Factchecking Won’t Save Democracy
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, a talk about the rise of anti-system politics.
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Factchecking Won’t Save Democracy | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
For this week's edition of The Time of Monsters podcast, we're posting a talk that host Jeet Heer gave at Carleton University earlier this November on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/antisytem. Liberals have tried to fight antisystem politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on factchecking.
But as I argue, this strategy is deeply flawed since voters who respond to antisystem arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with antisystem anger in a more productive way.
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Keynote speaker Jeet Heer questions the role of fact-checking in an increasingly distrusting society at the Reimagining Political Journalism conference at Carleton University on Nov. 15, 2024.
(Natasha Baldin)For this week’s podcast, I’m posting a talk I gave at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, earlier this November on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/anti-system. Liberals have tried to fight anti-system politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on fact-checking.
But I maintain that this strategy is deeply flawed, since voters who respond to anti-system arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with anti-system anger in a more productive way.
The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
The Living Legacy of Norman Podhoretz w/ David Klion and Ronnie Grinberg | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, died on December 16 at
age 95. His legacy is a complex one, since in recent decades neoconservatism has been
supplanted in many ways by American First conservatism. But many aspects of Podhoretz’s
influence still play a shaping role on right. I take up Podhoretz’s career with David Klion (who
wrote an obituary for the pundit for The Nation) and the historian Ronnie Grinberg, who had
discussed Podhoretz in her book Write Like a Man.
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