The NPR Politics Podcast - View from the Ground At Washington DC Protests; Misinformation Spreads Online

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Since the White House has increased its military in the nation's capital, more protesters are gathering by the day. The protests continue to remain largely peaceful despite the Trump administration's focus on violence. Plus, misinformation is spreading quickly as more people are turning to social media to understand what's happening on the ground.This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Alan Wise, political reporter Miles Parks, and investigations reporter Tim Mak.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio stationLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 2.12 Eastern on Thursday, June 4th. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Alana Wise. I cover politics. And I'm Tim Mack. I'm a reporter on NPR's Investigations Desk. Tim, welcome back to the podcast. And Alana, welcome to the podcast. We work together, but since you started working with us since coronavirus, I have not actually met you yet. Thanks for having me. All right.

So as we are taping this podcast, a memorial service for George Floyd is underway in Minneapolis. Lord, we are asking today for you to take this table of healing here in Minneapolis today and multiply this healing all over this nation as part of that now never fading voice crying out on behalf of those who have been and who are now being crushed in body and spirit. And last night marked the ninth day of coast to coast and really worldwide protests against racism and police violence. On Monday, President Trump pushed to confront those protests with more military force, and that only increased the number of people protesting. Alana and Tim, you have both been out covering the protests here in Washington, D.C., and I want to talk about what you have seen

and what you have heard. So it's been remarkably peaceful for the most part. Obviously, on Monday, there was the incident where there was a pretty extreme escalation by police shooting rubber bullets and letting off tear gas at what was largely a peaceful group of demonstrators in Lafayette Park. But after that and past the weekend, when we did see some instances of rioting and looting, largely downtown where there have been many protests, it's been remarkably peaceful and deliberately so. Yeah. And what was very interesting to me was how demonstrators over the last few days have responded to that escalation of force that Alana mentioned on Monday evening. So people reacted to that escalation of force on Monday evening by showing up in greater numbers and being more peaceful

and showing more unity than they had in days before when we did see some acts of violence and property destruction over the weekend. Okay, so that is what you have been seeing, what you have been reporting. Attorney General William Barr held a press conference a little while ago, and he is putting the emphasis on other things, particularly violence and property damage and other things that have happened aside and apart from these protests. While many have peacefully expressed their anger and grief, others have hijacked protests to engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses and public property, assaults on law

enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent. Such senseless acts of anarchy are not exercises of First Amendment rights. They are crimes designed to terrify fellow citizens and intimidate communities. Still, there's been a lot of anger and, as we've talked about, a lot of motivation for further protests from this massive federal response that we have seen in Washington, D.C., in particular, in response to all of this. So it was pretty immediately apparent over the past couple of days that the main goal of the majority of protesters was to remain peaceful. There were some bad actors over the weekend. But for the most part, especially downtown, nearest to the White House, the group was largely self-contained and largely self-policing when it came to any instances that might result otherwise in some sort of outbreak of violence or rioting. And it's hard to describe, right, to someone who isn't there. But there's a tremendous feeling of

goodwill amongst demonstrators right now, regardless of the message that they're promoting. I mean, you see people handing out water and snacks to everyone. Medics are circulating. People are being kind to one another at these protests here in D.C. And you get a sense of general goodwill and kindness amongst the demonstrators, the thousands of people who have gathered in front of the White House. I want to share also this sound that we have of one of the demonstrators breaking out into song. So what you're hearing there is thousands of demonstrators outside the White House I'll help you carry on So what you're hearing there is thousands of demonstrators outside the White House

with cell phones in the air, their lights on, singing together this obviously very peaceful song. One woman I spoke to who I found particularly remarkable was an elderly woman. She and her friend were out with a cane wearing masks there to protest. And I asked what sort of motivated them to come out. And they mentioned that, you know, they had been actively involved in protesting in the 60s and 70s. But seeing how little things had changed now inspired them to want to come out. Racism. Racism and Trump. Those two. We win.

You might have another one. No, that about does it. Just some honest, some capable leadership finally for the country. And racism. Yes. So I have one last question. And Tim, this is for you because you were trained as an EMT, actually. This is all happening in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

It has not stopped. The virus is still out there. It is still incredibly contagious. And for months, we were warned about people getting too close to anyone else. We were told that large gatherings especially were incredibly dangerous. So when you're out there seeing all of these protesters in tight crowds and large numbers, do you get the sense that they are mindful of the coronavirus? You definitely see a lot of masks being worn by people demonstrating, but a lot of faces aren't

covered. There are a lot of people who are choosing not to wear a mask. And I think the public health concern here, expressed by public health experts experts is demonstrations involve a lot of speaking, a lot of shouting, a lot of chanting and singing, as we've heard, right? And these are the kinds of activities that can convey the coronavirus from person to person. You know, a virus doesn't care why you're in a crowd, what your politics are, what the politics of anything are. So I think one of the big questions that we're going to look for over the next week or so is whether this leads to a big spike in cases again. Well, Alana, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and welcome to the pod. Thank you.

All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about misinformation and how it is spread during all of these protests. Support for NPR and the following message come from DuckDuckGo. Are you fed up with companies selling your data? DuckDuckGo can help. They help millions of people like you take back their privacy online. With one download, you can search and browse privately, avoiding trackers. DuckDuckGo. Privacy simplified.

It feels like nothing in the news these days makes any sense. So Hassan Minhaj turned to his father and his faith for answers he said don't worry about the number of questions just worry about which questions become more clear and solidified comedian hassan minhaj on how his spirituality is getting him through listen and subscribe to it's been a minute from npr we're back tim is still with us and now we we've got Miles Parks. Hey, Miles. Hi, Scott. So let's go back to that press conference that Attorney General Barr gave today. I want to focus on one thing he said. We have evidence that Antifa and other similar

extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity. And we are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence. So, Miles, I want to focus on that last part, this idea of foreign actors playing all sides. You have been covering for a while now misinformation in our politics. How much of a problem has it been in this particular crisis? It's been a huge problem. I mean, you think about the protest movement in general, and it kind of hit, it's like

a greatest hits of everything we've talked about the last few months in terms of all of the things that make, you know, a very ripe, fertile ground for misinformation. You've got kind of an audience that is very doubting of official sources of information right now. You've got very, you know, raw emotions. We know that visceral emotional reactions make people more likely to share bad information. And then you've got the fact that this situation is just changing so rapidly. Whenever you have information changing this rapidly, you're going to see bad actors kind of trying to flood the zone with all sorts of stuff. Yeah, and I want to talk about one specific widespread misinformation effort that you've

done some reporting on. So Monday morning, I was up pretty early to go drive up to Delaware. I tweeted about being on the road for the first time in months, and I got a few responses right away from people saying, is hashtag DC blackout real? What's going on with DC blackout? I had no idea what these people were talking about, but we later found out this was a huge misinformation campaign. What was it and what exactly happened?

Yeah, it's kind of complicated and sophisticated to be completely honest. But what we know is that around two in the morning on Sunday night, Monday morning on Twitter, there started to be this hashtag DC blackout that was purporting to say we know is that around two in the morning on Sunday night, Monday morning, on Twitter, there started to be this hashtag DC blackout that was purporting to say that sometime in the late evening hours, the DC government basically shut down all internet and telephone communications. So that way protesters who were out in the wee hours at two o'clock, 3am time, that they wouldn't be able to

post to social media or text or call anybody, so that way police could use more force on them. There is no factual evidence that anything like this happened. And so these tweets start going viral late at night, and then in the morning, reporters wake up 6, 7 a.m. in Washington, D.C., and they say, no, no, no, I was there.

I was tweeting. I have text messages to and from people while I was there at 2.30 in the morning and things like that. So there's no factual evidence that this happened. But by that time, there were more than a million tweets sent using the DC Blackout hashtag. And then adding to this disinformation campaign, as it starts being debunked, bots and hacked accounts start tweeting basically public service announcements saying, oh, no, this is fake. You shouldn't listen to this.

DC blackout didn't happen. And so then there was this like double contradictory, weird disinformation thing happening where then real people were saying, oh, bots are tweeting out that it was fake. So it must be real. So there was kind of a reverse psychology element, really sophisticated stuff. Which gets to the broader goal that, you know, we've seen in Robert Mueller's investigation and a lot of other sources about what Russian disinformation is all about, just making people question truths, question reality, question what is real and what isn't. You know, we have also seen the Chinese government really actively

try to take advantage of this moment of global unrest to point out flaws in the US system and try and enhance its international reputation. Do we have any idea whether either of those countries could have been behind this? Or what clues are there for what such a wide scale effort came from? It's really hard to pin things like this down to a specific country. I mean, experts I talked to said it is definitely in the Russian game plan was the phrase that one expert used when you think about the idea of spreading multiple contradictory narratives, like you said, to basically question, make people question what is reality? What is truth? Maybe there is no truth to get at and everyone's lying in every situation. But then,

yeah, we know that China and Russia both have been using their official state media outlets and their official social media accounts to tweet like crazy about this protest movement. It is the most talked about thing by both Russian and Chinese media accounts right now, apart from the coronavirus. And so there's a lot of potential foreign actors who could be motivated to do something like this. What we do know about it is that it was well funded and well coordinated. This was definitely not somebody sitting in their basement on a Sunday night deciding to have some fun. This was something that was incredibly coordinated. There were hacked accounts evolved, there were things purchased on the dark web. It was a big operation. and participating in violent activity. And that's related to social media platforms because social media platforms are not only dealing with misinformation and disinformation,

but also with the proliferation of extremist ideology. For example, just Wednesday, it was announced that there were these three individuals in Nevada who were arrested, who were trying to and planning to instigate violence at a Black Lives Matter rally. In fact, according to the criminal complaint, they were preparing Molotov cocktails when they were arrested. They subscribe to this ideology, this movement called the Boogaloo movement, and they had hoped to set off this confrontation between peaceful demonstrators and police. And

the reason I mention this is that all of these three individuals were subscribed to so-called Boogaloo Facebook groups on that social network. I took a closer look at one of these individuals who was arrested, and he is a member of multiple Boogaloo groups that just exist freely on Facebook. So the big question is, why do these social networks, and in particular Facebook, allow these groups to exist and allow these groups to kind of push their message and gain followers and proliferate? One of the many existential problems that we are trying to sort out at the moment. All right, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. Obviously, a lot to round up this week. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign.

I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting and election interference. And I'm Tim Mack. I'm a reporter on the NPR Investigations Desk. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.