Fake News

This episode kicks off our new theme of "Fake News" with guests [Robert Sheaffer](http://www.sheaffer.org/) and [Brad Schwartz](https://abradschwartz.com/).

Fake news is a new label for an old idea. For our purposes, we will define fake news information created to deliberately mislead while masquerading as a legitimate, journalistic source of truth. It's become a modern topic of discussion as our cultures evolve to the fledgling mechanisms of communication introduced by online platforms.

What was the earliest incident of fake news? That's a question for which we may never find a satisfying answer. While not the earliest, we present a dramatization of an early example of fake news, which leads us into a discussion with UFO Skeptic Robert Sheaffer. Following that we get into our main interview with Brad Schwartz, author of [Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News](https://www.amazon.com/Broadcast-Hysteria-Orson-Welless-Worlds/dp/0809031647).

Guests

Robert Sheaffer

Brad Schwartz: I'm a writer and historian seeking new ways of telling stories about America's past in order to help us understand our present. My current research project, advised by Julian E. Zelizer, explores the intersection of media and politics by taking a fresh look at the career of pioneering newsman Edward R. Murrow. My previous work has reexamined mythologized moments and cultural heroes in American history to probe issues of criminal justice and media misinformation that remain relevant to this day.