the world for more than 30 years. That's a lot of conflict. Right. Well, Christiane stopped by my office recently, and I asked her if learning math and science might have influenced her approach as a journalist. So let's check it out.

I am quite an ordered person, and I do think that if you understand maths and science and you understand the order of that kind of scientific endeavor, it sort of helps. I think I need order to situate myself in the world of chaos that somehow I found myself in, whether it's being a war correspondent in the midst of all sorts of other people's chaos and violence and disorder and disruption, whether it's in today's political environment, which is chaotic and disruptive, I crave order. And I think science, to an extent anyway, the way I interpret it, is quite orderly. There are formulas, there are procedures, there's evidence, there's fact. And again, for me, jumping all the way forward,

the fact and the evidence and the science is especially important today when everything that we see and hear and touch and feel is in question. I mean, people want to question the color of the sky. So evidence has always been something incredibly important for me. But I hope that what I've also learned to do along the way is do that thing where you mix humanity with science. Because it's not just facts. It's also, I mean, it is. That's the, you know, the construct around what we're doing.

But then you put people's humanity into it, and you put people's emotions, and you put, you know, the real stories of what individuals are going through in these stories that you're telling, in these reports that you are, you know, being able to broadcast and communicate, and that's what makes the whole. So, Asma, have you reported from conflict zones? Yes, from Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

So how do you make order out of that kind of chaos? Or does order matter to you? It does. I think it's about getting local. So even before I hit the ground, I try to learn as much as I can about a place, its context, its history, the language, if possible. I would think that's what any journalist should do, but I don't think they do. When you say you learn the language, meaning? I try my best to learn as much of it as possible. I mean, I studied abroad when I was young. I, when I moved to Pakistan, I, even though I grew up speaking Urdu, I hired a tutor to make sure that I was learning. You know, I knew how to

say oil rig or whatever obscure, bizarre thing I wasn't maybe used to saying or knowing or wouldn't understand otherwise. So that would make others who you talk to more comfortable around you. It makes it less foreign to them. You're more also aware of your surroundings. You're not necessarily always relying on a translator, which is okay, but you try to do as much as you can to get local. And in that, you start to see that order and you start to distill the facts and information you're learning in a way that can really resonate with the public. So do you agree that sort of science or its methods and tools, or at least the principles, can help bring order to that world? Absolutely. In fact, most investigative reporters rely on similar scientific methodologies, even if we maybe coat them in a narrative or a story or use something

that might be a little bit more accessible to the public, but we're relying on similar methods of inquiry. So Gene, you think science brings order? Well, it does to everything but your desk, Neil. Yes, that is my desk, but I know where everything is in that desk. So just because it looks like it's disorder to you, it is order to me. I don't believe you. Well, so here's my question. Let's get back to the First Amendment. That has several things. The journalists can do their thing, free speech.

So isn't saying the sky is not blue free speech? So why should any of us care? It's free speech. And, of course, curiosity is one of the greatest traits, not just of journalists, but of people as a whole in any kind of democratic society. But that said, questioning when it's genuine, right, when it's an effort to learn the truth,

whatever that truth might be, is very different from setting out on a journey in which you already know where you want to end, right? There's a difference between curiosity and being ideologically driven. One is genuine curiosity to find an actual truth. Another one is disregard for what is true because you think you have the truth

and whatever else is going out there doesn't matter. You will stitch together whatever thread so that it agrees with you. Right. When you have an end in mind and you're not really looking at the facts in front of you. Is that what most people in the world do? I think we're increasingly living in a world of confirmation bias, of echo chamber, in which we're following people we agree with, we're paying attention to new sources we agree with. It's an incredible danger. So Christiane says that good journalism is not just the facts, but brings humanity to the facts.

So how would you do that as an investigative journalist? It's often narrative, right? So I'll have... Are you at risk of me thinking you are putting too much emotional layering onto it and I'm going to say just give me the facts? What's the risk of that? Very few people want just the facts. I have to work very hard to fit those facts into a narrative that people will read. They'll want to flip through, that they'll get to that section that might be, you know, the big data finding about schools in Afghanistan that the U.S. funded and whether and how many of them actually exist today or whatever it might be. But you have to get them to get into character. They have to find people who come alive on that page or in that film.

So it's not just gathering the facts. You now have, because of the homework you do before you arrive on location, you have a context in which, you have a substrate in which you can embed the facts. You're always looking for drivers of that narrative that fit what the facts show you. Maybe more people would believe in climate change, that it was real and man-made, if we gave them a list of people who are going to drown from it. Oh.

Okay. Let's just make it more real. Just trying to connect. Thanks for these helpful points here. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what we're missing. Right. Well, I asked Christiane how she deals with finding facts in any situation.

Let's check it out. You're confronted with people who are making news. Important people. And some of them are just completely clueless. Well, I try not to be judgy because I don't believe that's what journalists should be. Journalists should be based in the fact-based world, the scientific world, so to speak, the evidence-based world. And I have, in fact, spent my career not as a pundit or as an opinion maker or as an anchor,

but as a correspondent in the field. So I had to come back with the minute details, observing them, remembering them, recording them, repeating them. And I just, that's what I like. That's natural to me. That's the only way to do it. Because if you just guess and pull sort of threads from the atmosphere, I mean, I know artists and others, you know, the creativity. That's not me. I'm really based in fact. And that, I think, is what has stood me in quite good stead as our environment becomes less and less respectful of the facts,

as science becomes less and less respected and adhered to, as people, as I say, try to question the color of the sky amidst many, many other things. I mean, let's say the idea of climate change and all those things which we're living through right now. For me, it's very frustrating to see, because I've also, because of science, never drawn a factual,

a false factual equivalence between things. So I've never been the kind who believes that there's ever been this, on the one hand, on the other hand, about science, because of course there are deniers, but they are a very small minority of the scientific community. And I've always been staggered by how that very small minority was able to have an oversized effect on public consciousness, on politics, on all that goes around climate change. And I was just listening just recently

to this tragedy of how, you know, more than 50 years ago, we could have arrested climate change. We could have started and got a grip on it if the great NASA scientist, James Hansen, and the others who were working and warning at the time had been believed, instead of had a group of professional deniers decided to muddy the waters. And look where we are today. So, Asma, we know from research and psychology that a person is more likely to be swayed or taken in by a story that resonates with their pre-existing bias.

So you do something legit. Somebody else finds a thread that agrees with someone's bias rather than have the evidence matter. And so how do you resolve this? Not only as a consumer of journalism, but journalists themselves. How do you resolve this? Not only as a consumer of journalism, but journalists themselves. How do you address the fact that there are other journalists presenting disinformation,

and people as well? Journalists and people. Journalisty people? Journalists and journalisty people trying to put disinformation about climate change as an example. Right. trying to put disinformation about climate change as an example. Right. So in this case, I think that it often comes down to finding characters that might resonate with them. So depending on who the sort of,

if you were to look at the demographics of deniers and to understand maybe some of the communities they come from, right? And you're looking at a climate challenge, you're looking at whether it's a weather phenomenon or something else and some kind of a problem, whether that's a flood or something else, and really telling a story well about what happened to an individual person. And that is one way to do it. Another is to speak in their terms, right? Use language that doesn't necessarily completely veer them away from what you're doing because it

rings of, you know, what they associate with people who are climate pushers. So what you're, not to put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting that in the case of the disinformation people, you should study them the way you would study any other culture? I think you should. How to get in and to be able to communicate. Well, I think journalists in that case should actually be doing stories on climate deniers. They should actually try to investigate the lobby in place, understand how they put out that disinformation.

The PBS series Frontline did a great film called Climate of Denial that did just that, looking at these deniers. Now, the question is, how do you get people to pay attention to that? And that's really where narrative and good storytelling come into play. So it's an antidote to bad journalism, basically. It's true. It is. So, Eugene.

Yeah? Have you seen bad journalism out there? I've seen it, and I thought I'd actually create a test for our expert to watch this clip and see how many examples of bad journalism she can see in this clip. Breaking news, this just in. We are hearing reports that Russia is planning on launching a missile at the United States. We go to Brian Fingerbottom on the scene. Brian,

how likely is Russia to follow through with these attacks? Well, I'm not going to speculate, Sarah, but it's 32.2% likely. Here's a graph showing a correlation in the decrease of Russian missile attacks and an increase in graphs on TV. And where are you getting these numbers from, Brian? We got most of our numbers from India sometime around the 5th century. But my anonymous source, Vlad Kasparov of the Secret Russian Missile Attack Agency, tells me that this whole thing is just a big misunderstanding and that we should absolutely not worry about our seven most populated cities. I see. Do you have any other experts we could consult on this very urgent matter?

I do. Let's go to Natalia Reagan. Natalia, you're a primatologist, so what can you tell us about ballistic missile launch trajectories? I study monkeys. Thank you, Natalia. Natalia clearly confirming that there will not be a missile launch. There is some activity going on here, but what it is we won't be able to determine for some time. But no need for alarm, as any launched missile would burn up in the atmosphere because Mercury is in retrograde. That is reassuring, Brian. Okay, Asma, you are now tasked with listing what was wrong with the journalism in that report. I don't think we have enough time, but I will do my best.

Well, let's start with the very first thing she said. We're hearing reports of no source, no effort to try to verify that. She tosses it off to the reporter. The reporter, who in this case immediately says he doesn't want to speculate, proceeds to, with a very specific statistic that he does not cite the source of, proceeds to show us graphs in which he confuses correlation and causation, and then went on to consult an expert who said that they had no expertise in the subject.

He then manipulated her words to fit his narrative, contradicted what was behind him. It could go on and on and on. Okay. So, Christiane Amanpour, she's known for her journalistic integrity. And she also voiced the character of Enheduanna in a science series that I knew something about

called Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey. Yeah. So I asked her about her interest in science and where she might trace those origins. Because I just like knowing because I'm a science geek. And if there's a little bit of geek in somebody, I want to get to the bottom of it. I tried to right here. Check it out.

One of my earliest heroes, without me really understanding what a hero was at that time, was when I was woken up at the crack of dawn. I don't even really remember what time it was because I was in England and Neil Armstrong was on the moon. I can't remember what time, you know, GMT that was. But I do remember my mother and my grandfather waking me up and sitting me down beside the television, black and white, to watch that. And I remember, you know, even today it kind of brings almost tears to my eyes to imagine that humankind was able to break those

barriers and breach those frontiers. And somebody, a human being, was actually walking on the moon and planting a flag and that whole, you know, one small, you know, step, one giant leap. I've never forgotten it. I've never forgotten that moment ever, ever, ever. And it is still, you know, it gives my imagination these flights of fancy. For a moment there, I thought I wanted to be the first woman to walk on the moon. But of course, that never happened because it just didn't, obviously. But I really did. Well, up next, we will discuss the risks of reporting from a war zone when star talk returns bringing space and science down to earth you're listening to star talk welcome back to start off from the American Museum of Natural History.

You're featuring my interview with longtime war correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And I asked her about the dangers of reporting from the front lines. Check it out. Going in the middle of war zones, how much are you risking your life, your health, your well-being? Everything. All of those things are at risk, but we do it knowingly. Most of us know what we're putting ourselves on the line for. I went to the news museum in D.C., and there's a whole memorial to dead journalists.

Well, yes, because there are a lot of us. And I tell you one thing. Journalists died in the line of duty. Indeed, and hearing the President of the United States call us fake news enables those malevolent actors out there who want to kill us and who want to shut down the messenger to do precisely that. That's why I'm so upset about the president and his view on news and independent and free journalism. But going into the field is something that we understand comes with a very profound danger

and more and more danger, more and more sophisticated danger, more and more sophisticated and brutal ways of doing away with us, as we've seen ISIS, you know, with the throat-cutting and all the rest of it. No longer are we just caught in the crossfire. Now we are deliberately targeted. So that's very, very dangerous. It's a big change. the crossfire. Now we are deliberately targeted. So that's very, very dangerous. And that's why we find it so important. And, you know, if you're not going out there to be serious,

don't go out there because it could cost you your life. And so that's why I'm so serious and attached to the mandate, which is to seek the truth and to seek the facts, because we put our lives at risk and on the line in order to go there, which is why I then hate being called the enemy of the people because we are actually serving the people, those people who cannot get up for whatever reason of their own free will and accord to go to wherever, the war zones. We're their eyes and ears. We are their eyes and ears. And we perform that vital function, I think. But I do also think that one of the flip sides to all this violence and conflict and war is that I have seen shine through,

and this is what keeps me going, the indomitable nature of the human spirit, the incredibly inspirational reality of people, even at war, who can manage somehow, maybe their family members, maybe their friends or whatever, somehow manage to understand the story of the other, to still want to build the bridges, to not want to live in endless conflict, and who even throughout the worst, worst moments of their wars are dreaming and thinking about the possibility of how to one day again live together.

of how to one day again live together. I find that war forces you, if you have half a brain and half a heart, to really focus on the story of the other. And that's what we don't get enough of in today's politics. You must be willing to hear and absorb the story of the other. You must have some kind of sympathy and empathy. Otherwise, if it's all about you, it's a zero-sum game. I win, you lose. That's not a negotiation. That's not a recipe for peace. It's a recipe for continued conflict. Well, okay, joining us now to discuss reporting from war zones is conflict journalism expert Judith Matloff.

Judith, welcome to StarTalk. You're a professor at Columbia School, Graduate School of Journalism, and you developed safety training for journalists around the world. And you have a recent book about conflict called No Friends But The Mountains, and it's subtitled Dispatches from the World's Violent Highlands. So you train journalistic safety. That's just... So how has the landscape shifted from covering the war in Vietnam, which we all saw, well, I'm old enough to remember seeing it on TV, to journalists in Syria today.

And are those risks the same? Are they different? Well, I think there are some very big differences. I mean, the big risk is always you might be killed, or you might be arrested, or you might be tortured, or you might be maimed, or you might be blown up in a landmine. Those are still there. Those are the constants. One major thing which is very different is the rise of freelancers. Because as major news organizations have either collapsed or they've contracted their foreign reporting bureaus, more freelancers have filled the vacuum. And it's very, very dangerous for them

because they don't have the institutional backing. Just so I hear, so a freelance is not someone who's a rogue journalistic element. There's someone who sells you their stories because they went someplace that your bureau didn't send anybody. Right. And oftentimes they do it on spec, which means that they're pushing the boundaries of safety. They will go into a very dangerous situation and a news organization will say, come back and show me what you have. So they will take incredible risks to get that story. Uncompensated risks at the time they take the risk. Exactly, exactly.

That's a terrible business model. But I understand why it exists. Yeah. So that's one major difference. Another major one is the rise of digital and mobile communications, because this too puts us in much more dangerous situations because it increases the surveillance of ourselves, even of our movements. People can find out where we are at a given time. Rogue elements. Rogue elements or governments. For instance, the Russian the russian government um or the chinese government they know where you are oftentimes and and where you're operating but someone has to view you as

some kind of an enemy rather than as someone who could tell their story right like our president right okay so so amat you reported recently on the war against ISIS in Iraq, both in Iraq and in Syria. So what precisely were you investigating? I was looking at civilians who were dying in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. And so over the last two, almost three years now, I've been visiting the sites of airstrikes in Iraq, and for a particular New York Times Magazine investigation, I went to the sites of 103 airstrikes in three areas formerly held by ISIS, just to understand who was dying in them. And what I found was that civilians were dying at a rate,

at least in these areas, which is likely an undercount of civilian death, at a rate that's 31 times higher than what the U.S. military claims when it puts out its statistics about its airstrikes being the most precise in the history of aerial warfare. Did you say they're 31 times wrong? 31 times higher than what the U.S. government claims, and it's likely an undercount for many reasons. At any time, did you fear for your life or is this post attacks? And so you're there rummaging in the rubble with others. Yeah. I mean, I often am afraid while I'm doing my reporting. And I actually think that being fearful is what can help keep me safe to always feel that way at different moments makes me more observant.

Biologically natural to not want to die. Yeah. Yes. it's a strong feeling that grips me. But, you know, I can think of moments where I did fear. There was an area that was recently retaken from ISIS. It was the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq. It's called Hawija. And I had been obsessed with Hawija for years. I wanted to get there. It wasn't safe to go. It still wasn't, I wasn't sure how safe it would be. I made these plans and I was terrified. This was a place that had been, played such a historic role in the rise of ISIS. And honestly, it was the easiest trip I'd taken in all of my reporting in Iraq.

It wound up, I just flew through checkpoints. I have no idea why, but I think the more fearful I am, oftentimes the more precautions and preparation I do. So, Judith, what can journalists do to handle these kinds of situations? Well, first of all, you can avoid them. Okay, sure. Number one, stay home. But that's not our job.

Stay home, yeah. You do your preparation beforehand. You do your research. So you do what we call a risk assessment. You speak to as many people as you can who've been there or who are looking at the situation. And you identify what the biggest dangers are. And then you work backwards from the worst-case scenario and try to mitigate that risk. So let's say your biggest risk is, as what happened to me in Dagestan in a Muslim republic of

Russia. The biggest risk at that point was being arrested by the government. So I had to think about how I was going to avoid that and that's where the surveillance comes in. How do you avoid being arrested? Well, I was arrested, so I didn't. That would fail. Yeah, that was a risk analysis that kind of didn't the risk assessment was accurate

yes the risk assessment was accurate the steps I took were didn't necessarily mitigate it but I did my research then another big risk was at that time the extremists were blowing up establishments that sold alcohol. So you look at the risks and you try to work backwards. Another thing you do is you try to figure out what your escape routes are going to be. You try not to go into one place where there's only like one way to get out. It's the backdoor plan. The backdoor plan. Yeah, plan B.

You always want a plan B. So that and stay at places with speakeasies. Got it? Right, yeah. Not too many in Dagestan, but note to self. That you know of. And I know, that's true. So right now it's time for Cosmic Queries.

Yes. Nice. We've got questions about the science of reporting from the front lines. So I've got the two of you here to help us answer these questions because I'll be helpless in this part. Okay. Hit it. JJZ112 asks, what precautions do you take for cell phone use? Do you take any? I don't want to give too much information because I don't want my secrets to be given up here. Oh, sure. But you would encrypt your communications. Do you want to give us more details? Just kidding.

So get a burner phone or something? You would get a burner phone that you would throw away, or you would limit your cell communications. You're also really set up to sell drugs. Jay Clark from Virginia asks, how much protection does a bulletproof vest and helmet actually give you? And I... I've always wondered about that. Well, I can show you.

Oh, you've got a helmet? I brought it with me. Oh. From my yoga instructing in the war zone. Yeah, so I'm assuming people shoot from the top and no one ever tries to go for the face, so that's nice of people. Yeah, so Judith, come come on your face is exposed so what is this this is heavy yeah but once they see that it says press on you wow

this is really heavy that's very heavy so heavy so i never understood okay so this protects your your vital it protects your organs but not your face, which I count as a vital organ. So is this really just to protect against debris rather than a bullet? And bullets as well. And the flak jackets have different degrees of strength, so some of them will protect against certain weaponry and others not.

You know, it's heavy. You have to actually train to walk and run in those. But I have had friends that have died with a helmet because a bullet. It was slightly freaky, but a bullet went up there. And I have had friends who've died because the bullets went in the side. They're not, they won't protect every part of your body, but they'll obviously protect you from a lot. So your alternative is just not go at all.

As you said earlier, just stay home. And then no one learns about anything. Or you go, you know, you can also do long distance reporting. For instance, there were quite a lot of revelations about Russian troops being in Ukraine that were, well, it's done purely off of social media. I know what you mean.

I mean, you can actually do quite a lot of investigative work at a distance. I got this. Tell me. The journalist drones. And this, Command Central, and you put drones anywhere in the world. And you put them in, and they become your eyes and ears as journalists.

We'll call them satellites, and we'll put them in space. Judith, thank you for joining us tonight on Star Talk. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Up next, Christiane Amanpour shares how she convinced a member of the Taliban to sit down for an interview when Star Talk returns. This is Star Talk. Welcome back.

Star Talk, American Museum of Natural History History right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with international news correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And I asked about some of the cultural challenges that she faced around the world. Let's check it out. We know there are men out there, especially men in power, who run stuff in other cultures, occasionally in our culture, but especially in other cultures,

where, why is a woman interviewing me? I need a man who, I don't care what her credentials are, she's a woman. You know there are cultures where this is the attitude. I've been there. So how do you get through that?

By not taking that nonsense and not dealing with it. You know, I'm just like, excuse me, what? No, I'm the interviewer, we're going to do it. I'll give you a perfect example. Afghanistan at the beginning of the Taliban. So there is nothing more patriarchal and religious and a little whacked out than the Taliban when it comes to women.

But because of their interpretation of religion, they decided that, A, they didn't want to be interviewed because they don't believe in television. Remember, they don't believe in television, and certainly they didn't believe in a woman engaging with them. But I convinced them. I convinced this leader in this particular town where they had just stormed up from Pakistan and were beginning to take over Afghanistan. This is 1996. And so how we negotiated this interview

was that, you know, here I was, but the camera was, they insisted that the camera be focused not on the gentleman's face, but on the vase of plastic flowers on the glass table that was, you know, at his knees. So we did that. And then we broadened it a little bit, the shark to see his hands and things like that. But it became a very memorable interview, very memorable because of the complete weirdness of the unscientific evolution of this person's brain and who did not want to have anything to do with my gender or the technology that is television.

That too was verboten for the Taliban. That's surreal. Yeah, yeah. And I had two whammies against me, right? I was a woman and I was a television journalist. But we got it. So, Asma, have you experienced things like what she described with the Taliban? I mean, with anybody?

Absolutely. I mean, I've interviewed warlords, clerics, mullahs, people who were ISIS, but I didn't realize it at the time until I did a little bit more digging. Is the goal to get the interview no matter what it takes? No. I mean, your safety comes first. I do believe that, you know, not taking no for an answer has been critical to a lot of my work. But of course, I mean, if your safety is at risk, that's when, you know, you may have to let go. So, Christiane, she's famous for scoring interviews that nobody else can get.

I had to ask her what her secret is. Check it out. I think the secret is authenticity and that they know me. I've been doing this in their backyard. You've got a rep. Yeah, basically. And I like it. I like the rep. That I've been doing this since the first Gulf War. My career essentially, you know, became public. First Gulf War in 1991.

Yeah, 90 to 91. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, and in 91, the war against him started. That's where CNN really... That's right. Really... That's right. Made a presence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of exploded into the American living room,

but also around the world is where CNN truly went global. Didn't the president at the time say, ask, well, how did you learn this? Well, I saw it on CNN. Yes, we had plenty of ads that quoted all these leaders. And again, it was the first. There was no Al Jazeera. There was no BBC World Television.

There was no Fox News. There was no MSNBC. There was CNN, period, end of story. Asma, can you reflect on the importance of CNN's presence in that first Gulf War as a moment on the journalism timeline? It was a game changer for people to be able to watch war unfold in real time and to come

from an authority that was first at the scene before your government, before others, before intelligence agencies. Because in the Vietnam coverage, it wasn't in real time. We saw the footage, but it was delayed. And so that's an important difference that you're saying. Absolutely. There was an urgency to it. And I would almost liken it to the way in which, in terms of being a game changer, to the sort of contemporary instance in which people are sharing via smartphones, you know, as

bombs are dropping in Syria in real time. We actually have more access to what's happening on the ground than we ever have in the past. Well, up next, we discuss how technology shapes the landscape of news when StarTalk returns.

Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout-out to the following Patreon patrons. Francoisis Fraser, Dan Yoder, and John Ward. Thanks guys for helping us make our trek through the cosmos. And if you would like to get a Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com

and support us. Bringing space and science down to Earth. You're listening to StarTalk. Welcome back to StarTalk. You're featuring my interview with international news icon, Christiane Amanpour. And Christiane has covered events around the world since the 1980s. And I asked how important technology has been across all that time.

Let's check it out. Technology is fundamental. From the very beginning, where we used to go out with these massive cases, you know, 20, 30 cases full of huge satellite equipment. Of course, it all collapsed down and got smaller and smaller and more and more mobile and manageable. So it is what has allowed us to keep broadcasting from, you know, ever further distances where you can tell stories now from places that you could never get to before. You know, that worried me that maybe parts of the world, things were happening, either good or bad, and no one knew about it. Yes. You couldn't get a journalist in there to report.

I mean, that's true. So I think in one way, we have managed to have an impact on the world because, as we say in this sort of cliche, we've shone the light into the dark corners. Oxygen is the antiseptic, right, of all the evils and horrible things that go on in the world. But on the other side, I think also technology has had a limiting impact in that it's made things come at you so fast and at such warp speed and so quickly and the cycle moves on and moves on. Warp speed, I caught that. That's good. Yeah, there you go. Warp speed. We're good. Yeah,

got it. Light years. That you don't have time to digest and to stay with something that we need to do. We can't solve all these dreadful issues or really understand what's going on, whether it's politics or whether it's grave violations of international law and order. You can't do it unless you're ready to think in complex ways, to think that you can spend time trying to work it out. So, Eugene, you think smartphones are feeding us too much news? Mostly social media, because it's all just upsetting loops. Regular news is fine. It's a little upsetting.

I think the next generation, they've only ever known smartphones, so they don't think it's going too fast. They don't know that they're... Yeah, but they a little upsetting. But I think the next generation, they've only ever known smartphones, so they don't think it's going too fast. They don't know that they're, yeah, but they're all upset. There was just a thing today that all people under some age are all upset. Yeah, and anxious. Yeah, and anxious. Like 90% of millennials are anxious. So maybe they kind of know that it's a problem. Asma, what's your take on news being shaped by technology?

So, I mean, it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses in so many ways. Like the smartphone technology I mentioned earlier, we're getting pictures and portraits from the ground. I don't think we would have the lens on police violence or allegations of police abuse that we have today if it were not for ordinary citizens, you know, using their phones to share that information quickly. At the same time, we are now living in a world in which there are echo chambers, in which you're bombarded with pieces of information every minute, every second. And it's very easy to lose the big picture to understand these systems and these long-term structures that underlie fundamental problems of our society.

Well, I asked Christiane about the rise of social media as a force on journalism. Let's check it out. Suddenly, the dialogue has been taken over by this thing called social media. We don't even know, really, who these people are. But there's corners of outrage. There's professional destroyers on social media. There are people who, you know,

shut down a debate or exacerbate a debate. So, you know, for every good aspect of social media, there are probably about maybe 10 negative aspects. 10 to 1. That's bad. What do you think? Well, but does that mean everyone, with social media and everyone has a video camera? Does that dilute the potency of a professional journalist?

In a way, yes, but in a way, no. In a way, yes, because of the obvious nature of everyone. Having something, it makes it less special and less unique. But on the other hand, people, I think, I observe right now in this era that we live in of maximum political dysfunction, of populism, of partisanship, of poisonous tribalism and the inability to have dialogue and the inability to get out of your own echo chamber. to get out of your own echo chamber. So in a way, right now, people are looking to the established media,

whether it's the New York Times, whether it's CNN, whether it's all the others that are doing incredibly well right now, rising to the occasion, understanding that we stand between them and the deluge, essentially. We are a vital pillar of civil society. And I'm not being arrogant about it.

That is what makes a democracy. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is the difference between truth and lies, the difference between a free and independent press and a propaganda machine. We'll just end the show right there. I don't know what we can add to that. Well, up next, I asked journalist Christiane Amanpour

how she would have handled an interview with Adolf Hitler when StarTalk returns. This is StarTalk. Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with international news correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And I asked how the press should present the atrocities of war. For example, how would she have handled an interview with Adolf Hitler? Let's check it out.

First and foremost, we are not megaphones and we are not platforms and we don't give free advertising to anybody. We're not anybody's paid political consultants. We're not their campaign managers. We're not their advertising agency. We are people who have learned a lot, studied a lot, been around a lot, hopefully, who understand the complexity, who don't reduce everything to simple, lowest common denominator. And it is absolutely up to us to understand what we are engaged in. If something

of that horror and of that evil is sitting in front of any one of us. We have to know what we're dealing with. It's not just another point of view. In fact, I was criticized very heavily by many of my own colleagues during the Bosnia war. That was my signal career-making coverage, covering the Bosnia war. Bosnia was what racked Europe apart during the 1990s, where the former Yugoslavia split up and the strongest group wanted to survive alone and

strongest. That was the Serbs in general. When it came to Bosnia, they waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the other ethnic groups, most of whom were Muslims. So you had these white Christians ethnically cleansing and committing human rights abuses, violating international humanitarian law, genocide against Muslims in order to pursue their political agenda and their territorial cleansing. They wanted to get the territory. And purify the territory. Correct. I told the truth in this war, which was that. I never said that each had, you know, an equal but opposite point of view. I never, ever drew a false moral equivalence. But it was only when I was criticized for taking sides that I understood

what I was doing and what I was there to do. And that was to report the truth. And the truth is right in front of you. And reporting the truth does not mean creating neutrality, a false neutrality. It's not either or. It's not. We have to be cognizant and aware of what it is that we're confronted with. So to your question about Hitler, I asked my critics, I said, so if I was reporting during World War II and I had gone to a concentration camp or I had sat in front of Hitler and heard what you just said, would I have said, oh yeah, I must give this Adolf guy his say. You know, he's got a point. Well, now we hear the other side's point. No, that's danger. That's real danger.

So, Asma, what do you teach your students about truth and neutrality in journalism? You know, you're not here to make false equivalents. You're not here to give two opposing views equal weight. It's your job as a journalist to take every piece of information that you can and try to understand what is truth and what is not and to convey that accordingly. Well, my buddy, Bill Nye the Science Guy, sent in his own dispatch on the power of journalism

in a world at war. Let's check it out. Since humans first walked the Earth, there has been conflict. Neighbor against neighbor. Tribe against tribe. Country against country. We've applied enormous intellect and treasure

to build deadly machines of war. But I claim that even the most powerful mechanized cavalry will be ultimately brought down by good journalism. The pen is mightier than the sword. Good journalists and their crews go into war zones as warplanes streak overhead and the rattle of gunfire can be heard in the distance so that you can learn what they've learned about the struggles of our time. So to the journalists and their crews, what do we do about truth? Who establishes it? Who reports it?

Who consumes it? And I've thought a lot about this concept of truth. And I've thought a lot about this concept of truth. And what I've done is I've divided sort of the world of truth into three regimes. One of them is a personal truth. This is something that you feel is true, and you don't care what anybody else says about it. So what kinds of truths are those? These would include religious truths.

So if Jesus is your savior in this country, no one will take that away from you. That's a personal truth. If Muhammad is your last prophet on earth, that is your personal truth. Okay. We have laws that protect that. What other kind of truths might there be? Oh, there's, let me call it a political truth. This is a truth that becomes true in your head because of how many times it has been repeated. This is particularly potent in politics. That's how people get you to vote for them. They repeat something endlessly. It's another kind of truth, however objective truth the entire enterprise of science is conceived and designed to establish objective truths these are things that are true whether

or not you believe in them they are true no matter the state of your sensory system they're true no matter how you feel about it so journalism if it's reporting on people and places and things yes it should know about people's personal truths yes yes but if your personal truth now infringes on someone else's personal truth, and there's conflict there, somebody should call that out. You're taking your personal truth and imparting it on someone else's personal truth. That's a different kind of report from saying this person is right and that person is wrong. from saying this person is right and that person is wrong. Because really, at the end of the day,

the methods and tools of science are uniquely conceived to know what is right and what is wrong. Everything else becomes opinion. And diversity of opinion is diversity of culture. We want that. We need that. But if you hate someone because their opinion differs from yours, that's a problem. And what we heard tonight, I greatly value.

I cherish the idea that you're after truth. You're not after balance. Two things aren't balanced if one of those is objectively false. Someone says earth is flat, you don't say, well, I got to give them half the column inches in the article because they have a different view. We live in a time when people don't understand the differences among these truths. And as scientists, we do our little part, but at the end of the day, it's on the backs of the journalists to fix their house and understand what it is to report on what is and is not true in this world.

That is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.