Hafta 519: Meta and fact-checking, the role of journaling, social media as source of news

NL Hafta

This week on Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Manisha Pande are joined by author Amitava Kumar and academic Joyojeet Pal.

The panel discusses Amitava’s new book The Green Book: An Observer’s Notebook, and Amitava explains the role that journaling plays in his life.

“Journaling is a means of self-discovery and a tool to document our times. Personal narratives can preserve truths and challenge erasures of history,” he says. He also says journaling helps counteract misinformation since it’s “about creating a record that endures beyond fleeting news cycles”. Manisha adds that reading her own journals from her childhood “makes me cringe at times, but they’re a reminder of how far I’ve come”.

The conversation shifts to Meta’s decision to terminate its fact-checking partnerships. Joyojeet warns, “Abandoning fact-checking opens the floodgates for radicalised communities to define their own truths.”

Jayashree says, “ A lot of this is about changing things that are associated with liberalism. And that’s exactly what that revised policy says. It says that you can now make allegations of mental illness or abnormality based on gender and sex. You’re allowed to compare people to faces and filth based on protected characteristics.”

The panel also explores Elon Musk’s controversial claim that social media is the new media, how algorithms shape narratives, and a lot more. Tune in!

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Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introductions

00:00:44 - About Fight To Breath Campaign

00:01:50- Panel introduction

00:05:08- Headlines

00:09:57 - The Green Book and journaling

00:30:47- Announcements

00:32:10- Meta’s fact-checking decision

01:02:02 - Social media as news

01:23:03- Special message

01:25:50 - Subscriber letters

01:40:51 - Recommendations

Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters

Produced and recorded by Prashant Kumar and Priyali Dhingra.

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