[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Community Podcast initiative where we explore diverse and inclusive ways of audio storytelling.
Our goal is to connect community members through sound while providing an alternative for those underserved or misrepresented in traditional media.
The CPI is based out of Mount Royal University on Treaty 7 territory.
I'm your host, Emma Miller, and in this episode we sit down with MRU journalism professor and longtime journalist Brooks DiCilia. Our discussion is based off an article Brooks wrote for JSource in March of 2025 titled Fact Checking as an act of Courage.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Okay, I just wanted to start by thanking you for sitting down with me today. We're going to be talking about fact checking, misinformation, especially as an act of courage and all that really fun stuff. So you've been working in this field for a while.
Can you kind of start off by telling me how you've seen attitudes change towards fact checking and information since you've started in the field? Sure.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: I mean, fact checking isn't new. I mean fact facts are at the core of what journalists try to present. Right. And you know, ever since I've been working as a journalist for, you know, almost 30 years now, and you're constantly fact checking things, what sources are telling you, what you're hearing from official sources like the police, these sorts of things. But post hoc fact checking, this idea that we're going to fact check or test the accuracy of what people of influence such as politicians or people on social media, like fitness gurus or diet gurus, these sorts of things, we're going to check the accuracy of those claims. I mean, that's something new and it sort of has grown in fashion. There's lots of, you know, great fact checking organizations here in Canada, but also, you know, around the world. Think about factcheck.org or you think about PolitiFact or the Washington Post has their fact checking operation here in Canada. Canadian Press does quite a bit of fact checking as well as Ankhet at Radio Canada.
So there is quite a bit of fact checking going on and this is a kind of a new thing that started sort of, if you go back in the history, factcheck.org grew out of fact checking around political advertising in the 2004 presidential election.
So I have seen, you know, this evolution or this more emphasis on post hoc fact checking, so checking. We also live in this weird world, a disinformation disorder, some have called it, or an infodemic as the, I think the World Health Organization called it, where swimming in the sort of flotsam and jetsam of a whole bunch of disinformation. And there's both political and economic actors that have reason to be spreading disinformation. Journalists reacting to that disinformation with fact checking, you know, and there's also sort of debunking which has become a big thing recently where you're trying to inoculate the public. You see the disinformation or the misinformation that's coming particularly around elections or something. So you try to pre bunk it and inoculate like a vaccine, the public with information so that they can know that disinformation is coming their way and they can spot it and sort of discount it and look to credible sources for information. So I've seen that sort of evolution. Pre bunking wasn't a thing at all when I was, you know, for starting out in journalism. Post hoc fact checking there was some of it, but it's not as institutional as it in Canada, I can say it, you know, from research that I and Brad Clark have published. It's not as institutionalized as you see it in other countries, particularly in the United States where you see some of those big organizations like Fact Check or Politifact, that sort of thing.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: That's, I think that's a great kind of analogy for it. The inoculation against it that it's a vaccine. I never really thought about it that way, but that's.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And there is some really good scientific evidence that suggests that pre bunking is a really great way to inoculate the public against disinformation. If you tell people that disinformation is going to be coming their way or you even just sort of trigger people's sort of slower thinking or what's been called System 2 thinking, where you say, does that make sense? People are pretty smart, pretty clever, they can apply common sense to things. But you know, there is some evidence that people spread disinformation when they're sort of working in that autopilot mode of sort of doom scrolling and you know, the algorithms on social media feed us stuff that are trying to trigger that emotion, trying to trigger that outrage in particular. And so sometimes we will share things or like or comment on things and not sort of because we're in that sort of autopilot mode. But if we slow down and think about it, does that make sense? Is that a credible source? There is some evidence that suggests or some pretty good research that when people slow down or there's sort of cues for people to slow down or to Consider information that they're more likely to sort of be able to spot disinformation or sort fact from fiction.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: It's kind of really checking your confirmation bias and possibly that kind of when you're talking about, like, social media and like these short blurbs and stuff, I'm thinking about, like, when you search something in AI nowadays, too, or just on Google, and it will give you that AI blurb and it will give you something that kind of affirms what you're saying in a way, even if it might not be true.
Has this team competed?
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Won a gold medal. And it will be. No, they haven't, but. No, they've never competed kind of thing. Right. So it's like, to look deeper, credulous.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: Creatures, like, kind of evolutionary. We obtain knowledge. You know, hearing something is believing something. Right. Think about some of the things maybe our parents told us, and we still believe them. Annie Duke talks about this in her book Thinking in Bets. Well, she sometimes does public speaking engagement and she says, you know, how do you figure out how old the dog is? And that sort of the old adage is this idea that you just times, you know their age by seven. Well, that's not scientifically grounded. Or, you know, she'll ask, like, what's the cause of most male baldness? And most people will say, oh, it's the maternal line. And it's not. There's a whole bunch of factors that can cause baldness. But we sort of hear these things and we believe this is evolutionary. And that sort of bias that's baked in sometimes because, you know, think about how we formed groups sort of in ancient times, you know, you believed things so you could be a part of that group. Or you heard something rustling in the grass, you ran away. Right. So there is this. Our brains are not our friends sometimes when we're presented with information.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: So we've kind of touched on how, like, there's this new debunking and like, really fact checking. Yeah. Specific things that was a part of journalism before, but is now like kind of its own little subsection. Sure.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: It's sort of growing into a genre of journalism and political journalism in particular. Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Is there like. Obviously we kind of know what's caused it, but is there, like, a reason that is kind of pushing this?
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Sure. I think we live in a. What's been called a post truth world. Right. And we have a sort of stream of populist politics across the Western world now. We have, you know, bad state actors, authoritarian regimes that are spreading disinformation I mean, Peter Pomerentsev has written this really great book called Censorship through no Noise. And his argument is that in places such as Russia, the idea is, you know, and excuse my French, is they sort of flood the field with a lot of bs, right? And so it's hard for people to sort of figure out what's truth and what's. What's accurate and what's not accurate, sorting fact from fiction, those sorts of things. So it's too much information, right. So those bad actors are spreading lots of disinformation. So it's harder for people to sort of figure out what's truth. And they're also trying to trigger some stereotypes, some biases, trigger in and out group hostilities. I think there was some pretty good evidence of that from the 2016 US presidential election where Russian troll bots were sort of trying to trigger animus towards immigrants or African Americans in support of or trying to discredit Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Right. So kind of we live in this really weird world where I think. And we saw a lot of this in the pandemic, right. I think about all the disinformation that was spread about vaccines, these sorts of things. And you know, I also like to sort of think about from the perspective that some people who had concerns, who might be spreading misinformation or disinformation about vaccines in particular, kind of start started in a place where they were skeptical, maybe a pharmaceutical companies or they were anxious about something. So you can see how in some ways that people started out in a place where they had concerns about something. And then I think conspiracy theories or disinformation sometimes sort of feeds our need to understand something that's very complex or scary. Right. And then also you find community in those things. So. So someone who is stressed out in during a pandemic who's freaked out and has really anxious about things, and I admit I was very anxious at the beginning of the pandemic too. Right. And you're feel lonely and isolated. And then there's this group that sort of explains this really complicated, scary thing to you. Right. And then there's also bad actors. Southern Poverty Law center has done a really good job of documenting this, that some bad actors, particularly hate groups, tried to trigger that. Oh, so you're worried about vaccines. Oh, but you should also be worried about immigrants and migrants and trying to trigger those in and out group biases that people sort of have. So in fairness, we're up against this wall of disinformation that is really hard Sometimes. And I try to put myself in the perspective of like, why do credible people sort of believe incredulous stuff? Right. And I think we have to sort of have a bit more empathy and sort of try to figure out why people believe the things that they're believing in. And you know, Dan Ariel has written a really good book about how people fall down these spirals of disbelief because of cognitive and emotional deficits or where they're freaked out about things or they're anxious about things and they get sort of trapped in these worlds.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Well, it just takes like one thing to kind of spiral back to the COVID example. You think someone has a very valid concern about Big Pharma and like all the money being made off of that, and then it just takes one drop in the pond for it to kind of fill over. Right.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Yeah. And Jeet here, who, you know, gave this really great keynote speech at a political journalism conference in the fall, early winter of 2024, his argument was, you know, fact checking enough isn't going to be able to save us. And he also made. And this is where I kind of get this idea, so I want to give him full credit for this idea, is that he likes to see the world in terms of like, not left and right anymore, but people who are pro system and anti system.
And his argument is again, people who kind of believed conspiracy theories about his examp, about vaccines or about COVID those sorts of things like 5G chips and sort of this sort of crazy stuff.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: This is tracky.
[00:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah. His argument is, well, you know, some of those people started out with sort of concerns about Big Pharma. And he says those are legitimate concerns. Right. And his argument is sometimes we need to meet those people in the good places before they go completely to the bad places. Right. And he also makes an argument that sometimes our fact checking as journalists comes across as nitpicky, smarty pants, sort of snobby.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: As elitist sort of things. And I tend to agree with him. And his argument is we're not going to save our democracies with fact checking. And instead we need to complicate things more. Admit as journalists sometimes that we don't know the answers to things or that things are complex and try to listen more and try to be more empathetic.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of hit my next question right on the tail. There is the fact that we've moved away from left and right and we've gone into this kind of pro versus anti system of thinking. We're like specifically touching on your article from JSource, fact checking as an act of courage.
Start with what you kind of meant by that and what, what are you being courageous against.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think I, I gave a lecture to students on the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated and his inauguration day sort of addresses, not his inauguration speech, but when he had spoke later, it was filled with a lot of inaccuracies, Right. Like, I think Daniel Dale with CNN has accounted at least 20 inaccuracies around immigration, his contention that the 2020 election was rigged, that he lost to Biden, the economy, these sorts of, you know, you know, teaching students, as I do. And I always try to, I think my job as a journalism educator, my primary job as an educator is to inspire young journalists to think that this is important work and that what they are doing is a value and that it adds something to our civic society, but also our democracy. And so, you know, those are kind of big ideals. But you sort of like, you get a bit pessimistic, like you're thinking about, like, meager resources of journalism, sort of, if you want to think about it in terms of a battlefield or a war, sort of push back against that arsenal of disinformation that we hear, particularly from pop populist politicians. And, you know, and I was mouthing the usual sort of normative words about the essential value of journalism and that fact checking. And, you know, I can give you a long list of how fact checking works. Right. There is lots of evidence from social science that says when journalists point out or try to correct misinformation, that it reduces belief in misinformation, that it has a significant effect on people. And even there was a 2020 study that concluded that even Trump and Republican supporters in an experimental study there, that when they were given journalistic corrections of misinformation, misinformation or inaccuracies, they believed the corrected information, but they were still going to vote for Trump. Right. So you can kind of think like in the sort of, when I started journalism, and I can remember an old kind of world where, you know, if a politician was, you know, completely was lying or, and we didn't even use that word. It was only in the last, like, you know, the New York Times, like 2016 or 2000, it was 2017, where they started using that word, lying, because lying implies a motive. Right. And so as a journalist, sometimes we don't know what the motive behind is. We can point out that that's not inaccurate. Right. I can go through long list of dutifully saying fact Checking works that it corrects disinformation. But we still have this weird political world. I call it the sort of the. Or I don't call it, but political scientists have called it sort of this post shame politics where politicians as you know, they don't sort of, you know, there's no consequences for constantly being inaccurate or, and I'm not saying I'm not against spin. I think in politics you should argue your corner and you should try to convince the public of the merits of your idea. So I'm not beyond spin, but it's sort of spin when it sort of moves to sort of constant been based in reality. Yeah, you can hype your program, but hype your policy ideas. But if you're being completely blatantly inaccurate or you know, completely distorting the record of your opponent, then obviously I have some problems with that. So you can kind of feel like sometimes like, does fact checking work? And it's funny, I kind of got called out, I was on a panel giving a talk to a bunch of election officials a couple summers ago and Scott Reed, who used to work for Paul Martin as his communications kind of guru, he called me out and he said, oh, you know, does fact checking really work? Like, look at Trump, he's probably going to get reelected. And he was right. He did get reelected. Right. And so despite all the fact checking that, you know, Daniel Dale and all these other organizations did, sort of pointing out the inaccuracies of what os Trump was saying, and I kind of, you know, again, dutifully sort of recited, yeah, fact checking works. But you kind of, you know, sort of feel like, does it really work? Are there consequences for this sort of constant prevarication, Constant sort of over and over and over again. Right. And I kind of ultimately came to this conclusion, well, what else could we do? We know it works. The evidence is there. You know, study after study shows that it works. We show that media literacy is effective. You know, and I keep coming back to ideas that I do think most people in this world are still grounded in fact. You know, if you look at the statistics, eight in 10 Canadians basically got their first Covid jab. Right. I do think, you know, maybe there's some evidence to suggest that maybe we should be focused more on pre bunking. I think that's a thing. And you know, there are some second generation fact checking organizations, organizations full fact in the UK or Chikado in Latin America or Africa, check. And they've had some success in trying to structurally push back, like using institutions like the courts or regulators to push back when constant or sort of repeat offenders of disinformation are constantly doing so, they sort of push back. But I ultimately came to the idea that disinformation and this sort of disinformation disorder that we live in is not like a plumbing problem we can just fix immediately. It's like crime.
And this isn't my original idea. Tom Rosenstahl, who's a, you know, a pretty important journalism scholar in the United States who was former head of the American Press Institute, and he said, he put it really eloquently, he says, it's not like plumbing problem, it's like crime. It's a social condition and sort of have to constantly monitor it and constantly adjust to it, right? I think this is our new world, right? And so for journalists to say, just throw up our hands and say, no, we're not going to deal with this, it's just, I just think admitting failure. So I think the better response is to sort of push ahead and see fact checking is an act of courage to try to push back against these things. And journalism alone can't solve all of these problems. Journalism is, in that traditional philosophical sense, a liberal institution. It grows out of the Enlightenment. It is about facts. It is about testing accuracy. It is about having a public discourse grounded in some sort of reality or shared facts. And it's about the rule of law, the justice system, all of these sorts of things, and that ideas can be tested and proven and these sorts of things. And it can only operate in a liberal system, in a liberal democracy. And so if our politics become increasingly illiberal, then journalism will struggle to survive. And so I think, again, then I think it's our role as journalists, you know, and I don't ever try to speak out publicly. I try to remain very apolitical, in fact. But I, I am quite vocal, and I think journalists have every right to be quite vocal about things such as free speech and democracy and these ideas that journalism can only operate and survive in a liberal structure. And so I, I'm fine to sort of speak out and push back against, you know, when we see illiberal things in this world. And I do also think, you know, journalism has some problems that we have to sort out. Like I've talked about before. I think we do need to listen more. I think we need to hear more. I think we need to sometimes stop our sort of smarty pants, picky routines and these sorts of things. And I also think we have some problems with false balance and false equivalence that I think we need to sort out. But I do think there's no overnight fix to this. Again, it's like crime. We have to sort of constantly be at it and thinking about strategies to solve this problem.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: How relevant would you say that these problems are in Alberta today? Or do you think that a lot of it is just kind of the feedback feeling that we get from the U.S. in a sense, Obviously, we have the same issues on a smaller scale. Sure.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Yeah. There's definitely disinformation in Alberta. I think there are strands of populist politics in Alberta. I do think disinformation sometimes benefits populist politics, politicians, and we've seen that work in the United States. I definitely think what's happening in the United States has an influence on our politics here. I mean, it's like, how can it not? Right. We are solid the last election, right?
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: We very much live in. Despite being Canadians, there's a media saturation. Like we live in this orbit of this huge planet. And I think that political discourse has an influence on the political discourse we have here. I could just speak to. This isn't a disinformation example, but I just finished writing a chapter for a book, a University of Calgary, a press book, with my colleagues Lori Thorlakson, Melanie Thomas. And we make the argument that you see the derivatives of some of the populist rhetoric around fossil fuels, drill, baby, drill, that sort of thing, and castigating renewable energies as unreliable and fossil fuels as the only reliable energy source. We do see that, I think, in some of the rhetoric in Alberta in terms of politics. So I do think what happens in the United States matters for Alberta politics because I think the framing of certain issues and the framing of ideas can be universal and they can be. Be universally applied. And we know that there are connections between, you know, political operatives here in Canada and political operatives in the United States and people, people who are political operatives here pay attention to what's happening in the United States and they sort of look to campaigns to see what's effective, what's not effective, because you have very similar populations in a way. And again, we live in this political world where emotions, particularly outrage, anger and triggering of in and out group dynamics works in our politics. So I think we do see sort of the derivatives or sort of imprint of American politics in Canadian politics sometimes.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Just back to the article as well. I remember when you had posted it, I had actually sent you an email just kind of talking about what it meant for me personally. Like, I found a lot of hope in it. And I remember even kind of thinking the same things, like during your lecture when you were kind of going through that mentally of like.
But, like, what's the point? But, like, it's. There's no point in taking, like, not taking away. It's like, seems kind of like a win, lose, but better winning is keeping going. Do you have a message for students, people that want to get into journalism, or my class going into the journalistic field?
[00:20:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I think I am sort of hopeful and I'm excited. And, you know, as a journalist educator, you try to equip the young reporters with, I think, the skills that they need because, you know, like, I never spent as much time when I was first a reporter verifying information. You know, now we have to sort of verify. Verify videos. And I didn't have social media. Right. Social media didn't, you know, changed so much, has changed so much. So again, my primary goal is, you know, to inspire people that journalists, that this work is important and that it's valuable and it has meaning and that it does work. And then, you know, to give people those skills around verification and fact checking so that they are equipped to deal with the disinformation, the tsunami of disinformation that I think we're against constantly. But, you know, I kind of go back to over and over again. I do believe that the vast majority of people are grounded in reality and, you know, most people are decent and. And most people are open to new ideas. And again, 80% of Canadians got vaccinated. So science got communicated in an effective way so that people heard the messages and they, you know, made choices to go get vaccinated. Right. You know, I just think, you know, also here in Canada, if you just want to look at the recent election in April of 2025, I mean, for a year, that pundit and every poll was suggesting that the Conservatives were cakewalking to a massive majority. Yeah. And so interestingly, and I'm not trying to make a political argument here, I'm being. I want to be very nonpartisan and apolitical about this, but something happened and Canadians changed their minds. Right. And then Mark, I mean, I know there was a new leader, all these sorts of things, but if you believe the polls and you believe the pundits, Pierre Poliev should have been the prime minister after that election, but Canadians change their minds. So I do take solace in the idea that information, credible information matters and that people will make informed decisions based on the information they have. Right. And that people can change their Minds about things.
So I do think our job as journalists is to go out and report the stories fairly and balanced, to listen more, to hear more from people who, from those anti system people who have concerns about, and sometimes legitimate concerns about being ignored or thinking that organizations, you know, such as the New York Times or other legacy media are elite media. Right. You know, I'm someone who grew up in a small town. I spent still quite a bit of time in small town British Columbia where I do think people in rural communities have some legitimate grievances about feeling ignored. Or I do think that there is some snobbery around the difference between, you know, adages like people who shower before work and people who shower after work. Right. And this some blue collar snobbery. And I think being a bit of a political analyst here. Right. Sometimes I think center left parties have lost the ability to speak to blue collar workers. And I think it's in some ways because there's been this sort of striving culture for so long in sort of our discourse that if you don't get a university degree, you're not a success. Right. And I think we need to valorize all sorts of forms of work. Like I think the people who, you know, build the roads or build the schools or the plumbers, those people who, you know, coach little league or coach hockey, all of those people are making an important contribution. And I do think that sometimes media, like I'm talking about media, like entertainment media sort of media, grand scope of media culture, sort of makes fun or pokes fun. And I think some people have internalized that sort of shame. Shame, almost shame. Yeah. Or David Sandel at Harvard is called the tyranny of meritocracy. Right.
And so I do think that people have these legitimate concerns and I do think sometimes they feel failed by institutions and those institutions, schools, univers, governments, all of these sorts of things. And I think media is one of those institutions. Right. And so I think as journalists we need to do a better job of listening, trying to understand what's going on. And I, you know, I do see some success in that area. I do, you know, obviously I recognize that local news organizations are closing, but I do see efforts by some legacy media to create new bureaus in small towns, you know, some local journalism initiatives around trying to get more news from places that we don't often hear from.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Well.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: And you see smaller organizations pop up the sprawl is what I think of.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: Sure. And yeah, you know, some very entrepreneurial people trying to do hyperlocal journalism for sure. Yeah.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Awesome. Final little question.
What is the craziest, most insane fake news story, faked fact, whatever you have seen that you are just like, how did that even make it past it? Yeah.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: You know, we haven't even really talked about AI and some of the AI stuff that's coming out, I can't really think of a specific one right now. I mean, that what really troubled me last a couple years ago was that Joe Biden audio that sounded exactly like him and it was telling people not to vote. It was during a, if I remember correctly, around the primary in New Hampshire. And that scared me. Right. Because I think AI has the potential to be a disinformation super spreader. But there are some tools at spotting these deep fakes and spotting disinformation. Or, you know, just because I think news organizations have gotten very sophisticated or sort of very reticent about just because they hear something or they see a video about something, they don't automatically start running with it and giving it legitimacy. There's really egregious stuff that came out of the war in Gaza in terms of, like, this idea around crisis actors and recirculate, you know, recycling of war footage from Syria. So some of those really stand out as pretty bad examples of disinformation for me because the human consequences of those were profound. Yeah, sure.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: That was longtime journalist and MRU journalism professor Brooks DiCilia. I'm Emma Miller, and thanks for listening to the Community Podcast initiative.
The CPI focuses on audio storytelling as a way to better include underrepresented voices.
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This land is also home to the Metis Nation of Alberta, districts 5 and 6.
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