The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Free Speech, Election Lies, and the Fight Against Misinformation

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Jon Stewart tackles the growing claims of election interference, with Elon Musk joining Trump’s narrative. The episode explores how “free speech” is being weaponized by both figures. Jon also sits down with Bill Adair, creator of PolitiFact and Knight Professor of Journalism at Duke, to discuss his new book “Beyond the Big Lie.” They dive into fact-checking in the misinformation age, social media’s role in spreading falsehoods, and the government’s efforts to combat disinformation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Stewart here. Unbelievably exciting news. My new podcast, The Weekly Show. We're going to be talking about the election economics ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches. Listen to The Weekly Show with John Stewart, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news.

This is The Daily Show. Oh, we got one for you tonight. I'm not even playing. We got one for you tonight. I'm not even playing. We got one for you tonight. Bill Adair, founder of PolitiFact, he'll be here on the program. But first, you may have noticed... it's October.

The month we named for the Roman goddess Octomom. Obviously, you may not believe it's October because the Mets are still playing baseball. Laughter. Cheers. Applause. God, I love them so much. Laughter.

Now in election years, October is when everyone's on alert for an October surprise. It's what they call it when major unexpected news alters the race in the home stretch of the campaign, like the Access Hollywood tape, which if you remember, destroyed Trump's chances of being president.

What, what, what ever happened to him? Oh. But here we are again in October so... A major port strike could make for an October surprise. Could the infamous October surprise in this year's election actually be coming from overseas? Hurricane Helene affecting at least two battleground states. This to me might be the October surprise. Is a spike at the pump the October surprise that no one wants Why?

Are October surprises always so shitty Why do we never get a good October surprise an October surprise that brings our country together Oh ladies and gentlemen, no one saw this October surprise coming this close to the election But pesto and Mudang are dating. Oh! It's an October surprise! By the way, that picture is to scale. That penguin is the size of a f***ing hippopotamus.

Not shaming, just saying. But it's the period of the campaign when no matter what happens, it's going to be analyzed through its effect on the election, no matter how tactless that may seem. October has now started out very good for Republicans. This debate, chaos in the Middle East, the port strike and of course the clean up in North Carolina, this is something obviously in October if this continues that's going to bode well for Republicans. Oh if monkeypox runs amok, I don't see how we lose. What does it actually say about a party that a war, a strike, and a natural disaster work in their favor?

Sir, the election's close, but if we could just get the population shell-shocked and desperate, we can do it. just get the population shell-shocked and desperate. We can do it. Of course, most people would say these world events happening close to the election are not related or intentional. Most people would say that. Some people aren't person. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she posted a map on X showing areas affected by Hurricane Helene with an overlay of an electoral map saying it shows how hurricane devastation could affect

the election. An hour later, she posted this and I quote, yes, they can control the weather. It is ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it cannot be done. Is this the space laser thing again? Jews don't control the weather. If we could control the weather, don't you think we'd make Florida less humid? We retire there.

What did you think? Can you do something about the... My balls are stuck to my thigh. But there was an October surprise this weekend that I did not see coming. And that surprise is this. Elon Musk has ups this rocket company is the only reason we can now send American astronauts into space take over Eli yes take

Hey! He's acting like a guy who won a radio contest. No! I can't believe I get to bid on the washer dryer! The world's richest man and one of the most popular people on social media. He's got 200 million followers, completely organically, on his platform. You know, because of how interesting his tweets are. Like, things like,

hmm. And... interesting. And, FEMA is shutting down airspace to stop people from bringing help. Yeah, yeah. He tweets that. Anyway, his October surprise is he's come out MAGA. Hi, everyone. As you can see, I'm not just MAGA.

I'm Dark MAGA. I'm not just MAGA. I'm Dark MAGA. Dark MAGA? I didn't know it came in flavors. I wonder if for the holidays they'll come out with a peppermint bark MAGA or pumpkin spice MAGA. I like my MAGA like I like my coffee,

filled with chemicals that trick your taste buds into thinking you're drinking autumnal food. Don't know what my accent was. Now, you might think one of the world's richest men controlling one of the world's most influential platforms could be a recipe for what some may consider election interference. Stupid, stupid people. You disgust me.

Election interference is what Mark Zuckerberg did. Former President Trump alleging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will try to unlawfully influence the 2024 election, writing, if he does anything illegal, this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison. That's why he'll be in prison? Not for falsely promising me a beautiful life in the metaverse.

for falsely promising me a beautiful life in the metaverse. Oh, JS-69-420. The life we could have led. Now, Zuckerberg did give $400 million to organizations for voting infrastructure during the pandemic. And a good portion of that money did go to Democratic precincts. And Donald Trump did lose the election, so election interference.

But not illegal. And obviously Musk isn't gonna do anything like that. Elon Musk is offering hourly pay to anyone willing to encourage people in swing states to register to vote. He stated, quote, for every person you refer who is a swing state voter, you get $47.

Easy money. Oh, shit! He's giving everybody $47 million? When Trump finds out, when I think of the prison Donald Trump is gonna send that sweet jumping bean of a genius to, it kills me! When Trump finds out about this, it's not gonna be pretty. is going to send that sweet jumping bean of a genius to? It chills me. When Trump finds out about this, it's not going to be pretty. How good a guy is Elon Musk?

Right? You show him this. How good? What the f***? Wait, that's not election interference because he's for you? Well, what else do you think is election interference? The Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, does not always portray Donald Trump in a flattering light and the Trump campaign threatened to sue its filmmakers.

Calling the film pure fiction and election interference. Oh, come on! That's election interference? Maybe it's election interference. But you've got to be a little bit flattered that you're being played by Sebastian Stan. I mean... Oh, Sebastian.

If you're the Winter Soldier, why is it suddenly so warm in here. I look like Sebastian Stan if you were to put his face through one of those filters on TikTok that show your appearance right before you die. It's, it's... Yeah, you can applaud that. That's fine. I'm not... I know what I look like.

But what about Big Tech? Donald Trump? Surely they're not sitting this out. Critics accuse Big Tech of election interference as Amazon's Alexa gave favorable reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump. Alexa, why should I vote for Donald Trump? I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate.

Alexa, why should I vote for Kamala Harris? While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a woman of color who has overcome numerous obstacles to become a leader in her field. Okay, I'll give you that one. That... that one... No.

That is f***ed up. That's... that is f**ked up. That is f**ked up. I'm not sure Alexa's really influential enough for it to be considered election interference, but Oh, like you're so influential. I don't think I need a lecture from Mr. Monday Nights. Yeah, that's fair.

I was just, I was just trying to make the point that that's not what people should use Alexa for. That reminds me, Alexa, could you activate the bidet? That's good. That's good tech. Sometimes the shit's even too dumb for me. By the way, none of this stuff that we're talking about is election interference, yet Trump has threatened almost all of them with either imprisonment, lawsuits, or censoring. Which is why this one section of this weekend's rally in Pennsylvania was so striking when Elon Musk was discussing why he supports Donald Trump. The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.

You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment. Elon, were you not watching the rest of the show? A movie Trump doesn't like is going to get sued. A tech mogul he doesn't like he wants to put in prison. It's not free speech if only Trump's admirers get to do it without consequence. That's just not how it works.

It doesn't go that way. I don't see how his support of free speech is exposed the belly-worthy. I just don't see how his support of free speech is expose the belly worthy. I just don't. But at least the Constitution remains intact and is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment. The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the first amendment. Guns don't protect our free speech.

Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the constitution. It's not based on the threat of violence. It's based on elections, organizing referendums and judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated. Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun. It's a tool of intimidation. And if I may finish, listen, other f***ers, I'm not done yet.

I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet. I'm not, listen, mother-fuckers, I'm not done. It is a tool of intimidation and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadow banned by Facebook. I mean, for God sakes, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole reason you're there is because some f***ing asshole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country's free speech.

That's why you're there. The whole point of a society is guns don't decide it. I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me. The country ain't perfect. And there's a lot of issues we don't agree on. Choice, immigration, shrinkflation of snack chips,

the unholy marriage of penguins and hippos. But honestly, dude, a country that can adjudicate these complicated issues through a sometimes frustrating, overly bureaucratic constitutional system of checks and balances and peaceful transfer of power is the only kind of country that I want the children of Pesto and Mudeng to grow up in. And we come back, bill or dare. Don't go away. Hey, everybody.

Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show, coming out every Thursday. We're going to be talking about the election earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go. But how many of them come out on Thursday, listen to the weekly show with Jon Stewart, wherever you get your podcast.

He is the creator of PolitiFact and the Knight Professor of Journalism at Duke University. His new book is called Beyond the Big Lie. Please welcome to the program Bill Adair, sir. Oh! Oh! Oh! Welcome back. Nice to see you.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. All right. I'm doing great.

Thank you, Bill Adair. The book is Beyond the big line. Look, PolitiFact, when did you create PolitiFact? 2007. So right before the, for the 2008 election. And the idea is it's sort of a repository of fact checkers for political speech. How did you decide what would be included in what you would decide to check? Sure. So the whole idea is to answer people's curiosity. If you hear a politician make a

statement and you wonder, is that true? Those are the things that PolitiFact checks. I mean, and ultimately that's what journalism is all about. To answer people's curiosity. If they're wondering what's true and what's not, that's what politifact fact checks. And you had ratings, it was true, partly true, false, or partly false, false, and pants on fire. And pants on fire. And that was, you know, fact checking had been around

before politifact. But what distinguished politifact was the truth-o-meter, which rated things as you said. Yeah. And we did win. The technological advance of a Truth-o-meter. Exactly. And we did win a Pulitzer Prize. Really?

For Pants on Fire? It sounds funny when you put it that way. But the reason is that there's solid journalism behind it. Right. And it's so important. And I think that people realized that even back then, politics was getting complicated, and people were really beginning to wonder what was true, and PolitiFact and other factcheckers filled that void in an important way. Now this is all, in some ways you might look back on it and think, oh how quaint. We went through an analog and we would talk about whether it was partly true or

true and we created a truthometer and then social media comes along and it turns into this digital misinformation age where they talk about you know a lie travels eight times faster than the truth. How have you adapted and what do you think is the kind of fact-checking mechanism, if you think it's important in that way, that can adapt to that moment? Well, I think what you're alluding to is the original Truth-O-Meter used vacuum tubes. And that was a problem. And by the way, Truth-O-Meter, for those of you at home, that is copyrighted. Don't think you can just put up,

you can't just put up your own Truth-O-Meter or Truth-O-Meter as I incorrectly called it earlier. You know, but you're very right. I mean, the fact checking has struggled to keep up with the many ways that politicians and others spread lies. And in the book, what I talk about is, and the point of the book is to explore how and why politicians lie. And one of the things that I get at is that they're doing it in lots of different places that fact-ers are struggling to keep up with and they're doing it with these huge megaphones that fact checkers can't with their current staffing

adapt to. So I think- And with malice aforethought, as they might say on court TV, this isn't happenstance. Misinformation has been weaponized to a large extent in this digital age. Absolutely. And we're seeing it in North Carolina with the hurricane, as you alluded to earlier.

But fact checkers have to get more assertive in how they respond and think more digitally. So one of the things that we- Does that mean AI? When you say think more digitally. So one of the things that we- Does that mean AI? Like when you say think more digitally, are you talking about taking this, making it less bespoke and creating kind of AI context overlays for these types of things?

So that's one way. So I think the atomic unit of fact checking, I think, will be, for the foreseeable future, a You're creating your own metric system over here. The atomic unit of fact checking. I think humans will be needed to create fact checks. We hear what's wrong. We need to research it.

We need to respond to it. But yes, AI can be used to spread it more efficiently to broader audiences. And to be more responsive. So two ways that we've done that at Duke. We helped, we worked with the tech. Duke? Duke University?

I've heard it's a safety school. I've heard very very very poor things. So two things we've done with our team at Duke is to we worked with the tech companies to create a standard so that fact-checkers could label their fact checks. It's called claim review and it allows them when they publish something to put this tag on so that tech companies, search engines, social media platforms can find those. Like a good housekeeping seal to some extent of.

It's really what it is, is like a street sign that says, this is a fact check on this person on this claim. And claim review helps find that fact check if you're Google so that Google can then say oh here's a fact check and could use it in powerful ways. So that's one way. And keeps the information from being let's say laundered throughout the internet which is often times what happens. People lose attribution.

Potentially. I can't speak for Google but that's something they could do. But now here's another way that we're excited about. We call it half-baked pizza. So the idea, so. I'm just going to start right here. This is Duke University we're talking about. Well.

This isn't just like Duke's fact checking lab and pet repository. Half baked pizza index. It's a safety school. Paranormal. So, but let me tell you about half-baked pizzas. So what we want to do, so fact checkers have a problem in the United States. There are not enough fact checkers in many, many states. We studied this and we found huge, what we call, fact deserts.

Places where governors, members of Congress are never fact checked. They can see anything they want and they're never held responsible. Right. Those are called the 24-hour cable news networks. Congress are never fact-checked. They can see anything they want and they're never held responsible. Right. Those are called the 24-hour cable news networks. So how can we hold them responsible? So often they repeat the same talking points in Arizona that are being fact-checked in Florida. So can we use AI to monitor what they're saying in Arizona and duplicate a fact check from Florida using generative AI, but adapt it to the claim in Florida. So we've been experimenting with that.

Why do we call it half baked pizza? Please I was going to ask that. The idea is that if you have a claim that's been done, say, by PolitiFact, you need to review it by a human editor. So I think of that like half-baked pizza. The chef looks at that pizza that's not quite ready to go in the oven and says, yep, the pepperonis are in the right place, there's enough cheese, yeah, it's got enough sauce. Okay, the half-baked pizza is ready to go in the oven. So that's our product, we're trying to get

funding for it, we think it could be the answer. Let me ask you a question, when you came up with this, had you had lunch that day? But this gets us, all right, so this gets us to the larger point. So we've got this idea of fact checking, but I think the public solid fact checking, objective fact checking, that has to be an earned trust with an audience, right? Because we really aren't a balance of it's misinformation, but then it's also the First Amendment and censorship. The government, for instance,

and you tell this story in the book, Nina Jankiewicz, who was hired by the Department of Homeland Security to run a kind of operation within the government that can examine misinformation, generally coming from foreign sources and other things. They ended up calling it... What did they call it? The Disinformation Governance Board, the worst name any government agency's ever been given.

So it does, the name itself conjures up Orwellian bureaucratic standards. The right gets a hold of that, tweets it out, 48 hours later the whole thing is blown to shreds. The whole thing is blown to shreds. So it shows how difficult it is for even this idea of creating that mechanism to take hold in a country where misinformation is weaponized for partisan purposes. Sure. So how do you balance that? So let's be clear about,

so I focus on Nina Cenkowitz for several reasons. One, I wanted to show someone who was victimized by lying. Here's someone whose life was turned upside down because of these lies, who faced death threats, who had trouble getting work afterward. And the speed of which it went from Twitter, somebody tweeted it out, to the right-wing mainstream media thing,

and people were Brutal to her. Yes. Now, it's important to point out this Organization was an internal working group that was designed to coordinate What the Department of Homeland Security agencies did to combat disinformation? It was not out to do the things that the liars said about it. So it was not there. The purpose was not to then contact Facebook and Twitter and say, you must remove this. We don't agree with it.

Correct. But the reason that there's so much misunderstanding about this group is that the government, the Biden administration, did a terrible job explaining what it was supposed to do. And so the story- They hung her out to dry. They did. And the story of Nina is the story is really

a really depressing story, although it has moments of humor in it about how Washington works and doesn't work. So it's sort of the backbone of the book because I felt like I got so caught up in Nina's story because it reveals so many things about lying and how Washington works. Now... Does it show the limits of fact-checking?

Because in the story, look, Department of Homeland Security said, don't say anything, and so they let this thing go until it built up a kind of, you know, event horizon situation, and it was all blown up. But when Maria Ressa says something like, a lie travels eight times faster than the truth, doesn't that mean the truth has to work nine or 10 times harder?

Doesn't this mean that to battle misinformation, you have to do it in a way with a tenacity and a clarity of you know sort of a moral foundation that is kind of unyielding and they're not they don't do that at all because let's face fact the government often bends the truth for their benefit and their own propaganda. So in this case, there were no fact checks done. There was one. Right.

I do think, you know, the government is a culprit here in this case. And it's very sad to watch how the government doesn't do anything. But I think in combating misinformation and disinformation, the government needs to step up and be upfront about facts. And this is something, you know, I've been an aviation reporter in the past, I've been a political reporter in the past. I've seen plenty of instances when government does a good job telling its story, when it's honest, when it's transparent. And one of the best things that government can do

is tell us when it does not know something. Be honest with us. Boy, do they not do that well. I wonder, what do you think? You know, COVID is a great example. So as we play this all out, we talk about misinformation and trying to counter it and the weaponization of it. But when the government, as you said,

doesn't know something but come out with certainty, 100% safe and effective, if you don't do that, you know, everybody dies. And when that is shown, when the misinformation that they say is misinformation turns out to be maybe not misinformation, maybe information. I'm not saying in every case, how badly does that damage their ability to make any case vociferously and does that make it impossible for the government to have that responsibility

at all. Isn't that kind of the crux of why they can put up maybe some guardrails but can they really be adjudicators of misinformation? Well one I don't think they should be an adjudicator of misinformation. I think they should just tell us what they know and what they don't know and often it takes courage what they know and what they don't know. And often it takes courage for people and entities to say, we're not sure. And a classic example this week is the hurricane. Like for the National Hurricane Center to say,

well, here's where we think it's gonna go. But we're not positive. That's always been built into hurricane predictions. And I think that's that same uncertainty should be reflected in other things the government does. And I think they have either gone silent on us with things or they have just, uh, uh, or they have shown certainty when they're really not. And I think that really harms their credibility.

And as a fact checker, there's nothing worse than getting information from the government you later find is not accurate. Right, yeah, and that can take the whole thing. So when we look at the big lie and how it's been weaponized so effectively, you write more by the right than by the left. You've taken criticism because you fact check more people on the right or you say they lie more. Yes.

And better. They're very good at it. Yes. But you've done a, I mean it's in here, there's a statistical analysis. Yes. What I did for the book was look at fact checks by PolitiFact and by the Washington Post fact checker and then talk to, I think the most revealing thing was when I talked to Republican politicians and said, why does your party lie more?

And it was really revealing the answers. Wait. You just said, hey, why do you guys lie more? And they're like, good question, Bill. Yeah. No. There's something deeply wrong with us. Yeah.

Well, these are, for the most part, people who have left the Republican Party and who will acknowledge this truth. But they have a partisan media that not only looks the other way when they lie, but echoes their lies and often has a business model built upon their lies. And so you begin with that. Then you have a culture in the Republican Party that many people told me goes back to many people put it with Newt Gingrich as sort of the turning point. Really?

That Newt Gingrich sort of changed the culture of the Republican Party and changed it into a sort of anything goes. Hey, if we're going to win, let you know you can you can change the fact by any means necessary yes right and that culture took hold now some people dated earlier I'd go to Nixon on that and Roger and Roger and I was just gonna say and Roger Ailes and maybe money's not even the point you know Roger Ailes who was the the founder of Fox News very famously said during Watergate, I'm going to create an apparatus

so that what the left did to Nixon, they viewed any sort of press as the left, what they did to Nixon, you can never again do to another Republican candidate or president. And quite frankly, I think has been successful. And, you know, combine all those things, and you have a recipe for lying and support for lying that has just become a culture.

Now, are you suggesting the left doesn't lie or doesn't weaponize it to the point where it's as effective? Um, I am... There's definitely a substantial amount of lying from the left, but nowhere near as much lying from the left, but nowhere near as much as from the right. I've gotten, if I may, I've gotten a couple of pants on fire from you over the years.

Like literal pants on fire, like not even like slightly untrue. Like there was one where I think the tagline is, this mother f***er is lying. I think it's that on it. It's a terrible situation for me. I went home that night shamed. But see okay there's the difference and I would have accepted that from an Ivy League school. But from Duke, from Duke sir. At long last, Beyond the Big Line. It's a fascinating look on misinformation. Please get it. some do. Beyond the big line it's a fascinating look on.

John Stewart here, unbelievably exciting news. My new podcast, The Weekly Show, we're going to be talking about the election economics ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches. Listen to The Weekly Show with John Stewart wherever you get your podcasts. We are going to check in with your host for the rest of the week Yeah. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. So excited. Very excited about, very excited about hosting this week. Yippee. We talked about this Jordan. You got to do the jumping.

Come on. John, John, John. It's embarrassing. I'm serious. I am serious. I am serious. This is just, I'm freaking out. I'm serious, I am serious. I am serious, I am serious. I'm serious.

I'm serious. John, John, John. John. John. This week, Michael Boll, the winner of The Lord Reveals, high concentration. Reapers are done. It's now a four-mile conclusion.

Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah. Here it is, your moment is done! You did it! I don't like flies. Get out of here, fly. Never been a big fan of flies. You don't mind my bringing that up, do you? Anyway, this is a very aggressive sucker, that is. This one. This one in particular is very aggressive. Like, I'm gonna be aggressive for our country. You can probably say that. your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime

on Paramount Plus. Paramount Podcasts. Hey everybody, John Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show. It's gonna be coming out every Thursday. So exciting. You'll be saying to yourself, TGID.

Thank God it's Thursday. We're gonna be talking about all the things that hopefully obsess you in the same way that they obsess me, the election, economics, earnings calls, what are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're gonna be talking about ingredients to bread ratio on sandwiches. And I know that I listed that fourth,

but in importance, it's probably second. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday? I mean, talk about innovative. Listen to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you get your podcasts.