Three Steps to Save the Presidential Debates

While the president was demanding a fourth debate with his challenger, an opinion piece in The New York Times suggested that debates be scrapped altogether. Yes, the debates have certainly devolved over the years but this is a classic “throw the baby out with the bathwater” reaction. Let’s fix them instead. Here are three changes to elevate the debates and increase their value to the public:

 

1. Ditch the audience. In her NYT piece, Elizabeth Drew wrote that debates were less about conveying a vision or a plan than they were about upstaging the opponent. “Points went to snappy comebacks and one-liners. Witty remarks drew laughs from the audience and got repeated for days and remembered for years,” she said. She’s not wrong, of course. But it’s the debate format that has helped to create the reality TV atmosphere. The candidates have been playing to the audience; they look for applause or a laugh. Let’s get serious and let’s remove the audience. The point might be made moot because of the pandemic this year but the editorial board of The Washington Post recently endorsed this idea, calling the debates “quip contests.” We’ll gain time, engagement, and potentially more substantive responses. 

 

2. Level the field. I mean this literally. The candidates should be seated, anchored to their chairs. The freewheeling Town Hall format, where the candidates roam the stage, should be banned. In 2016, candidate Trump tried to intimidate Secretary Clinton when he alternated between standing and pacing back-and-forth behind her. Clinton said he was breathing down her neck, which made her feel "incredibly uncomfortable." Politico magazine called it "the ugliest debate ever seen." Pressing a physical advantage – bullying – must not be allowed. And having the candidates seated will also help mitigate any height discrimination, or “heightism,” where taller people are perceived to be stronger, and better leaders.

 

3. Check the facts. A consequence of our glorious First Amendment is that political speech is highly protected – essentially any half-truth or lie may be told. While there are plenty of post-debate analyses, it’s too late. Many viewers tune-out after the practiced smiles and forced handshakes. And our brains tend to cling to misinformation even after it's been refuted. We need real time (or near real time) fact checking. If IBM's Watson computer can win at Jeopardy!, why can't we get an indication of veracity while the debate is still in progress? Let’s use technology to help the experts sift through speech transcripts and testimony; almanacs and atlases; laws, regulations and policy statements; credible survey data, and non-partisan news articles, journals, and research reports. Let’s help ensure the public gets the facts and not the flimflam.

 

While we’re more polarized than ever and fewer people are undecided, more information, more opportunity for side-by-side comparison, is still crucial to the democratic process. In a society that’s increasingly stressed by the health and economic consequences of COVID-19, systemic racism, and so many other issues, political discussion can be dispiriting, infuriating, and sometimes incendiary. But, as Ray Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451, “If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.”

Between blog posts, I invite you to follow me @pauloestreicher.

Who Can Win the Battle for Truth?

This article also appears in Medium.

We’re fighting over the truth in the news media, at home, at work, and in the halls of Congress. And the battle carries over to our institutions of higher education with sides taken over free speech and academic freedom.

President John F. Kennedy said, “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” So, it seems appropriate that Cornell University recently held a symposium entitled, “Universities and the Search for Truth.”¹

Why does this all seem more urgent today? Humans have always been truth-challenged. Ancient conquerors frequently rewrote history. The Bible is filled with stories of deception. Some countries, institutions and industries exist on the clever use of propaganda.

The truth is the amount of what we call information is expanding wildly, and spread in more ways and with greater consequences than ever before. The rise of the internet and consumer-generated content, pressures on professional journalism, and our reliance on social media channels and their complex algorithms all influence what we see, hear, believe and share.

Add these modern issues to Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that “There are no facts, only interpretations” and we have a gray, goopy and potentially grave mess. Echoing the reality of truth’s plasticity, Professor David Shalloway at the symposium said, “Data can be true or false, but knowledge is usually only an approximation.” And Professor Holly Prigerson voiced a similar view: “Truth is not an absolute thing. It’s not binary, and it’s on a continuum.”

Our judicial system recognizes our inclination to manipulate the facts into a self-satisfying truth when we’re asked to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” As much as the words matter, though, Professor Sarah Murray said, “Language itself doesn’t ensure the truth or reliability of information. It’s how we use language and communication and who’s using the language that are judgments about that.” Most people understand this – the messenger can increase or decrease the credibility of the message.

While the literature carries many comparisons between strategic communication and war – offense and defense, knowing your opponent, hearts and minds, etc. – Professor Mor Naaman acknowledged his talk was particularly “dark” and “grim.” “Modern media technology is killing truth and knowledge,” he said. “Instead, our technology emphasizes only information and emotion.” He added that social media is a “well tuned and optimized machine that plays exactly” to our biologically, psychologically and evolutionarily wired sense of emotion, not truth or knowledge.

You can see how fear and anger are being used as platforms for persuasion but we can use this insight on emotion toward a more favorable purpose. The most effective, enduring way to communicate is to link fact and emotion through the use of examples, imagery and storytelling. And the language needs to be relevant; context is required. A famous wrongful death case involving drug side effects was lost well before the conclusion of all the testimony. “We didn’t know what the heck they were talking about,” a juror told The Wall Street Journal.²

Yet, a problem remains in how we receive information. We hear about algorithms making viewing choices for us – the creation of echo chambers. The algorithms are sometimes called filters but they are not. They curate but also isolate. They homogenize, not cross-fertilize.

The symposium panel offered some fixes: Educate students on the ethical, philosophical and social issues of technology; study how technology can create misinformation and biases; create new curricula, and focus new research on these issues. While important, they are long-term solutions and it’s unclear how the findings would be applied widely.

We need equal attention on smaller, shorter-term initiatives. So, let’s stipulate that the truth is subjective and focus instead on the starter material – the objective facts – since these are frequently denied or called into doubt. In addition to the earlier call for using relevant language in describing the facts and connecting these to resonant emotions, we should consider the following:

Push to end false equivalency and the conflation of opinion with fact. If 97 percent of climate scientists agree on human causes for climate change, we should not see one-on-one debates. News organizations and social media news feeds should present the available, accurate data but must differentiate between fact and opinion.

Overwhelm the bad with the good. More experts need to speak out and share the facts to help push inaccurate information down the internet search list. The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University is one of a growing number of programs tackling how to communicate complex information in more understandable, relevant ways.

Get there first. False or misleading statements are terribly difficult to retract and, harder still, to erase from one’s memory. In a study of nearly 900 participants, researchers showed “the repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are subsequently disconfirmed, can assist in the creation of false memories in a substantial proportion of people.”³ The bottom line is that people may continue to rely on misinformation even when a subsequent retraction is made and remembered.

Use technology to advance real time fact checking. We can’t rely on a reporter’s memory or ability to interrupt a guest to check the facts. The idea for a “Truth Meter” was raised at the symposium and it was reported last week that two Penn State professors received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop technology to identify and exclude “fake news” on digital platforms.⁴ If IBM's Watson computer can win at Jeopardy!, there's no reason that (nearly) real time fact checking couldn't be a reality. We should explore the potential for machines to sift through transcripts, proceedings and testimony; almanacs and atlases; laws, regulations and policy statements; credible survey data, and peer-reviewed research reports.

These efforts will be successful only if our institutions – and society at large – do more to promote and enforce honesty, and venerate intellectual exploration. I keep reading about our “hyper-connected world.” But in these connections we need hyper-vigilance for the facts. Perhaps then we’ll have an easier time searching for truth.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.

1.     Cornell University. “Academic Symposium: Universities and the Search for Truth.” August 24, 2017. https://www.cornell.edu/video/academic-symposium-universities-search-for-truth.

2.     Tesoriero, H.W., et al., “Merck Loss Jolts Drug Giant, Industry,” The Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2005.

3.     Lewandowsky, S., et al., “Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation” (2005), Psychological Science, 16(3):190-195.

4.     Associated Press. “Penn State Professors Get Grant for ‘Fake News’ Detector.” August 31, 2017. https://apnews.com/e1b353e9e62f4e4096e419c13b061750/Professors-get-$300,000-grant-for-digital-fake-news-detector.

How Google, IBM and Others Can Help Hold Feet to the Fire

A Proposal to Harness Computing Power to Showcase the Truth During Political Debates

Like so many, I'm profoundly disturbed when facts are ignored or twisted. I bristle especially when it comes to junk science and false health claims. Politics aside, Michele Bachmann's repeated assertion that Merck's HPV vaccine may cause mental retardation goes beyond inaccurate; it directly undermines public health. She ignores the experience of millions (and the lives saved, the disease prevented), clinical evidence, and the findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. It would be an absolute crime if Ms. Bachmann's fear-mongering statement leads to just one girl eventually getting cervical cancer because her mother decided against vaccination. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts."

Of course, health advocates, and public health and medical professionals blitzed the news media with the actual facts, which were 100 percent contrary to the presidential hopeful's claim. Unfortunately, the damage was already done. For some, the corrections will stick in their brains; for others, however, it will be in one ear and out the other. In Camelot, Inc., I addressed the challenge of undoing false or misleading statements: "It’s difficult to defeat because once in place, misinformation is terribly difficult to retract and, harder still, to erase from one’s memory. In a study of nearly 900 participants, researchers showed that “the repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are subsequently disconfirmed, can assist in the creation of false memories in a substantial proportion of people.”* Once the information is published “its subsequent correction does not alter people’s beliefs unless they are suspicious about the motives underlying the events the news stories are about.” And, “when people ignore corrections, they do so irrespective of how certain they are that the corrections occurred.” The bottom line is that people may continue to rely on misinformation even when a subsequent retraction is made and remembered."

Following last night's Republican debate, Ms. Bachmann denied saying that the vaccine was "potentially dangerous." "I didn't make that claim nor did I make that statement," she countered. And, yet, anyone can read the transcripts or look at YouTube to see and hear for themselves that she said it again and again. Of course, there were plenty of other flagrant violations of the truth by the other candidates. In the debate follow up, PolitiFact.com and others comment on the veracity of some of their key statements. It's important and worthwhile and... maybe too late to matter. How many listen to the pundits after the main event is over or read the news articles the next day? Just some small fraction of the debate audience, I'll bet.

So, here's a proposal that will hold every candidates' feet to the fire. Let's have all the fact checking completed during the debate. Before everyone shakes hands and calls it a night, a final segment is added: the candidates are confronted with their false or misleading talking points (maybe even a report card on how accurate or truthful they've been) and are asked to address the issues right then and there. During the course of the debate, all of the statements could be crunched through the vast holdings of credible, objective knowledge. Google was a co-sponsor of last night's debate, for crying out loud. And, if IBM's Watson computer can win at Jeopardy!, there's no reason that near-real time fact checking couldn't be a reality. It could be PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter(TM) on steroids. No opinion sites or blogs would be part of the fact checking database -- only transcripts, proceedings and testimony; almanacs and atlases; laws, regulations and policy statements; credible survey data, and peer-reviewed research reports.

Google/YouTube and Twitter have expanded interest and engagement in the political debates. Here's a way for them and others to ensure that the widening audience gets the facts and not the flimflam.

* Lewandowsky, S., et. al., “Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation” (2005), Psychological Science, 16(3):190-195.

Between blog posts, you can follow me @pauloestreicher.