26:55Philippines-based investigative journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa is alarmed by the pollution of the online information system. She's reported from war zones, written about terrorism and online radicalisation, and been jailed for fighting for press freedom. Through these experiences, she notes how social media poses an existential threat because of the way it proliferates disinformation, lies, and highly emotive engagement that can lead to real-world violence. Ressa's concerns are well founded. MIT study from 2018 found that lies travelled six times faster than the facts on Twitter, and that was before Elon Musk took over the platform and removed moderators tracking hate speech and other harmful content. The same with Facebook when it stopped doing any fact checking in 2016. Whistleblowers from the companies have since raised the same concerns about manipulation and social harm. The concern now vamps to AI, where an audit found that 17% of chatbots' answers amplified false narratives they were fed.
A six-part anthology that traverses some examples of modern misinformation and digital deception. Each episode presents an example of how the Internet has been used to cause harm and commit crimes. The people involved in the cases tell their struggles, mistakes, and efforts to catch the perpetrators, and also how it affected their lives. After introducing the key characters in the case, the episodes explain how the Internet was used to commit the crimes.
The Power of Big Oil is a three-part series that investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. The series presents a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists, and public relations strategists who lay bare how the biggest petroleum firm in the United States, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry globally, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes--Denial, Doubt, Delay--the series documents the corporate cooptation of science, the manipulation of public opinion, and political figureheads that mirror conduct by other industries--from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid epidemic.
53:13In the United States, a year after Joe Biden's inauguration, around two-thirds of Republican voters believe his election was illegitimate, and the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump is now a defining issue of the Republican Party. Yet the story of how lies about election fraud made their way to the center of American politics has not been fully told. Plot to Overturn the Election traces the hidden sources of misinformation about the 2020 election, demonstrating how a handful of people have had an outsized impact on the current crisis of democratic legitimacy.
44:12Split Screen tells the story of January 6, 2021, where an estimated 2,000 people stormed the United States Capitol building, attempting to stop the certification of votes from the 2020 election. What started as a protest became violent chaos, killing several people and injuring over 140. The event was the culmination of years of angst, anger, violence, and confusion, that began stirring years or even decades earlier in the thick of growing polarisation in the United States. Certain media outlets and social media influencers spread content fuelling division and angst in the months leading up to and following the election. Allegations of voter fraud--rejected by state and federal officials in both parties, as well then-Attorney General William Barr--were amplified and emboldened by conservative media, ultimately igniting the rage and frustration of an undeniable portion of people in the United States who get their news and information through big tech, and the slurry of social media echo-chambers.
1:20:58China's COVID Secrets documents the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and how Chinese authorities responded by initially suppressing the findings, and then engaging in censorship of and disinformation about health risks to its citizens, world health agencies, and other governments. Scientists and doctors, along with international disease experts and health officials, discuss the historical response, echoing China's similar disaster with handling SARS in 2002, and its repeated actions to prevent a similar global outbreak with COVID.
53:20United States of Conspiracy investigates the alliance of far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Donald Trump, and long-time Trump associate Roger Stone, and their roles in deepening the battle over truth and lies in an age of disinformation. Drawing on interviews with Stone, former staffers from Jones' InfoWars website, people who have been directly affected by their conspiracy theories, and experts in how misinformation spreads, we see how once-fringe conspiracy theories have come to be wielded as a pervasive tool at the highest levels of mainstream politics.
1:47:27This Is Not a Movie is a profile of the career of Robert Fisk, an influential British war correspondent whose groundbreaking and often game-changing journalism during some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world, has been imperative to reporting the reality of war. The film captures Fisk in action, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, seeking out the facts on the ground, and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions. Fisk talks passionately about his process of translating raw experience into incisive and passionate dispatches, while showing his determination to see things first-hand and the tenacity to say what others won't. In his pursuits of the truth, Fisk has attracted criticism, but in spite of the system stacked against him, and the huge personal risks and dangers, he continues to cover stories as they unfold, talking directly to the people involved. This Is Not a Movie is a homage to Fisk's legacy to speak truth to power, in an era of fake news, and where journalists are dubbed "the enemies of the people."