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Air Dates: October 7–October 13, 2024

Lies and disinformation are as old as humanity itself.  But Steven Brill argues that the witches brew of 30-year-old legislative consequences; mixed with technological innovation; and bad actors threaten the lives of democratic institutions and truth itself.

Brill is an award-winning journalist, author, and the founder of Court TV, The American Lawyer Magazine, American Lawyer Media, Brill’s Content Magazine, Journalism Online and The Yale Journalism Initiative. He is also the co-founder and co-CEO of NewsGuard, a media platform that rates the reliability of news and information websites. His latest book, “The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World – and What We Can Do About it” explores the threat of disinformation on society.  

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square," Brill describes the factors leading contributing to the spread of disinformation in the digital era and the importance of trustworthy information. He explains, “when you pollute the information ecosystem with hucksters, with state-sponsored disinformation, and you don’t have any way to tell the difference between what’s real and unreal, then nobody will trust each other. And we’re just in a world of trouble.” Brill also highlights the vitality of truth in a functioning society, “facts are what enable a democracy to function and facts are what enable a free market to function. It doesn’t mean we have to agree the solution to those facts or how to interpret those facts, but we do have to be bound by a core set of beliefs in basic facts and in basic institutions that we’re willing to trust.”  

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.