Can you spot the lies in your news feed? | Laura Smythe

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Here's a question. Why did hundreds of smart, well-off people pay up to $100,000 for a music festival that didn't exist?

I'm talking about the Fyre Festival, the infamous luxury getaway in 2017 that collapsed into disaster relief tents and cheese sandwiches with its organizer now headed to federal prison. For media literacy advocate Laura Smythe, Fyre Fest was never really a story about a concert or a scam. It was a story about trust.

Laura Smythe (0:40)

Humans gravitate to people that we like. When someone feels relatable, we instinctively trust them more.

But relatability and credibility are two very different things.

Elise Hu (0:52)

In her talk, Laura argues that Fyre Festival was an early warning. Back then, celebrities and a slick campaign to convince people something fake was real. Today, with AI and algorithmic feeds, that kind of convincing fakery is everywhere, and most of us were never taught to tell what's actually true.

Laura has spent her career in both legacy newsrooms and new media, and she believes that verifying facts, a basic tenet of journalism, has become one of the most urgent needs of our time.

Laura Smythe (1:22)

The habits journalists use to verify information shouldn't be trade secrets.

They're not difficult or unattainable, but they're not taught outside of newsrooms or journalism schools. And in today's social media, AI-powered information environment, that skill gap might be the biggest civic problem we have.

Elise Hu (1:44)

Journalists train for years in the discipline of verifying information, and Laura makes the case that the rest of us urgently need those same tools. She showcases one country that's already doing this, Finland, where media literacy is woven through the school curriculum from grade school and on, and argues that learning to think like a journalist might be one of the most important things any of us can do. That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the day.

Laura Smythe (2:19)

Come back with me a moment to 2017 You're having a great time because none of us know what a pandemic is. Comfy mom jeans are back in style, and the bitcoin you bought back in 2008, it's finally taking off. You're scrolling on Instagram, and that's pretty cool because they only just started with their algorithmic feed, so you're still kind of seeing memes and photodumps from people you actually know. What's up with all these orange squares? Influencers and famous faces from Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldwin, Emily Radikowski and Ja Rule are posting about this high-end music festival coming to the Bahamas.

White sand beaches, luxury accommodations, Migos, Major Lazer, the cultural experience of a decade. Influencer and celebrity-driven marketing sells out 95 percent of tickets in 48 hours. Some folks are shelling out up to 100k for a spot, and college students are also going for spring break. Not a bad way to unwind for finals, right? Except it never took place.

Fyre Festival has gone down in history as the greatest party that never happened. Ticket holders expecting five-star service showed up to bread and cheese sandwiches and FEMA tents. None of the promised artists performed, and the main organizer ended up in federal prison.

Well, so much of this was shocking. What really resonated with me was how this was really a story about trust. A lot of people here were left disappointed. Netflix and Hulu, they got some great fodder. But hundreds, not even thousands of smart, well-off people saw this glamorous curated content online and collectively decided, this is real and it's worth the cost. Humans gravitate to people that we like. When someone feels relatable, we instinctively trust them more. But relatability and credibility are two very different things.

After years working in legacy newsrooms, I thought I understood how people interact with news to inform our world views. And it wasn't until I later started working also with new media creators that I realized just to what extent we are not all dissecting information using the same framework. Throughout my career in communications, I've had this front row seat to the ways that our evolving media landscape is shaping our democracy. And the habits journalists use to verify information shouldn't be trade secrets. They're not difficult or unattainable, but they're not taught outside of newsrooms or journalism schools. And in today's social media, AI-powered information environment, that skill gap might be the biggest civic problem we have.

Journalists spend years learning a professional discipline of interrogating information in pursuit of the truth. It's a craft rooted in ethics and moral reasoning. There's so much that happens inside of a newsroom to ensure accuracy that not everybody realizes simply because we've never been in that environment. Facts don't just materialize. Reporters, editors, fact checkers, and legal teams are all working together to parse out truth. That looks like gathering information, verifying facts, vetting sources, checking for bias, and overall maintaining objectivity to ensure trustworthiness. We have more access to information than any generation in history. Yet in so many cases, we're thinking less independently than ever before. Social media and AI algorithms push trending content to the top. But that doesn't guarantee accuracy or that we're getting all of the relevant facts that we need to make our own informed opinions.