Keynote speaker Jeet Heer questions the role of fact-checking in an increasingly distrustful society at the Rethinking Political Journalism conference at Carleton University on November 15, 2024.
(If Natasha)
For this week’s podcast, I’m posting the I conversation gave at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, earlier in November on how the crisis of democracy is linked to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we live in an age where the visible political divide is not so much left/right as system/anti-system. Liberals have tried to combat anti-establishment politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on fact-checking.
But I argue that this strategy is deeply flawed because voters who respond to anti-establishment arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to fact-check. The conversation attempts to outline a strategy for dealing more productively with anti-systemic anger.
