#50: Where The Gospel Meets Fake News

#50: Where the Gospel Meets Fake News

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey guys, it’s Jesse. Real quick before we get today’s episode started – the end of the year is a really important time for our ministry. The money that we raise over the next five to six weeks – it is going to decide a lot of what we’re capable of doing over the next calendar year, and the only way for us to raise all of this money is with your help. You have an opportunity to make an impact in the work that we are doing. So to help us out, head over to lovethyneighborhood.org/donate. Everything that you give between now and the end of the year will automatically be doubled up to $105,000. This is the largest fundraising opportunity that our ministry has ever had, so head over to lovethyneighborhood.org/donate so we can continue to shape the world through discipleship and missions for modern times. Thanks for your support.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Alright. Hold on. My headphone’s on… am I coming through?

JESSE EUBANKS: Alright. On October 30, 1938, a shocking piece of audio erupted from home radios around America. 

RADIO CLIP: Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News… Observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.

JESSE EUBANKS: A series of disturbing and cataclysmic events descended onto listeners. Reporters continuously broke in providing coverage from around the country. 

RADIO CLIP: Now, nearer home comes a special bulletin from Trenton, New Jersey. 

JESSE EUBANKS: In fact, one news reporter stunned listeners as they described the scene of a strange meteorite crash.

RADIO CLIP: I guess that’s it. Yes, I guess that’s the thing directly in front of me… What I can see of the object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor, at least not the meteors I’ve seen. It looks more like a huge cylinder… More state police have arrived. They’re drawing up a cordon in front of the pit… Wait a minute. Something’s happening. Humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on!… It’s coming this way now about 20 yards to my right… Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make – those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.

JESSE EUBANKS: Of course, the whole thing – it was simply for entertainment. None of it was real. It was simply a brilliant dramatization of the book War of the Worlds. Producer Orson Welles wanted it to sound realistic, like there was actually an alien invasion happening across the United States. But even though Welles intended it to be for entertainment, not everyone took it that way. Upon hearing on the radio that aliens had landed on our soil, some folks took to the streets in a panic. Others evacuated their homes. Some even jumped out of buildings committing suicide so they wouldn’t be taken by aliens. The nation was in an uproar. The very next day, The New York Times ran this headline – “Radio Listeners and Panic: Taking War Drama As Fact.”

SKYE JETHANI: And you know, you and I might think that’s silly. Of course, aliens hadn’t really invaded Earth. But at the time in the late 1930s, radio was the trusted source for news. 60% of Americans had a radio in their home. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right, and it was still fairly new technology. But when it came to news, it was seen as a marvel. Unlike newspapers, radio could be updated in real time and you could actually hear eyewitness accounts – something never possible before. So people believed whatever was on the radio, which meant that Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds went down in history as a fake news scare that terrified a nation. But here’s the thing – is that this story is actually a layer of double fake news. 

SKYE JETHANI: What do you mean? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, it turns out that the scare reported by the newspapers the next day – it was also fake. Headlines like “Fake Radio War Stirs Terror Through U.S.” and “Nation Is Swept By Hysteria Over Martian Invasion” – they were all blown out of proportion. Historians have found no evidence of people leaving their homes that night or jumping out of buildings. The only recorded impact the show had was that there was a brief spike in phone calls during the broadcast. 

SKYE JETHANI: So you’re saying that the newspapers ran fake news covering a story about fake news?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, exactly. It was the perfect opportunity to malign the use of radio and create skepticism in an attempt to reboost newspaper sales. 

SKYE JETHANI: Wow, so fake news embedded within fake news. That is ahead of its time. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, but I think this is like a perfect example of the quandary that we all find ourselves in today. You know, the War of the Worlds story was all the way back in the 1930s, but the existence of fake news since then – it has only increased. 

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah, fake news has become sort of a buzzword in the last couple years. And you’re right – because now we don’t just have radio, we also have television and the unending reaches of the Internet. We are constantly bombarded with information and news. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So the question is – how do we know which information we can trust?

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets fake news. This episode is in partnership with The Holy Post Podcast, so one of their hosts, our good friend Skye Jethani, is here with us. Great to have you back on the show. 

SKYE JETHANI: Thanks, Jesse. It’s always a pleasure.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so this topic of fake news is one that you’ve taken a lot of interest in. Why do you think this is such an important topic for Christians? 

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah, well, as Christians we’re called to be people of the truth, and we are to base our lives around the truth of Christ and the truth about the world. So when we get caught up in fake news and lies, it’s a recipe for leading to bad faith and a bad engagement with the world. And unfortunately, it seems like an awful lot of Christians are caught up in exactly that right now. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So today we’re gonna dive into the world of fake news. Where does it come from? How does it spread? And what is our role in the news we consume? Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: So Americans are engaging with news more than ever before. In fact, online interactions with the top 100 U.S. News sites actually doubled in the year 2020. 

SKYE JETHANI: And that makes a lot of sense. There’s been a lot to follow in the news – the coronavirus, the presidential election, police shootings, justice issues. I’m not surprised.

JESSE EUBANKS: But this increase in news engagement also includes engagement with fake news, and an analysis by News Guard – it’s an organization that tracks news credibility and misinformation – found that in 2020 people’s engagement with what they call, quote, “unreliable news” – it also doubled. 

SKYE JETHANI: And here’s why I think this is especially important for the church. A poll from Lifeway Research this past January found that 49% of Protestant pastors said they frequently hear members of their congregations repeating conspiracy theories.

JESSE EUBANKS: Uh, hold on though. Are conspiracy theories the same thing as fake news? 

SKYE JETHANI: That’s a good question. I think maybe we need to pause here and give a good definition of what we mean when we use the term “fake news.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, that’s a good idea because there are a lot of words that can be used – you know, propaganda, conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation. Like is all of that fake news?

SKYE JETHANI: So “fake news” is sort of an umbrella term. It simply means any false story that is presenting itself as news, which leaves a lot of room for variations and types. The University of Michigan Research actually gives us what I think is a pretty clear and helpful breakdown of this. So from that, there are four types of information that qualify as fake news. Number one – satire. This would be sites like The Onion or Babylon Bee. It’s meant as parody simply for entertainment and laughs. This type of content has no intention of being harmful or misleading, although it does have the potential to fool some people. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so satire. What’s next? 

SKYE JETHANI: Number two is misleading content. This would be things like if a headline doesn’t match what’s actually in an article or leaving out or including certain information in order to push a certain agenda or if something is factual but is shared out of proper context. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so number one – satire. Number two – misleading content. 

SKYE JETHANI: Number three – manipulated content. This is where you would see things like deep fakes or photoshopped images, factual or historical content that has been altered and presented as real. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. And then what’s the final thing? 

SKYE JETHANI: The final one is fabricated content. This content is completely false and is intentionally designed to deceive people.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so fake news can include satire, misleading content, manipulated content, and fabricated content. 

SKYE JETHANI: Right, and the important part is that it’s all posing as a source of news. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so when you said that half of the pastors hear their congregants spreading conspiracy theories, what that really means is that the church is actually spreading fake news.

SKYE JETHANI: Right, and as Christians, we believe in and uphold the truth, so you can see how this is a problem. But even beyond that, a Business Insider article this past March reported pastors who’ve actually left their congregations due to the divisions caused by fake news. Fake news is having a deep and real impact on the church today.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it does seem so. Well, I guess that the good news is that it isn’t the first time that Christians have dealt with fake news. You know, in fact, we’ve been dealing with fake news from the very beginning.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus miraculously rises from the dead. And of course, this was not the outcome that the religious leaders were expecting, so now they need a way to explain the empty tomb – one that doesn’t involve Jesus being the risen Son of God. So when the guards who were stationed at the tomb report back to the chief priests, the priests essentially devised a plan of fake news. Chapter 28 says, “They gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, ‘Tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.'” 

SKYE JETHANI: The chief priests fabricated the story and reported it as real news, and it had lasting consequences. In fact, just a few verses later, we’re told that this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

JESSE EUBANKS: So I think that we can take comfort in the fact that fake news is not a new phenomenon, but one thing we are faced with that wasn’t present in Jesus’ day was our technology. And so when it comes to the conversation of fake news in today’s context, I do think that we need to look at two contributing factors, and those two things are people and technology. 

SKYE JETHANI: Right, because I think both have a responsibility when it comes to where fake news comes from and how it spreads. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so first let’s talk about people. And to do that, let’s follow an actual news story. On November 5, 2016, just three days before the presidential election, The Denver Guardian ran this headline on their website – “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.” The article went on to state that FBI agent Michael Brown and his wife were both found dead in their home. There were quotes from the local police chief, comments from neighbors, and links to online sources that were claiming that the incident was really a hit job by Hillary Clinton. 

SKYE JETHANI: Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. So within minutes, not surprisingly, the article made its way to Facebook, and there it took off like wildfire, so it was being shared as many as 100 times per minute. The evening of that same day, The Denver Post also ran a headline – “There Is No Such Thing As The Denver Guardian, Despite That Facebook Post You Saw.” The article claimed that The Denver Guardian was not a real publication and neither was the FBI agent or the story about him. 

SKYE JETHANI: Oh my gosh, this just gets more and more crazy.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, check this out. So just five days later, The Denver Guardian site vanished, but the article about the FBI agent had already been shared on Facebook 1.6 million times. 

SKYE JETHANI: Oh, in other words, the damage was already done. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes, exactly. I mean, by then it had gained the attention of NPR, The Washington Post, CNBC, and The New York Times.

SKYE JETHANI: So was the story actually false? ‘Cause I’m guessing it was.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, the whole thing was completely made up. 

SKYE JETHANI: So where did it come from? 

JESSE EUBANKS: So it came from the mind of a guy named Jestin Coler. 

JESTIN COLER: You know, it was myself and, and a handful of people that were goofing around, right. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Coming up – we hear from the “King of Fake News.” We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

SKYE JETHANI: And I’m Skye Jethani. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets fake news. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Back in 2016, a stir was caused by an online news story about the mysterious death of an FBI agent involving Hillary Clinton. After the story had gone viral and was shared over 1.6 million times, it was discovered that the story was completely fake. So of course, the question is – who made up this fake news story? Why did they do it? Well, it turns out it was created by a guy named Jestin Coler. So Jestin Coler’s been dubbed the “King of Fake News,” but he didn’t start out that way. His story actually starts out pretty mundane. Here’s Jestin from an interview that he did with NewsWhip back in 2017. 

JESTIN COLER: Well, I’ve been a writer for quite some time. I previously worked for a magazine group in South Florida, lifestyles type publication, and I was the arts and entertainment editor for them.

JESSE EUBANKS: Since the early 2000s, Jestin was simply a writer with a background in political science and mass communication, but he started to become intrigued with a certain sect in the online community. 

JESTIN COLER: Really became interested in what is now considered the alt-right.

JESSE EUBANKS: So to be clear, Jestin was not part of the alt-right, but he was noticing that a lot was happening online with these alt-right groups. They were organized, they received tons of engagement, and they seemed to really take the bait for conspiracy theories and fake viral content. 

JESTIN COLER: So I was really curious about how they were getting engagement on, online and kinda started to work towards what I would think of was kind of a formula for creating viral content, just to see what people would believe. Also kind of in, in some ways kind of meant to discredit their engagements by showing that things were made up. 

SKYE JETHANI: I actually think Jestin is kind of being smart here. So just this past May, Cambridge University released a report that found that partisan polarization is the primary motivator for sharing fake political news on Twitter, but he was seeing that trend all the way back in 2016. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so Jestin takes this on as a sort of social experiment. What if he could plant fake stories into these online groups and then come back later and say, “Gotcha, it was all fake”? So in 2013, he launched his own fictitious news site called National Report.

JESTIN COLER: Initially it was kind of almost a, a parody, kind of a, a Stephen Colbert amplified idea where we were kind of joking about how these sites were. It was a parody of a hardcore, you know, right-wing site. 

SKYE JETHANI: Wait, so let me get this straight. So he got into fake news not to really spread fake news, but out of his own curiosity and pleasure?

JESSE EUBANKS: Basically. I mean, like when he talks about it, he gives off this vibe that, like, the whole thing was just kind of innocent. It’s just kind of fun. 

JESTIN COLER: You know, it was myself and, and a handful of people that were goofing around, right. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But it quickly turns into more than that. So the site National Report takes off, and that’s when Jestin realizes that his efforts can be about more than just having fun. He realized he could actually make a lot of money. In an article for Nieman Reports, Jestin writes, “As our traffic grew, advertisers came calling. For the first time, I realized the potential financial benefits. The motivation then changed from simply messing around online to supplementing my income to assist in providing for my family. During the next year, I focused my time on studying analytics and monetizing the site through ad networks.” 

SKYE JETHANI: This is an aspect of the fake news stuff that we don’t often think about, but very often you gotta follow the money. There is a financial incentive for driving fake news stories because it draws an audience and that’s exactly what advertisers are looking for and they’re willing to pay a lot of money for access to an audience and they don’t necessarily care whether that audience is gathering around news that’s real or news that’s fake. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right, I think there’s always that old question, “Who benefits?” Like if we’re reading something and taking in something, you know, it’s easy to read it and go like, “Oh, this politician benefits,” or, “Oh, this large company benefits.” But sometimes it’s not quite as obvious as that. You know, it could be somebody else like Jestin, who’s just kind of manipulating factors so that they can put some cash in their pocket.

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah. Sometimes we think there’s a nefarious, uh, ideology behind fake news, but sometimes it just comes down to the almighty dollar.

JESSE EUBANKS: And Jestin admitted that that’s actually the only reason that he knows of that people create fake news. 

JESTIN COLER: Now I know several of these publishers of these sites, and I can promise you none of them are doing it to influence elections or to, or for ideological purposes. It’s all financial.

SKYE JETHANI: So how did he go from this to his popular fake FBI agent story? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, in 2015, Facebook actually changed the way that its algorithm worked and this caused his website National Report to lose traction, so it became really hard to get as many views as he had had before with the parody content that he was creating. So Jestin actually shut it down, but of course his bills didn’t shut down. So in 2016, he created another site, The Denver Guardian.

JESTIN COLER: And so I built The Denver Guardian, which to me was kind of the, the evolution of where this is going next. You know, I featured a lot of local news content. It looked just like a local newspaper. It didn’t have anything on the homepage that would give it away that it was fake news. We had, uh, a staff list and a location, “about us” page and a history, and all that sort of stuff, you know, so I kind of, again, saw an opportunity and, uh, my mortgage was due and I built the site and ran with it. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And here’s the thing – it looked like a legit news site. It even had the local weather. But it only had one national news story, the fake one about the FBI agent. And you know, as we said before, this story gets a lot of national attention. And by 2017, Jestin was running his own business called Disinfomedia that included a handful of other fake news sites, and he was making about $30,000 a month. Jestin had arrived. Truly, he had become the king of fake news. 

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah, but here’s what I’m wondering. What was the fallout from all of this? Because we know that no one can lie forever and get away with it. I’m assuming there were consequences somewhere along the way. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, there were. And those consequences – they were actually largely for Jestin himself. So again, he writes, “Soon after the election, a narrative was born suggesting that fake news influenced the election, and I became a public face of the fake news industry as well as a scapegoat for both a failed Democratic presidential campaign and a shocked media.” So Jestin was no longer an anonymous face behind a computer. He was thrust into the public spotlight, and that affected not only him, but those around him. Again, he says, “What started as a hobby grew far larger than I had expected and brought untold stress upon my family and myself.” Okay, so since all of this happened, Jestin’s actually quit being involved in fake news and said he’s actually done just a bunch of interviews talking about his experience and the tactics behind the industry. But I think the question that is like looming for me is – who are the victims here? Who are the people that are really being hurt by fake news?

SKYE JETHANI: Well, in this story with Jestin, it seems like he himself was a victim of his own engagement with fake news as far as we can tell, but we know there are other stories where fake news has deeply impacted responses to the pandemic, the riots that happened on January 6 in Washington, D.C., even refugee crises overseas that have been fueled by fake news on social media.

NEWS CLIPS: It’s a Sunday of sorrow… Right here in Newtown, Connecticut… Is home to children from kindergarten through…

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, there are real victims of fake news. I’m thinking about the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory. 

NEWS CLIPS: Sandy Hook is a synthetic, in my view, manufactured…

JESSE EUBANKS: So the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, and then rumors started spreading online that the whole thing was actually staged and fake.

NEWS CLIPS: The official story of Sandy Hook has more holes in it than Swiss cheese…

JESSE EUBANKS: And that the grieving parents were simply actors paid to play a role. And it’s really messed up, but a lot of people bought into it, even to the point of sending death threats to the parents. So actually here’s David Wheeler, who lost a son in the shooting, talking about it with CBS News.

DAVID WHEELER CLIP: For me personally, it has in my more vulnerable moments felt like a complete denial of my life. In my more vulnerable moments, it has felt like salt in the wounds and it can take a big chunk out of your faith in humanity if you let it.

JESSE EUBANKS: So fake news stories aren’t just harmless business ploys or someone simply voicing their opinion. They have real world consequences for the people involved. Okay, so in looking at fake news, it’s important for us to remember that there are people behind it, and it’s usually people who are motivated by money, by profit. 

SKYE JETHANI: But the other factor you mentioned that I also want to talk about is the role of technology because I think we would be remiss to put all the blame on people alone. Some of the problems we’re seeing today with the spread of fake news has a lot to do with artificial intelligence. 

JESSE EUBANKS: You mean like robots? 

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah, but probably not in the way you’re thinking. 

JASON THACKER: Often when people talk about artificial intelligence, especially when I talk about it, people say, “Oh, like robots and futuristic type of things.” But reality is, is that artificial intelligence is around us always and everywhere.

SKYE JETHANI: This is Jason Thacker. He’s the chair of research in technology ethics for the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a fancy way of saying that he spends his days looking at technological issues like fake news, misinformation, digital governance, and the use of artificial intelligence from a Christian perspective. And when it comes to AI, we’re already surrounded by it in our smartphones, our Alexas, our smart home appliances, and of course, on social media.

JASON THACKER: Like the “What’s Next” on Netflix or, uh, autoplay feature on YouTube or our news feeds, whether it be on Twitter or on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. There’s an algorithm, which is another fancy term for artificial intelligence system, and these algorithms are, in many ways, shaping and forming us because they’re exposing us to certain types of content. 

SKYE JETHANI: And the way most of these algorithms work is based on engagement, and people are more likely to engage with something they have an emotional response to.

JASON THACKER: So even in recent weeks, we saw from The Facebook Papers some reports and some research that was done where Facebook weighted content differently in the algorithm if it had more angry emotions associated with it, in the sense of “Did people respond with a little anger emoji?” And if they did, it was shown to more people. And so what does that naturally do? It amps up division. It amps up polarization and tribalization because you’re sharing things that make people angry. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Jestin actually talks about this, about using emotion to guide which fake news stories to publish. 

JESTIN COLER: The fear really was something that sells really well, right? And we see this – across previously on the right and now on the left – we’re seeing a lot of kind of more fear mongering, uh, with regards to media, something that again, kind of, uh, gets that emotional response to the reader. 

SKYE JETHANI: Exactly. So if creators are feeding off of our emotions, the technology’s only enhancing and perpetuating that.

JASON THACKER: This happens on Twitter and others is that the more engagement something gets, whether it’s good or bad engagement, the more it’s shown because these algorithms think and these companies have designed them to say, “Well, if it’s getting more interaction, maybe more people should see it.” But again, this doesn’t speak to the truthfulness of anything that’s being shared. It’s all about the emotive response or the response that we’re giving, whether it’s happy, glad, we share it, we, we’re sad, we’re angry, whatever. We like it, we retweet it, et cetera. Engagement doesn’t equal truthfulness. 

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, I read recently about a study from MIT that found that false news spreads faster on Twitter than actual news, that a fake story is 70% more likely to get retweeted than a real one.

SKYE JETHANI: Which is why something like Jestin’s fake story about the FBI agent could get a half a million shares in just a matter of days. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we’ve got people creating fake news, and we’ve got technology accentuating that fake news. 

SKYE JETHANI: But I think it goes even one layer deeper than that because we also have an extremely polarized society that is more than ready to jump on anything that confirms their side.

JASON THACKER: Because often, you know, if people don’t believe that the news that they’re sharing or the news that they read is actually fake, they think it’s real, there’s often a conspiratorial aspect. No one thinks they’re a conspiracy theorist. They think they’re a kind of a soldier for truth. 

SKYE JETHANI: What Jason is getting at is that we live in a society where something is labeled as fake news simply if it doesn’t confirm to my worldview or ideas, and we as the church are not immune to this. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. You know, studies have shown that conservative fundamentalist Christians are one of the groups most likely to be fooled by and buy into fake news, which means like the creators of fake news – who are they gonna target? They’re gonna target conservative Christians because they know that that’s where they can get engagement. 

SKYE JETHANI: So if you take a step back and look at the big picture of this, it’s really like a perpetuating spiral where everyone feeds off one another. The more creators publish fake news, the more we engage it. The more the technology pushes it into our feeds, the more money the creators get. The more content they make, the more we engage it, and on and on it goes. 

JASON THACKER: It becomes a really interesting question for Christians is how do we then engage in the digital age, um, in this technological society in that sense, where the very standard of truth is debated on the most basic level. Uh, what is true is very debated and contentious in our society. And then you apply that on top of that all of these technologies and all these tools that spread information so quickly, it’s very, very difficult to know what to do next and how to move forward.

JESSE EUBANKS: And so I guess that’s the million dollar question, right? Is – what do we do with all this? Is there anything that we can do? How do we reclaim truth in a world of fake news? Well, one Christian decided she was tired of people being victimized by fake news, and she decided she was gonna do something about it. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. 

SKYE JETHANI: Skye Jethani. Today – where the gospel meets fake news. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we’ve looked at the role of people and the role of technology in understanding where fake news comes from and how it spreads. But the question is – where do we go from here? Is there anything that we can do to combat fake news? And that is the question that a librarian named Rachel Wightman wanted to answer. So Rachel works at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She’s been a librarian for more than 10 years, which surprisingly makes her pretty qualified to talk about fake news. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: The master’s degree that most librarians have is a master’s in library andinformation science, and so that’s also a little bit of an unknown piece about what we do. 

JESSE EUBANKS: As a librarian, Rachel specializes in navigating information and teaching people how to find information and evaluate it in ethical ways. And she’s mostly done this with college students, but last year two things in particular got her thinking about what it would look like to equip more people to navigate the barrage of information. And the first thing was simply conversations that she was having with friends, especially friends from her church. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: So they might say, “Oh, my parents were talking about X, Y, and Z in the news and, you know, they think X, Y, and Z opinion, but I think the other side and when I read about it I saw this.” And I was noticing a theme where it was like, “Well, where do your parents get their information from? And they’re reading different sources, and I wonder if that’s playing into how you all are seeing the world.”

SKYE JETHANI: That’s exactly what we’re talking about with these social media algorithms that curate content that only conforms to our own biases and opinions. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, exactly. Okay, and the second thing that happened was that her church did a sermon on race, and it wasn’t necessarily the topic that caught Rachel’s attention. It was actually the application that the pastor gave. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: He said this thing that really stuck with me, which was, “We need to check our inputs, and in order to help alleviate the issues we’re seeing in our world around race we need to be willing to listen to people who are different than us.” And I remember thinking, well, I don’t disagree. Checking our input seems really important, but people don’t always know how to do that very well and the information landscape is not necessarily set up to help us do it well. The internet, social media really thrives, again, on that emotional content, algorithms that keep us in our echo chambers, and so I kept thinking, “Well, you can tell people to check their inputs, but do they even know how to find something different than their own perspective?”

JESSE EUBANKS: Rachel realized at the heart of what people were talking about was information. And as a librarian, information is what she specializes in. So she got this idea – what if she could do something to help her fellow Christians navigate the flood of information and fake news that comes at them every day? 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: Kind of all crystallized for me into a moment of thinking, “I think there’s content here for a church to say, ‘How do we engage differently?'”

JESSE EUBANKS: So Rachel’s church regularly offers what they call an “equipping hour.” It’s a class or a series of classes on Sundays that help their members engage the culture, with things like how should Christians approach history or how to deal with anxiety. And so Rachel got permission to offer a six-week class called “Faith and Fake News.” 

SKYE JETHANI: What I find interesting about this is that she wants to do it specifically within the church. I mean, she’s a librarian. She could do a class like this at her library or community center or somewhere else. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you’re right. But for her, the faith piece is really important in having this conversation. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: How do we connect this to people’s values? And so many people in the church, they want to love their neighbors well. The people I’ve worked with have been very thoughtful people. They, they want to be better in their online spaces. And as a person of faith, how does your faith even show up in these spaces?

JESSE EUBANKS: So the day of the first class comes, and Rachel’s church – they actually meet in an elementary school. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: So we were sitting in an elementary school classroom. We would move the tables out of the way, and people were literally sitting in chairs that were kind of smaller. There’s like colorful rugs and artwork and, yeah, different charts up about different things.

JESSE EUBANKS: About 15 people show up for the class, and to Rachel’s surprise, it’s actually a pretty diverse crowd. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: So we had some older folks that are retired, we had some people in their twenties, and then the range even of like very different professions. There was a guy who was in the class that’s a doctor, we actually had a woman who is blind, and then we had this person that works for the public radio.

JESSE EUBANKS: And of course because so much of fake news targets political camps, at first it was a challenge to get people to take off their political lenses. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: People who lean left politically – even though I’m not talking about politics, I’m very clear about that – but people often who lean left will say, “Oh, I’m so glad we’re gonna do this class because people need the right” – you know, like they think I’m gonna tell everyone all their, the left-leaning sources they should be reading or watching. And then people who lean right politically tend to kind of think the same thing, like, “Oh good, you’re gonna help people, like, find the right sources.”

JESSE EUBANKS: But Rachel actually ended up teaching about some of the things that we’ve covered in this episode, things like the role of technology. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: Your search results on Google look different than my search results. We live in different places. We’ve searched different things in the past. So just even what we see in online spaces looks different. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And the role of emotions. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: Again, that emotional content in online spaces can really throw people off.

JESSE EUBANKS: And to her surprise, people came back the next week – and the next. Actually, several folks even brought friends along as the class progressed. People were looking for a space to talk about their online engagement, and they wanted to become wiser in terms of how to navigate it. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: People really just wanna talk because they were overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do, right? They’re just like, “There’s so much information coming at me. I don’t know what to believe. I feel really overwhelmed.”

SKYE JETHANI: So did she give tips for people on how to actually avoid fake news? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, actually she gave a ton of advice, far more than we’re gonna be able to cover here. But for example, here are just two practical tips of advice that Rachel gave in her class. Okay, so number one – be aware of your emotions when you’re online. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: Before we can even really do much fact checking, if you will, is I think really important for us to check our emotions. So I always talk a lot about what does it look like to notice your emotions. When you scroll online, does it make you stressed? Does it make you angry?

SKYE JETHANI: I think this is really important advice. Jason Thacker also talked about it a bit in terms of slowing down and not being so reactive. 

JASON THACKER: So instead of sharing an article because we read the headline and it seemed to make sense, maybe actually read the article. Uh, that little step of slowing down to read an article might keep you from sharing something that may not be true. Maybe you don’t need to comment on X, Y, and Z situation or controversy or breaking news story maybe ’cause you don’t have all the information and having that kind of humility to say, “I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t have an opinion on that yet. I wanna read more about it” and then do your own research and seek to understand what’s actually going on.

JESSE EUBANKS: So number one – be aware of your emotions. Number two – diversify your sources. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: There’s a, a website called AllSides.com where they show news headlines for, on the same event from different news sources side by side so you can see what did this left-leaning newspaper say compared to this right-leaning newspaper say about the same thing.

SKYE JETHANI: Yeah, I think what she’s advising here is that we’re responsible for breaking our own echo chambers, for getting out of those silos and listening to voices that we wouldn’t normally listen to, just to make sure we’re getting all sides of something. And in a weird way, I think this fits with what Jesus tells us about looking at the log in our own eye, rather than just the speck in our brothers’. Like we need to be self-aware enough to realize that we may have a problem in our vision and we’re only gonna recognize that with someone else’s help probably. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Like for example, you know, I realized a few years ago that I was not getting my news from nearly enough diverse sources. So I actually set up the Echo in my house, uh, to read the news to me each morning. So I set them up to give me news from four different sources. So I get it from NPR. I get it from Fox News. But I also get it from Al Jazeera, and I also get it from BBC. So I’m starting to try to get a bigger perspective on how are different people talking about the exact same news events, and it is fascinating how often maybe one source emphasizes something in a particular way and the other three don’t or uh, that there are times where one mentions it and the other three don’t bring it up at all. So yeah, I think that diversifying our sources is pretty essential for us to have a bigger view of the world.

SKYE JETHANI: Jesse, I think you’re modeling, uh, what we should all be doing, but I think we also have to admit that that, that takes more work. It takes more energy and intentionality than just staying in the echo chamber. So we’re calling people and, and Rachel’s calling people to a lot more intentionality and effort, and that’s not easy for everyone. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it does take a lot of effort. It can be really hard work, but I think that at least doing these two simple things – being aware of your emotions and diversifying your sources – they can help in slowing the spread of fake news.

SKYE JETHANI: I, I agree. That makes a lot of sense because so much of this stuff feeds on reactivity and polarization, and those two steps are breaking out of those boxes and creating a different way of operating. Of course, it isn’t gonna stop fake news tomorrow, but Jason says we have to own up to our responsibility, our part in all of this.

JASON THACKER: Well, it’s all the platform’s fault because these are their technologies, their technologies are messing everything up, they’re the one who created this kind of fake news epidemic. They need to fix it ’cause it’s the algorithm’s fault or it’s the CEO’s fault or it’s this company’s fault or it’s this – and we scapegoat. We seek to say, “Well, we play the moral blame game. Well, it’s their fault.” And what I, I say in that conversation is, look, not only do the technology companies bear moral responsibility for what’s happening, but one of the most important things we can do as individuals is to take ownership that we are using these tools. And while they may expose us to fake news, while they may expose us to misinformation or conspiracy theories, we don’t have to propagate that. We don’t have to push it forward.

SKYE JETHANI: So what about Rachel’s class? Was it a success? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. In fact, one of the ladies who came to the class – she actually worked in the media. She worked for a local radio station, and she went back to her work and actually talked about it with her coworkers and with the people around her, about making sure that they weren’t a part of spreading fake news. In fact, by the end of the class, there was actually a reporter that contacted Rachel just wanting to talk to her about why she did this class and what kind of impact it had. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: But the reporter came to that first class – she came to the last session of that first round – and I think her response kind of matches the response I see from a lot of people when I say, “Oh, I’m doing classes on, you know, misinformation at churches.” The reaction is kind of like, “What?” (laughs) As a reporter, she was particularly interested in, like, learning more. 

JESSE EUBANKS: The reporter ended up publishing a story about Rachel and her class, and then Business Insider actually did a story about her. And as the word got out, more churches ended up contacting Rachel about offering the class to their own congregations. Today Rachel’s offered her class almost a dozen times to different local churches and even across the nation, and she hopes to keep doing it, to help even more Christians know how to navigate fake news. 

RACHEL WIGHTMAN: I love doing these classes. I knew a lot of these things. I had a lot of these skills, but it’s helped reinforce over and over again how personal some of this is and how important it is for me also to examine my faith and, and say, “Okay, how does this impact the way I’m gonna look at this?”

SKYE JETHANI: What I really appreciate about what Rachel’s doing is she’s not just giving Christians answers, but she’s trying to help them develop real wisdom in how they engage in our technological world. And I think that’s what the church should be doing overall. Rather than just giving simple explanations or saying, “Here’s where you should go to get all your news,” the church ought to be giving us the tools and wisdom to live like Christ in this really complicated time and to make sure that not only are we not doing harm by spreading fake news, but that we can actually be sources of truth and goodness in our communities. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Near the beginning of the episode, we talked about how Jesus’ resurrection was followed by a fake news story and that made up story had real impact on real people. It discredited the miracle that had happened and kept people from believing. Fake news can have serious consequences, but it wasn’t enough to stop those who did follow Jesus or the spread of Christianity. While fake news may be powerful, it isn’t the final word. 

SKYE JETHANI: And that’s the hope that Jason Thacker clings to as he continues his work. 

JASON THACKER: We know Jesus is sitting on the throne, and so in some sense we can be hopeful. We can speak truth and with grace knowing we’re not going to be able to solve every social issue or political issue or even technological issue, but we can do so from a place of hope and engage our, our neighbors around us, knowing that they too are created in God’s image and that God loves them. 

SKYE JETHANI: One of the qualities of Jesus that comes to mind in all this is that Jesus never hurried. He didn’t rush. And we live at a time where everything feels so urgent, and I know a lot of Christians who feel like we need to respond right now to what’s happening and react right now to this event or, or that phenomenon. And I think that’s what kind of gets us in trouble and why we so often fall for fake news or spread it unintentionally, and like Jesus I think we need to slow down and realize that everything doesn’t depend on our response and we don’t have to respond right away. And if we would slow down and read other sources and engage broadly and really pursue the truth rather than just reaction, it might help us create not just a more faithful church, but a, a better society. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. As Christians, we just simply cannot be a part of spreading lies and deception, especially because when we spread those lies or when we believe those lies, it inhibits our ability to really understand reality. And Jesus was always dealing in reality. And so if we’re gonna be people that walk in the truth and follow Jesus, then we also have to be people that are only interested in spreading and sharing truth.

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you’ve benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Your review will help other people discover our show.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode – Jason Thacker and Rachel Wightman. If you wanna learn more about Rachel’s “Faith and Fake News” class, check out her website at racheliwightman.com or her Instagram at faithful.factchecking. Also, if you’d like to hear Jestin Coler’s full interview, you can find a link in the show notes.

SKYE JETHANI: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Skye Jethani. Skye, thanks again for joining us. To hear more from Sky, check out his show The Holy Post wherever you listen to podcasts or at holypost.com. Our media director is Rachel Szabo, who I had to confront the other day about her and her friends pushing down elderly people when they passed her on the street.

JESTIN COLER: And I can promise you none of them are doing it to influence elections or to, or for ideological purposes. It’s all financial. 

SKYE JETHANI: Anna Tran is our audio engineer. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Poddington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX. 

SKYE JETHANI: Apply for your social action internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. You’ll grow in life skills and in your faith. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”