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Sharyl Attkisson: How Propagandists Co-Opted ‘Fact-Checkers’ and the Press to Control the Information Landscape

American Thought Leaders

JAN JEKIELEK

“Virtually every piece of information that can be co-opted has been, whether it’s Wikipedia online, fact-checkers, the news,” says five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson. “This is all part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.”

Attkisson is the host of Full Measure and author of “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.”

Below is a rush transcript of this American Thought Leaders episode from Jan 18, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Mr. Jekielek: Sharyl Attkisson, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Ms. Attkisson: Thanks for having me.

Mr. Jekielek: Sharyl, I’ve been lately thinking about your book Slanted. You wrote this pre-COVID frankly. And the more I think… The subtitle, this is close. How the Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism. I think you were seeing something very profound earlier than many were.

Ms. Attkisson: I think part of the reason it’s not that I’m so prescient, it’s that the kind of reporting I do lends itself to me seeing, or being subjected to trends in media and propaganda that later become more widespread. But I think I’m kind of on the leading edge of seeing it sometimes. And I can look at it, kind of see what’s happening in the landscape.

When I say how the media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism, it’s referring to the phenomenon that prior to 2015, 2016, and I looked at this to make sure I was on target with my memory, there was no big movement, begging big tech or third parties or fact-checkers to get between us and our open information online or on the news. Nobody would’ve thought of it at least on any broad scale.

And yet now here we are just a couple of years later, after a major campaign to control the information I believe, on the news and online, where many people embrace the notion that some know nothing third party that’s quite frankly, their strings are being pulled by some corporate or political interest that they’re inserting themselves and saying what we can and can’t see and read and what we should believe, yet people are embracing that even in the media, and begging for more of it. Never would’ve thought of that just a couple of years ago, that would be the case.