Fake News

This episode kicks off our new theme of "Fake News" with guests Robert Sheaffer and Brad Schwartz. 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.

Guests

Robert Sheaffer: Robert Sheaffer (born 1949) is an American freelance writer and UFO skeptic. He is a paranormal investigator of unidentified flying objects, having researched many sightings and written critiques of the hypothesis that UFOs are alien spacecraft. In addition to UFOs, his writings cover topics such as Christianity, academic feminism, the scientific theory of evolution, and creationism. He is the author of six books.

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.