Mass Media with Mass Impact: featuring Gabby Barrett

Journalism is often known as the Fourth Estate in government, ensuring political accountability and transparency. If you've ever wondered how the media influences politics or what journalists focus on most when reporting, then this episode is for you. 

Gabby Barrett is the soon-to-be Head of Politics at Marlborough's student-run newspaper The Ultraviolet. This interview covers her inside scoop on how the press shapes our political system. 

Go read the Ultraviolet articles here! https://theultraviolet.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome back to Red White and You, a podcast dedicated to informing the public about our American history and civics in an accessible, digestible way, because let's be honest, we all need a little bit of a refresher course. I'm your host, Evan Hyman Muchnik, and today we will be talking about how the mass media and press influence our American government. Also, today we are joined by Marlboro's ultraviolet newspaper politics editor, Gabby Barrett. And she will also be the head of politics next year for her senior year. Gabby, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit of a quick biography kind of vibe if I missed anything. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

I am so happy to be on this podcast. Very excited to talk about mass media and the press influence. And I am a junior at Marlborough. I am on the Ultraviolet, which is our school's newspaper, as Evan mentioned. I am the politics editor and actually recently just got our um roles for senior year. So I'll be head of politics with shout out Tyron Lee. Yay! Um and so I've been on the UV since 10th grade. Um I really enjoy journalism, um, but politics in general, obviously. Um and yeah, I'm super excited to be here and chat with Evan.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yay! Okay, perfect. Super exciting. Okay, so let's just start. Um we see all of these news articles every day. We don't really know what to believe. There's a really large fake news movement that has been going on since Trump really entered office in 2016, if not before. Um, what are some ways that you think um we should limit misinformation? How should we be consuming political information? Like, are we should we be looking only at the UV? Should we be looking at social media? Should we be reading the New York Times? Should we be diversifying? Um, what do you think? Where should we turn?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Um, I mean, yeah, definitely look at the UV. We can always use more readers, look out for that issue every couple of months. Um, but that definitely is very much pertained to the Marlboro community. And so we also see on a larger scale um big news organizations like Fox, like New York Times, etc., um pertaining to their specific audience, which is oftentimes not a completely unbiased view. Um, but I think the biggest perpetrator of online misinformation would be social media, because at the end of the day, an alarming amount of our um of people our age and in our generation solely rely on things that come across them when they're um when they're absorbing their news information. Um, and that can be an incredible problem because people can say anything on the internet. Um, they are not um journalists who got an education at a college and university. Um so we often see people spreading things that are completely false, but a lot of the times children our age are completely gulpable and susceptible to that, and not even just people our age, people older than us, which is a little bit concerning. But um, there's a crazy statistic about how many people are consuming um news that just comes across and they're not actually looking for it themselves. And I think the first step of not having this huge issue of misinformation is to just go look up and fact check for yourself because most of the times everything is just a Google search away. Um, I get most of my information from CNN. Um we often are anxiously scrolling through it before our current events quizzes. Um but there's also um Apple News is really good. I listen sometimes to they have like a daily podcast, which is just like I love the daily. Yeah, super good. And I love listening to that even on like my car rides on the way to school. I think it's just a really great way to stay up to date on everything.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, let's practice active, active political information consumption rather than than just scrolling, watching edits, and then uh-oh, some politics stuff comes up. Um so talking about that misinformation, I mean, especially in social media, anyone can say anything. And I that I mean, it's not just with social media. We also saw it on Wikipedia, but I know that at my school and even when I was in elementary school, like the number one rule was if you're researching something, don't look to Wikipedia because anyone can say anything. And I think that's just been exacerbated with social media and just like scrolling content and everything, and also like the motivations of making scrolling content where you want to grab your audience's attention. Um, so that just leads to even more possibly possible misinformation, but at the same time, I know my podcast listeners know about the First Amendment, which um talks about protection of the press. You write and freedom of speech, you can say whatever. So, from your time at the UV, what has the press become to like what does it mean to you now? Um, how can you protect your freedom of speech? And how do you think that others should protect their freedom of speech while at the same time not just yelling fire in a theater in a in a non-burning building, you know? Um, what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Well, I mean, for obvious reasons, I think people just need to know the goings-on of the world. Like, how are you supposed to be an active participant in society if you are unaware of even just the fundamentals of the our, like the democracy that we live in? Like, I mean, like, you gotta listen to this podcast. Yeah, literally, literally, guys. Um, but I think, especially in a time where there have been threats to our First Amendment, whether that be the freedom of press or just the freedom to protest, um, and I think that means that it's especially important to use our voices, especially in the place of privilege that we're in. And I think journalism is one of the most important pillars of this country. And I think being able to have a voice, regardless of what political affiliation it may be with, I would think in a perfect world, all news sources would be politically unbiased. But at the end of the day, we know that's not gonna happen. And um I think it's just important to um one, for us to use the voices we've been given, but at the same time also listen to the other people in this world who have much more knowledge on these issues and be able to learn as citizens to be able to participate in society.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah, sometimes you don't have to just teach because you're opinionated, sometimes you can just learn more through your opinions. Um so you obviously are write for the UV and you have been writing for the UV. Have you ever, because Marlon is a private school and like I mean, you can't just totally write opinion, you can't write opinion um papers the entire time, like, do you ever feel any pushback to like not being able to write what you wanted to write about or feeling like there are guidelines or limitations on you? And how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

I mean, honestly, for me, I don't think I, like as a journalist, I feel the need to share my political opinion within political pieces that I'm writing. Um, but like because as one of the politics editors, obviously I edit politics articles, I do like occasionally see sometimes where there's a little bit of bias creeping in, and I think that's just um that's just inevitable, especially at this school. Like a lot of us do lean towards one political affiliation and kind of have um a very sheltered view on things. Um, but I have never I think the UV does a really great job of like being as unbiased as possible within the setting that we're in. Um and also we have the opportunity to um create stories and think of story ideas that um we are actually interested in and we actually think the Marbot community should um hear about and learn about. Like we take story ideas from everybody in newspaper one and newspaper two, and we kind of filter through those to make sure we have enough politics pieces, news pieces, arts pieces, sports pieces, etc. How do you decide what's relevant? Um we really just try and think of well, this will be more of our focus next year because right now um we haven't been choosing stories like just as politics editors, but um next year we will be. And I think right now we kind of have a process of just figuring out how certain stories can pertain to the Marmor community. That sounds a little bit redundant, but um, like for example, if there's a story about um how um, I mean, obviously we re had a recent issue about Trump's first year as president, and you know, we had a lot of stories about that in general, but at the same time we also had um a story which was super interesting about how his um his budget cuts to women's STEM programs, and we actually had a computer science student work on some coding for that, which was really cool, so you should go check it out. But um we have had that article is like no other news source had gotten the information that we had gotten. Um, and so we could kind of like STEM cuts to women's programs is incredibly relevant to the Marg Marlboro community. And we had alumni, um, alumni from Marlboro being interviewed who were directly impacted by this change. Um, and our feature for that issue, which I was a part of, was also on how women's support for Trump has shifted and changed and kind of the demographics of that. And we um we interviewed some students from neighboring Mar or neighboring Los Angeles private schools um about their opinions, because obviously we can't really share our own, but um I think that's a really interesting way to kind of turn stories that seem very broad and very not close to home and kind of bring them closer to our community.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah, and you're also you're not trying to eliminate bias because that's fully just part of being a human. You're just trying to report on other people's biases rather than just like focusing on your own and just writing like, hey, this is what I think, and ha ha ha ha ha ha. You're trying to put in as many perspectives as possible, which I think is really great. Um in the past, mass media meant that everyone pretty much watched the same three channels. I have rec I can recall multiple times I spoke with my parents and they're just like I only had two channels on TV, right? Um, and now everyone has their own personalized feeds as we were talking about earlier. Do you think that this kind of like fragmentation um affects our ability to have a national conversation, promotes polarization, um, and takes away the importance of having a deliberative democracy?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

I mean, yeah, 100%. I think um on social media the algorithm really just feeds to what people are interacting with, and if there is some absurd video that you're watching over and over again, or that something that you even like accidentally liked, or just things that you keep watching because it's interesting and it's like really grabbing your attention, like you're gonna get more videos like that, and it can become a space where you're just constantly getting fed these horrific stories and you kind of just feel like demotivated, like you don't want to like you're like, what's going on with this world? But like that's just the stuff that you're interacting with. And like to go about your point about fragmentation, like that also is the same thing where you're just getting fed stories about one simple like political party or one simple side of the story. Um, and that ultimately, like that specific type of news information like that you're getting from TikTok or Instagram or whatever it may be is so much more aggressive than like the m the like news networks like on TV and like actual like um respected newspapers because everyone like the point of social media is to share your opinion. And when people's opinions are attacked, they attack with even greater force. Like people become so um politically um blind to everything else around them. They're like, I'm right, I'm right, I'm right. And they're keep they get fed that information, so it just keeps boosting um whatever they think. Like they're just getting stuff that agrees with them, so they're just gonna continue on with that and continue like their aggression is gonna continue growing. And I think that kind of just makes it really difficult to have a even a conversation with anyone. Like you people who are so um enamored with their own opinion can't really get out of that headspace and democ d deli and deliberate. Deliberate. Um that becomes really harmful for a society for our society, and I think it's only looking like it's gonna get worse from here.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

But yeah, um, I mean, I think it's just confirmation bias after confirmation bias just piling on. Um, and it's getting pretty bad. Bring back um reading the newspaper in person, analog newspapers in coffee shops, and turning to the person that was sitting next to you in the coffee shop and being like, what about like what do you think about this? And then having a conversation about what's going on rather than just sitting in the dark and reading Fox News or CNN or something.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Like go directly to the source, go to New York Times, go to Washington Post, go to the ultraviolet, you guys.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yes, go to ultraviolet. I'm gonna link this in the bio. Yeah. So go read the ultraviolet.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

And even subscribe, you guys. Like our newspapers and we have a magazine too, like they're really great and they're really fun. And if you go to Marlboro, like you'll be like, wow, I'm a Marlboro expert, and who doesn't want to be a Marlboro expert? Everyone wants to be a Marlboro expert. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Okay, I think that's all we have today. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you when I see you, and have a great day. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, okay, bye, guys.