Engines of Outrage Pt. 3

Summary

Landslide: Engines of Outrage Pt. 3 [NPR]

Host: Ben Bradford
Date: February 20, 2025
Main Theme:
This episode explores what, if anything, can be done to curb the engines of outrage, misinformation, and political division that have flourished in the digital age—especially as they relate to right-wing media ecosystems. Through interviews with experts and personal accounts, host Ben Bradford seeks to uncover solutions, from the practical to the radical, for combating misinformation in a polarized America.

---

Table of Contents

• Overview & Purpose
• Key Discussion Points & Insights
  • 1. The Facebook ‘Good for the World’ Experiment
  • 2. Nina Jankowicz: Fighting Disinformation and Bearing the Consequences
  • 3. Systemic Barriers: The Outrage Engine and the Response
  • 4. Trusted Messengers — Lessons from Ukraine
  • 5. The Role and Limits of Local News
  • 6. The Reality of Political Campaigns and Messaging
  • 7. Is the Only Solution to Build a Counter-Engine of Outrage?
• Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
• Important Segment Timestamps
• Conclusion

---

Overview & Purpose

Episode Purpose:
Host Ben Bradford asks: Can misinformation and division be curbed? This episode examines failed and proposed solutions, focusing on the need to tell compelling truths, reach people where they are, and build trust through local messengers. Through the saga of Nina Jankowicz and insight from campaign strategists, it discusses why previous efforts have failed and whether competing engines of narrative are the only viable answer.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Facebook ‘Good for the World’ Experiment [00:24 – 01:40]

• In 2020, amidst rampant COVID misinformation, Facebook ran an internal experiment on the spread of positive vs. negative content.
• Experiment: Users tagged content as “good for the world” or “bad for the world.”
• Findings:
  • “Bad for the world” content spread faster and kept users engaged longer.
  • Changing the algorithm to favor “good” content reduced engagement; Facebook reverted the change.
• Takeaway: Engagement (and thus profit) trumps social good in platform incentives.
• Speaker Quote:
  • “They found posts rated bad for the world circulated fastest... Those people spent less time on Facebook... Facebook did? They literally turned off the algorithm called Good for the world...” (Interviewee, 01:11–01:35)
• Implication: Platforms drive outrage because outrage is profitable.

2. Nina Jankowicz: Fighting Disinformation and Bearing the Consequences [03:48 – 13:19]

• Background: Nina Jankowicz, an expert on Russian disinformation, worked in Ukraine post-Crimea annexation.
• Two Principles for Counteracting Disinformation:
  1. Tell a good story — Compelling truth is needed to compete with compelling lies. (04:13–04:25)
  2. Meet people where they are — Actively push out truthful information on platforms people actually use. (04:42–05:00)
• Personal Experience:
  • In 2022, joined DHS as lead on the Disinformation Governance Board, an advisory inside DHS.
  • The announcement was seized upon by right-wing media to invent “ministry of truth” conspiracy theories (06:52–13:19).
  • Outrage rapidly spread after amplification by right-wing influencers like Jack Posobiek, then by Fox News and members of Congress.
  • Nina and her family received threats; advised to leave their home.
  • The Board was shuttered; she resigned.
• Lesson: Silence or slow response allowed misinformation to fill the void:
  • “That meant that the kind of prevailing truth out there was the lies that were being bandied about.” (Nina Jankowicz, 10:21)

3. Systemic Barriers: The Outrage Engine and the Response [13:35 – 15:00]

• Noted that any effort to combat misinformation is rapidly targeted by the same methods—lawsuits, congressional scrutiny, media outrage—creating a chilling effect even on academic research centers.
• Ben Bradford:
  • “I’m not convinced there’s any story the government could have provided to outcompete that message.” (14:27)
• Principle #3 emerges: Trusted messengers matter — people believe those within their communities more than distant authorities.

4. Trusted Messengers — Lessons from Ukraine [14:14 – 15:42]

• Ukraine’s Approach: Trained 10,000 librarians nationwide to teach information literacy; librarians were trusted, local, and effective.
• Limitation: Such a top-down, government-run program is unworkable in the U.S. context, especially as trust in institutions is so degraded.
• Jankowicz:
  • “It’s all about the framing and the delivery of this stuff.” (15:35)

5. The Role and Limits of Local News [16:20 – 20:50]

• Matt Gertz: Argues reviving local newspapers could help restore trust and serve as community messengers.
• Barriers:
  • Most local papers shuttered or stripped of resources.
  • “Pink slime” fake local news (AI-generated, right-wing content) fills the void.
  • Kate Starbird (University of Washington):
    • People pick news that entertains or affirms more than informs.
    • “Conspiracy theories are far more entertaining than the truth.” (18:48)
    • Even trusted fact-based news struggles to engage (“how do you tell the stories that engage people?” – 19:20)
• Challenge: Real news may not emotionally compete with viral misinformation.

6. The Reality of Political Campaigns and Messaging [23:43 – 32:07]

• Mike Madrid (GOP strategist):
  • Campaigns no longer try to persuade; focus is on mobilizing the base through fear and anger.
  • Different messages target segmented audiences; consistency isn’t required, only resonance within micro-communities.
    • “What we have found is, it is much easier to use fear and anger as mobilizing tools.” (Mike Madrid, 24:43)
    • “Tell me what your mythology is and I’ll let you know if I can agree with that.” (25:26)
  • Earnest journalism or fact-based news cannot compete; alternative right-wing media infrastructure has swamped old patterns.
  • To break through: build infrastructure within communities, using validators (existing trusted figures) and narrative storytelling.
• Bradford’s Reflection:
  • The market incentives, funding sources, and aim are mismatched: there is no business model for “piercing the bubble” with truth at scale.

7. Is the Only Solution to Build a Counter-Engine of Outrage? [32:07 – 33:40]

• Attempts at neutral, fact-based information fail due to lack of resonance and scale; only emotionally compelling narratives spread fast and wide.
• Mike Madrid: Suggests building a counter-infrastructure, copying the tactics of outrage media but for fact-based storytelling—constructing new communities, media outlets, and leveraging existing influencers.
  • “Tell a better story about truths.” (30:45)
• Ethical Dilemma:
  • Is the only way to counteract the right-wing outrage ecosystem to build a similar engine for the other side?
• Bradford: It may be the only “compelling” answer for truly piercing the bubble, albeit an uncomfortable one.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Facebook’s incentives:

  • “They literally turned off the algorithm called Good for the world…”
    — Interviewer/Commentator, [01:35]

• On the power of narrative:

  • “Government communications doesn’t need to be something that’s boring and staid… Tell a good story.”
    — Nina Jankowicz, [04:13–04:25]

• On being targeted:

  • “Within 24 hours of it being announced, Tucker Carlson was saying that I was going to have men with guns at my disposal…”
    — Nina Jankowicz, [06:52]

• On failure to respond:

  • “In not responding, that meant that the kind of prevailing truth out there was the lies that were being bandied about.”
    — Nina Jankowicz, [10:21]

• On media ecosystem:

  • “What the right wing media ecosystem did was they created thousands of outlets to focus micro communities on Trump.”
    — Mike Madrid, [26:33]

• About mobilization over persuasion:

  • “The craft of the political consultant 30 years ago was to persuade. That is not at all the case today. The entire practice is about mobilization…”
    — Mike Madrid, [24:43]

• On the ethical/strategic dilemma:

  • “Is the only answer to the engines of outrage to spin up another engine of outrage against them? …It’s the most compelling one I have found.”
    — Ben Bradford, [32:07]

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• Facebook ‘Good for the World’ Experiment: [00:21 – 01:40]
• Nina Jankowicz – Ukraine beginnings & lessons: [03:48 – 05:00]
• Disinformation Governance Board saga: [05:36 – 13:19]
• The failure of slow/technical government response: [12:32 – 13:19]
• The chilling effect on academic/NGO efforts: [13:35 – 15:00]
• Ukraine’s model of info literacy via librarians: [14:59 – 15:42]
• Collapse/compromise of local news and rise of “pink slime”: [16:20 – 18:36]
• Limitations of local news for engagement: [18:36 – 19:20]
• Mike Madrid on campaign tactics: [23:43 – 29:35]
• Building a counter-infrastructure: [30:16 – 31:10]
• Concluding ethical dilemma: [32:07 – 33:40]

---

Conclusion

Episode Summary:
This episode of “Landslide” lays bare the bleak state of America’s information ecosystem: outrage is incentivized, truthful responses are often too slow or too tepid to gain traction, and virtually all efforts to intervene are rapidly villainized by a sophisticated, profitable right-wing media machine. Local news, while trusted, has been decimated. Experts agree on three foundational principles: tell compelling stories, meet people where they are, and use trusted messengers—but they admit even these strategies struggle in practice.

Central Dilemma: The only tactic that appears robust enough to challenge the right’s outrage engine—building a competing infrastructure of narrative, community, and emotional storytelling—is fraught with its own ethical and practical hazards. Still, as Ben Bradford concludes: “If traditional information cannot compete in front of this audience, cannot bring them back out of the bubble to a fact-based reality… is the only answer to the engines of outrage to spin up another engine of outrage against them?” For now, it may be the only real answer to the question of how to pierce the American bubble of outrage and misinformation.

---

For further reading and episode sources: nuancetales.com

Transcript

[NPR Announcer]

This message comes from Carvana who makes buying and financing your next car easy. Thousands of vehicles, terms up front and 100% online. Even get it delivered to your door. Buy your car the easy way with Carvana. Delivery fee may apply.

[Ben Bradford]

This episode contains some strong language. Listener discretion is advised.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

By the way, here's the other moment. I remember that we were really screwed.

[Ben Bradford]

I'm talking to Hani Farid, the Berkeley professor studying misinformation on the Internet who you heard last episode when he tells me a story. It's about Facebook.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

There was a study Facebook had done and you can't make this up called Good for the World Bad for the World.

[Ben Bradford]

This was back in 2020. Facebook had grown to more than 2 billion daily users. But Covid misinformation was running rampant. That you could cure it with horse dewormer that it was part of an Illuminati like plot. There was fake news about the election. The QAnon conspiracy theory was crescendoing.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

They're getting heat for the hate that they are promoting.

[Ben Bradford]

Alarmed researchers at Facebook ran an experiment.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

They had people, a select number of people on their news feeds every time something was promoted to them would just say, just qualitatively, is this good for the world or bad for the world?

[Ben Bradford]

They found posts rated bad for the world circulated fastest and they said, okay.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

We'Re going to promote things that are good for the world.

[Ben Bradford]

They adjusted Facebook's algorithm, right?

[Interviewer/Commentator]

And then they went and looked at the news feeds and in fact they, they were better, they were nicer, they were more decent, they were less hateful. But you know what else happened? Those people spent less time on Facebook and you know what Facebook did? They literally turned off the algorithm called Good for the world for fried.

[Ben Bradford]

It's another example of the ruthlessness of the industry and the harm.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

Because why? They're not there to make the world better. They're there to make a lot of money.

[Ben Bradford]

I would argue the good for the world experiment shows something else too. It shows there are ways to curb the engines of outrage driving our misinformation and political division. Good for the World may not have succeeded, but it may hint at some answers. This is Landslide Engines of Outrage. I'm Ben Bradford. In this mini series so far we've examined how misinformation and polarizing content travel and divide us, including encouraged by the incentives of an Internet focused on engagement. How that stacked on top of an existing right wing media apparatus which had developed over decades posing as news but with different intent. All of it combined to create a self reinforcing bubble where for millions of Americans, politically motivated conspiracy theories and falsehoods circulate indistinguishable from truth. And so this episode is about what can be done. The answers I found range from the anodyne to the unsavory, from reinforcing existing institutions to hotwiring the engines of outrage themselves. We'll explore all of it, starting by meeting someone who tried to fight disinformation and ended up feeling the full brunt of it herself. Back in 2014, reports began to filter out from the Crimea region of Ukraine about sightings of soldiers in the area with no insignia. At the same time, a growing chorus flooded Facebook and Twitter panning Ukraine's new government. The soldiers were Russian special forces. The posts came from trolls they'd paid. It was all designed to kick up dust and confusion as a precursor to an invasion. Russian troops moving swiftly to take control of military bases in Crimea. Armored Russian vehicles burst through the wall of Crimea' Belbek base today. This is where Nina Jankowicz cut her teeth in Ukraine fighting Russian influence campaigns in the years after the invasion of Crimea. This became her focus.

[Nina Jankowicz]

It was just really clear to me that foreign interference was the thing already. Even if we in the United States were thinking, oh, that's just something that's happening to those poor countries over there, we've got more robust institutions.

[Ben Bradford]

Nina studied different countries that face disinformation campaigns where they failed and what it takes to succeed. She describes. And this is my takeaway, two foundational principles, starting with this.

[Nina Jankowicz]

One of the things was just transparent communication and telling a good story. You know, government communications doesn't need to be something that's boring and staid and, you know, fact sheets and press releases.

[Ben Bradford]

Principle number one is tell a good story. Simply presenting true information cannot counter the pull of outrageous. It needs to also be compelling. And then there's principle number two. Don't rely on people to find your accurate information.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Particularly with these tools that we have now. There are ways to reach people where they are. You know, we should be trying to get out good information using social media. And Ukraine, to their credit, has really done a great job with telling its story on social media.

[Ben Bradford]

You will hear these principles over and over again stated in different ways. Tell a good story, reach people where they are. They're probably the building blocks for any solution to what can be done. But they're hard to execute, especially because the engines of outrage will spin up in their own defense. As Nina found out, it was 2022 Nina was hired by the US Department of Homeland Security to help shore up its internal processes, running a new panel called the Disinformation Governance Board. Can you just tell me what happened? Sure.

[Nina Jankowicz]

So the Disinformation Governance Board was meant to be an advisory body, a kind of coordination group within the Department of Homeland Security, which is kind of a Frankenstein of a government agency.

[Ben Bradford]

DHS includes everything from airport security to disaster relief.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Whole bunch of people doing different stuff. But a lot of their missions touched disinformation in some way, shape or form. And so there was an interest within the administration of making sure that everybody was kind of marching to the beat of the same drummer. And they brought me in to lovingly herd those cats within the government. We, just to be absolutely, perfectly clear, had no operational authority.

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah, you were gonna write reports and you were gonna tell people, hey, here's what we think you should do. Here's some stuff to try out.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Not even that, really. It was gonna be a con of the heads of all of those agencies. We would tee up questions for them, and they would make recommendations for the whole department about how to deal with stuff like this.

[Ben Bradford]

It was wonky, bureaucratic, inside baseball, but also possibly useful. FEMA might have liked to have it last year after hurricane, when false rumors spread that the agency was stealing land from hurricane victims, when in fact it was offering aid. Benina's group never got off the ground.

[Nina Jankowicz]

And so when it was announced, the right wing jumped on it and said, oh, this is going to be a ministry of truth. And within 24 hours of it being announced, Tucker Carlson was saying that I was going to have men with guns at my disposal to get men with.

[Ben Bradford]

Guns to tell you to shut up. Most Americans probably haven't thought of that because this isn't Africa or Eastern Europe. This is America. And we don't do things like that here and never have. More precisely, we haven't until now. The outrage engine flared, spitting out a world of fantasy about this wonky government board. Joe Biden's partisan political enemies are now officially enemies of the state. I'm wondering if you can kind of map how you think that disinformation about you and what you were doing, you know, rose and spread and permeated.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Yeah, so I can do that pretty at a pretty fine point, which is one of the ironies of being a disinformation researcher who's subject to a disinformation campaign. There were a couple little tweets percolating the day of the announcement. People who were like, what is this, this is weird. And eventually those tweets had tagged in Jack Posobiek, who very infamously is the guy who amplified the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

[Ben Bradford]

Pizzagate was the myth that a restaurant in D.C. was a front for top Democrats to perform satanic rituals on babies.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Posobiek tweeted that this was a ministry of truth. Posobiek has a million, more than a million Twitter followers. And then I. I remember I had just laid down to take a little nap because I was massively pregnant and was working from home. And I saw this on my phone and my husband was like, something's going on that you should probably get up and deal with. And then throughout the afternoon, it spiraled from there. It went from Posobiek to members of Congress.

[Ben Bradford]

It's something that sounds surreal. We can't believe that it would have come to this. It's effectively a ministry of truth. That was future House Speaker Mike Johnson. Here's the current Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. This is the kind of thing that.

[Nina Jankowicz]

You see in dictatorships, this ministry of truth.

[Ben Bradford]

Fox picked it up.

[Nina Jankowicz]

It was the leading news story. And when you're the leading news story on Fox News, the effect is instantaneous. You become the folk villain for the people who watch that network.

[Ben Bradford]

Nina Jankowicz was one of the biggest perpetrators and purveyors of disinformation in the entire country. One of the most outspoken critics of free speech. Right wing influencers, pundits and their audience dug up and distorted old tweets as proof. They also found that Nina in her private life is a musical theater nerd and incorporated that part angry feminist, part frustrated karaoke singer. Jank. She is pitch perf for the Biden administration. A watchdog group found that over the course of the week, Fox mentioned Nina and the board on 70% of his hours.

[Nina Jankowicz]

My family and I got a kind of really staggering amount of threats, nastiness, vitriol.

[Ben Bradford]

A private security consultant advised her to leave her home.

[Nina Jankowicz]

We were doxxed.

[Ben Bradford]

Within weeks, the Department of Homeland Security folded to the pressure and paused the board. Nina resigned. The Minister of truth has gone poof. Nina Jankowicz had become a case study in how the engines of outrage work. She says her story also shows exactly what not to do to combat them in not responding.

[Nina Jankowicz]

That meant that the kind of prevailing truth out there was the lies that were being bandied about.

[NPR Announcer]

Support for npr. And the following message come from Warby Parker, the one stop shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com it is hard to get a house.

[Mike Madrid]

Getting that down payment together. Brutal. You shipped off to Djibouti to afford a down payment for a house?

[Ben Bradford]

Yes sir.

[Mike Madrid]

100% on Planet Money. The high price of housing, what the Trump administration is trying to do about it, and will it work? Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Venezuela, Iran, Greenland.

[Ben Bradford]

World events move quickly. Make sense of them with State of.

[Mike Madrid]

The World from npr. We bring you on the ground reporting from around the globe in just a few minutes every weekday. Listen to State of the World on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben Bradford]

Everyone involved in Joe Biden's new Ministry of Information is a buffoon. They may be evil, but they're also ridiculous. Nina Jankowicz is the most ridiculous of all. The attacks on Nina Jankowicz didn't stop even after she resigned from her government job.

[Nina Jankowicz]

I like to joke that I can't sneeze without Fox News writing an article about it. And that is true. They do try to reference me and stick me in whenever they can. And it's because it's profitable for them, right?

[Ben Bradford]

Remember the Doom disinfo board that was led by crazy show tunes lady Nina Jankowitz?

[Nina Jankowicz]

Profitable for them to be able to point to an enemy and say, oh yeah, remember that crazy woman? And it, it, it's just changed my life.

[Ben Bradford]

She was subpoenaed by House Republicans and spent five hours being deposed.

[Nina Jankowicz]

And I at the time was still nursing my son, so I had to take pumping breaks and stuff like it was all very human, right?

[Ben Bradford]

Nina thinks all of it, the backlash, the conspiracy theories, the disruption to her life, could have been prevented early.

[Nina Jankowicz]

The department should have been getting both supporters and adversaries in Congress on the phone ahead of time to let them know that this was coming and that it wouldn't be a surprise.

[Ben Bradford]

She says the government should have been more transparent, more public about what her wonky board would do, and then jumped quickly if lies began to circulate. Don't let them gain oxygen. And that's something all organizations can learn from.

[Nina Jankowicz]

And I know it's difficult. These are, you know, huge, hulking administrations that need several levels of clearance to even put a tweet out. But there's gotta be a way to kind of keep up with the pace of communication and the tone and tenor.

[Ben Bradford]

As well, by seeking to tell a good story Pushing it out to reach people on the platforms they're on. Nina says. Instead, she was told not to comment. Even as the outrage built, the department.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Got kind of caught flat footed, didn't know how to respond to such a massive uproar. And in not responding, that meant that the kind of prevailing truth out there was the lies that were being bandied about.

[Ben Bradford]

But there are reasons to think that once the outrage engines started, the actual truth never had a chance. All kinds of efforts to combat disinformation and foreign election interference have been targeted with the same playbook. Stanford folded its center tracking online misinformation after being forced to defend against lawsuits and congressional subpoenas. The University of Washington, Clemson, and a variety of other centers trying to tell truth from fiction have faced the same. The backlash to these places is almost like an immune response from within the right wing bubble.

[Nina Jankowicz]

The idea is, you know, the disinformation has been incredibly profitable for them. It has shorn up their power. And so if any efforts are chipping away at their ability to spread that, that's, you know, a threat to their very existence.

[Ben Bradford]

This ecosystem is premised on convincing its audience it offers the truth. And anything that pushes back is lying. I'm not convinced there's any story the government could have provided to out compete that message. No channels the agency communicated over would match the reach. And so it's not just about the platform or the message. Principle number three is to use trusted messengers. When Nina was in Ukraine, she saw a program that spread an effective, simple message against Russia's disinformation.

[Nina Jankowicz]

That basic phrase, the most engaging content is the most enraging content. If you tell people that one of the tactics of disinformation is emotional manipulation, they are much more likely to be able to discern fact from fiction, just that basic information literacy.

[Ben Bradford]

And to spread that word, Ukraine recruited.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Specific messengers, librarians highly trusted in their local communities. 10,000 of them all over the country who went and then trained other librarians.

[Ben Bradford]

We are so much more likely to believe information that comes to us locally from within our communities, from people we trust, rather than faceless, remote entities.

[Nina Jankowicz]

I think it's all about the framing and the delivery of this stuff. I think that's a really great model.

[Ben Bradford]

It's a model we can learn from, but not duplicate. Because that program spreading what's called information literacy through librarians, came from the government itself against an outside enemy. Here, our biggest bubbles of distortion are homegrown.

[Nina Jankowicz]

We've got, you know, a call coming.

[Ben Bradford]

From inside the house, a national U.S. information literacy program is out of the question. Nina's attempt ended in flames. Academic centers are under siege and certainly not trusted. Within the bubble, there's no obvious cavalry to turn to. So that's the next question. We've explored the principles of fighting misinformation. Tell a good story, reach people where they are, find trusted messengers. Is there any institution that can do it? So, okay, the other question is, if you were a wealthy investor and could fund any venture, what would you do? If I was a wealthy investor and could fund any venture. I'm talking to Matt Gertz, the media analyst. You heard last episode. I think I'm probably going to buy up a lot of local newspapers in rural areas. This is a not uncommon and I think compelling answer. Local newspapers are like librarians in a community, easily visible, generally trusted, but they're vanishing. I think that's been really disastrous for the industry at large, both, you know, because of the loss of actual reporting, but also because of the loss of that sense that the reporters represent you and are looking out for you. More than a third of all local papers in the US have shuttered over the past 20 years. Much of what remains is gutted. The old business models seem to be falling away. Papers used to make money not on the reporting, but movie times, weather reports, restaurant reviews, classifieds. Things the Internet took over and made free in the whole left. From their closure, the bubble has expanded the right wing. Sinclair Media now owns almost 200 TV stations and has forced their newsrooms to run talking points. The national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. Fake outlets known as pink slime have also cropped up posing as local news with AI generated articles, sometimes actually printing papers. A company called Metric runs more than 1200 such sites. Could restoring newspapers with philanthropic dollars or some other funding reverse this growth of the bubble? I think that that is probably your best bet for trying to give people options to hear more credible information. But I wonder if that's enough to make a difference against the bubble.

[Kate Starbird]

The problem is people have to want to choose to turn on your channel, right? And we have a lot of other options and competitions for our attention.

[Ben Bradford]

Kate Starboard at the University of Washington, who maps misinformation.

[Kate Starbird]

To be honest, you know, conspiracy theories are far more entertaining than the truth. Political speech that aligns with what we believe is much more enjoyable for us to consume.

[Ben Bradford]

Adding a local paper doesn't mean someone will pick it up. Americans are already tuning out of traditional news.

[Kate Starbird]

We have a Lot of other options and competitions for our attention.

[Ben Bradford]

And I remember our principles of what it takes to fight misinformation. Local newspapers could be a trusted messenger. They might be able to reach people where they are. But what about that final critical piece?

[Kate Starbird]

Facts based reporting may not resonate with people as well as stories. And so how do you tell the stories that engage people?

[Ben Bradford]

I've had a worry growing in the back of my head. I worry an underlying assumption I've had this entire time is wrong. I just assumed that the obvious answer to misinformation is giving people good information. Delivering real news would be the solution. What if it's not? We often juxtapose sort of the disinformation economy, I guess.

[Kate Starbird]

Right.

[Ben Bradford]

And fact based news and information. What if these are just fundamentally different products? News is designed to inform. It's not designed to combat the things that make disinfecting information stick. Right. It's not supposed to be emotionally manipulative or tell a comforting story. What if the best options that I can find for providing useful true information like local newspapers simply do not have what it takes to penetrate the bubble? I realize everyone I've interviewed for this series is in the profession of distinguishing truth from falsehood, whether as academics or journalists. And maybe that was a mistake.

[Kate Starbird]

I don't have like a, a confident answer here where, where I know, like this is the answer. But I think that is a very good comment. Right.

[Ben Bradford]

When I brought this up with Kate Starboard, she said something intriguing.

[Kate Starbird]

There's a different way of thinking about solutions, but it doesn't necessarily look like my recommendations for how do we build a fast paced world. It would be a different set of recommendations. But that's not who I am. That's not who I am. Right? Like that's not what I'm doing.

[Ben Bradford]

We're not necessarily investigating how do you get people back to traditional news. We're asking what can pierce the bubble? And that may have a different solution.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Do you ever feel like no matter.

[NPR Announcer]

How many hours of sleep you got, you're still fatigued?

[Nina Jankowicz]

We have to be able to differentiate sleep and from the different ways that.

[NPR Announcer]

We can rest on the Life Kit podcast.

[Nina Jankowicz]

The seven types of rest and why each one is important to living a full, healthy life. Listen to the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[NPR Announcer]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the Internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to Shopify.com NPR to take your business to the next level. Today there is a long history of.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Misinformation about autism, from accusations about bad parenting to RFK Jr. S false allegations that Tylenol has something to do with it. But science is getting closer to truly understanding what drives autism.

[Ben Bradford]

It looks like there are hundreds of genes that are involved.

[Nina Jankowicz]

To find out what the research actually.

[NPR Announcer]

Says about autism and what we still.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Don'T know, listen to Short Wave in.

[NPR Announcer]

The NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Melinda French Gates on seeing her ex husband Bill Gates's name in the latest Epstein files For.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up right because brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage.

[NPR Announcer]

Watch or listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube.

[Ben Bradford]

PRWildcard I have been talking to a lot of people who are journalists or who are disinformation researchers and it just struck me that if my question is what can pierce this bubble? If we think this ecosystem is churning up myths and falsehoods in a way that's really difficult for the country, it has political advantage. And so it's very sticky what can disrupt it. And so I thought, well, let's talk to someone who is in campaigning because campaigns are not about informing in the sense that like not saying they can inform. Right. But sort of what's the point? The point is to win.

[Mike Madrid]

That's exactly right. And I was going to say I'm laughing because you're talking to purveyors of truth where that's the objective. And it's not necessarily that political consultants aren't practitioners of truth, but we're not.

[Ben Bradford]

This is Mike Madrid.

[Mike Madrid]

I'm a Republican political consultant and an author now, and I have a very unique role in American politics where I've worked at some of the highest levels of campaigns on both sides.

[Ben Bradford]

What's been your personal relationship with the Republican Party over the last several years?

[Mike Madrid]

Yeah, I've been a Republican since the day I turned 18 and registered to vote. I was one of those kids that was excited to register on my 18th birthday. And I've seen the Republican Party obviously transform itself into something I would argue is the exact opposite of what I joined it for.

[Ben Bradford]

I asked Mike to talk through how political strategists look to influence voters, how campaigns work, and then we can consider what applies. He tells me that campaigns by and large do not try to change voters minds. It's just too hard.

[Mike Madrid]

The craft of the political consultant 30 years ago was to persuade. That is not at all the case today. The entire practice is about mobilization. As the information silos have become more segmented and more sophisticated. We're not just watching three channels on broadcast TV anymore. It's so difficult to reach voters that what we have found is, is that it is much easier to use fear and anger as mobilizing tools.

[Ben Bradford]

In other words, campaigns are more engines of outrage because fear and anger are easy buttons. And in this bottom line business of winning, they don't challenge their audience's beliefs, they tell stories that match them.

[Mike Madrid]

I think what we're doing is saying tell me what your mythology is and I'll let you know if I can agree with that.

[Ben Bradford]

Mike says in our first fractured information landscape, the messages to different audiences don't even need to be consistent.

[Mike Madrid]

We used to believe that they had to have common values or overlapping interests. That's not true. You just need to be able to communicate to a community of interest on their own terms to reach them.

[Ben Bradford]

Campaigns look to ally with messengers those communities already trust. Mike calls it building infrastructure.

[Mike Madrid]

You have to find a whole, whole wide cadre of third party validators, the Joe Rogans of the world, the, the, you know, those other audiences where there already exists a community and a culture and trust and use those to validate you and you, you have to inculcate yourself into them and lean into that mythology of whatever it is that is being espoused.

[Ben Bradford]

If you've wondered why Joe Rogan, barstool sports, the maniverse, the anti vaccine movement have folded in with the gop, this is a huge reason.

[Mike Madrid]

What the right wing media ecosystem did was they created thousands of outlets to focus micro communities on Trump.

[Ben Bradford]

Mike thinks trying to compete with this using traditional fact based news is like the French building fortifications in the wrong place during World War II.

[Mike Madrid]

You're building the Maginot line against an invading force and that's not where the invaders are coming.

[Ben Bradford]

So what would it take to push back the invaders?

[Mike Madrid]

The response is you have to create that infrastructure of communities, finding messengers, people.

[Ben Bradford]

Trust who can reach them where they are. But also the political strategist thinks the story they tell can't just communicate truth news.

[Mike Madrid]

It's all about narrative and storytelling or.

[Ben Bradford]

Mythology, stories Specifically crafted to make inroads with these audiences playing off instead of refuting what they already believe, where the.

[Mike Madrid]

Truth is a better story than the lie. And that is not easy. It's not easy because you can't monetize truth as much as you can monetize lies.

[Ben Bradford]

Because conspiracy theories tend to be more gripping, more profitable. But as I think about this and the infrastructure Mike is describing, there's a larger point about money too. Media businesses serve their users. If you subscribe to Vogue, you want to read about fashion. If you tune into npr, it's because you're looking for that type of traditional reporting and that's what they produce. Who is making a product designed to pierce the bubble, to speak to the audiences in it and to deliver facts? There's no business model for that. Political campaigns are interesting because they raise money from a different source than where they spend it, but they're short run with the goal of electing one candidate or a slate of them in a specific race. So they target low hanging fruit.

[Mike Madrid]

Yeah, the cost of actually getting new voters is so difficult and so prohibitive. You don't have engage in it much. And it's much, much better to mobilize.

[Ben Bradford]

Your own base, which fans our polarization. And I realize, as far as I can tell, there is no product combating the engines of outrage, at least large scale and running perpetually using the tactics that we've heard work. That product does not exist. There aren't dollars oriented for that. Which is interesting, I think, about the amount of money that, let's say presidential candidate Kamala Harris raised, you know, one and a half billion dollars. If you had one and a half billion dollars, would it be more effective to build infrastructure? Yeah, yeah, to build.

[Mike Madrid]

That's what all my clients know, all of my clients is we begin with what is your infrastructure? And then how do we build it? Doesn't even matter what your message is. I don't really even care what your policy positions are. I don't need to know. Doesn't matter where you're at on this specific issue or that, because I can continually drown you out if I keep talking to my people with the infrastructure that I have.

[Ben Bradford]

I think that's fascinating. It's also cheaper in some ways to get your message out to build a platform than ever before. I mentioned the pink slime outlets of AI generated local news as an example. They're literally printing and sending AI generated papers to people that just sort of are, you know, parroting Trump talking points. The point being not, oh, do that.

[Mike Madrid]

You can do that.

[Ben Bradford]

You can do that.

[Mike Madrid]

It's relatively easy and cheap.

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah.

[Mike Madrid]

And I don't say you wouldn't do that. I don't know that that's probably a good tactic.

[Ben Bradford]

And so I asked Mike what he would do if he was hired to run a campaign, not to elect someone, but to pierce the bubble. What would that look like if I.

[Mike Madrid]

Was brought on to by the globalists right to fight for truth? And what tactics and strategy would I develop? I would copy the tactics of what the disinformation campaign folks have done.

[Ben Bradford]

You would raise money to build infrastructure.

[Mike Madrid]

You need your own media. You need your own megaphone.

[Ben Bradford]

It would target people in the bubble not by seeking balance or informing, but outreach and playing off what they already believe.

[Mike Madrid]

Start telling your own narrative and quit trying to dispel lies. Tell a better story about truths.

[Ben Bradford]

And he would look to recruit and ally and incorporate existing messengers with inroads in those communities.

[Mike Madrid]

You don't just create a Joe Rogan person. They already exist. They're already out there. You have to engage them and use them as the fire hose in response to what is already occurring.

[Ben Bradford]

He would build his own engine. And suddenly I realized what we're talking about. A campaign reaching people where they are stimulating their outrage, personalized to the causes they care about, linking them together with fiery messages. It is the model that 50 years ago a grassroots movement adopted. We have to go out there and polarize the electorate. The New right challenged the establishment and.

[Mike Madrid]

Who pays for the textbooks?

[Ben Bradford]

Printers bused the issue of court ordered busing. The subject was the Panama Canal, which is in favor of school prayer. It provided the foundation for the right wing media ecosystem. It's uncomfortable to think of it as any kind of a template, but I also think about what we heard from experts about what it takes to fight disinformation.

[Nina Jankowicz]

It's all about the framing and the delivery of this stuff.

[Kate Starbird]

Facts based reporting may not resonate with people as well as stories.

[Ben Bradford]

If roughly half of American voters are caught in a media ecosystem that consistently misinforms and polarizes for profit and political gain. If traditional information cannot compete in front of this audience, cannot bring them back out of the bubble to a fact based reality. And if that is destabilizing our democracy, then is the only answer to the engines of outrage to spin up another engine of outrage against them? I don't know if that's the right answer. It's the most compelling one I have found to the question of what might really pierce the bubble. So I have presented it. There is one other question about our information divide and our engines of outrage that I want to explore, which is how it affects you and me. Even if you're not in the right wing bubble, how have the shifts in our media environment caused by it or the incentives of the Internet influenced our information diets? How can we tell? So next time on Landslide Engines of Outrage, a little news you can use. If you think this mini series is helpful. You want more people to know about it or you're interested in more from Landslide, please pass. Pass it along. Tell even more people about it. You can stay up to date by signing up for our mailing [e-mail] Landslide is a production of Nuance Tales in partnership with WFAE and distributed by the NPR Network. It is created, hosted, reported and produced by me, edited by Noya Carr. Jay Sebold is the sound designer and engineer. Music is by Matt Bradford. Thanks to everyone at WFAE and NPR who's helped make the series possible. You can view key sources for this [e-mail] thank you for listening. Sources and methods is NPR's national security podcast. When world news changes by the hour, we help you zoom out to understand shifting alliances, global flashpoints and what is really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland. Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to explain a world order changing beneath our feet. Listen to Sources and Methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[NPR Announcer]

This year on Throughline, NPR's history podcast for generations, an American quest has shaped the world.

[Nina Jankowicz]

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

[NPR Announcer]

Now, 250 years in, what is that pursuit really about? Join us each Tuesday for an essential new series, America in Pursuit. From Throughline on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.