How to deal with information on the age of Trump, look at the weather report and gamification for an answer

There is a prevalent issue with the way Trump behaves (and Republican politicians before him), it's the basic axiom of populism: experts, meritocracy, and facts are no competition for popular opinion. That's why they create an alternate reality where up is down and the sky is red and where actual facts have no standing while opinion, confirmation bias, and twisted interpretations take their place. That's why "the mainstream media" is creating "fake news" and are "the enemy of the people." That is why there are information channels that are dedicated to maintaining and profiting from this alternative reality (Breitbart and Fox News come to mind).

But that is also why they (particularly Trump) tend to generate an avalanche of outrageous "information" that keeps the mainstream media chasing its tail. It's impossible to cover yesterday's craziness when today's craziness is even more outrageous. And all of the craziness makes it very hard to cover the actual outrageous things they are doing. That's why they can get away with the destruction of basic democratic principles, there is way too much noise for people to be able to pay attention and react. I have seen this movie before, it's the same tactic that was employed by Chavez in Venezuela. The media never knew how to deal with it and democracy was slowly dismantled under their noses while Chavez laughed at them running around like decapitated chickens.

The media has quite a bit of blame in all of this. Their attraction to shiny objects (squirrel!), ratings, and the horse races requires them to present today's outrage instead of dedicating time to carefully analyze what is going on. The viewer's attention span is limited, they have to keep the conflict going so that we would pay attention. A different model that does not require that conflict and horse race aspect must be found. That job is left to the ever declining newspapers and magazines that only the informed minority reads, leaving the uninformed majority to fend with the avalanche of misinformation on their own. No wonder that it's very common to hear: "I don't trust the media, they just serve lies."

But there is a more problematic aspect to this, it creates an alternative reality market. The market that has led Fox News and right-wing radio to thrive. People that live inside the alternative reality need their beliefs catered to. Fox News is happy to oblige and get advertiser's money to do so. No wonder that it has been found that people that watch Fox News are less informed than people that watch no news at all. Making actual fake news is easy, you just need to create something out of thin air and have a choir to repeat it to the masses. While real journalism requires investigation and corroboration. That's why a lie has travelled around the world in the time the truth puts on its boots.

One effective way to deal with this is satire, there is a reason that many people can be better informed by watching the Daily Show or listening to Wait Wait don't Tell Me on the radio. Chris Hayes already incorporates his Thing 1/Thing 2 segment with this purpose. The problem with this format is that it is narrow in focus, takes too much viewer time and preparation, and it's not for all tastes as it's clearly one more example of "Liberal Bias."

So we have to come up with a way to cover the daily craziness and the alternative reality universe in a way that is (1) entertaining, (2) comprehensive, (3) documents its evolution, and (4) leaves time for real news. I propose we look at the weather report, participatory competition shows, simple easy to understand measures, and the fast ubiquitous flow of information through social media for an answer.

The weather report model

The weather report takes little more than 30 seconds of a news program, yet it's able to convey a lot of information with a few graphs and numbers. This is short enough and informative enough to make it entertaining with no need for conflict (although it might involve some theatrics). This doesn't mean that it should be all of the coverage, some topics might merit some in-depth analysis, but it makes it possible to adequately and fairly cover everything in just a few minutes, leaving plenty of time for the more important stuff.

The media could thus condense most of what comes out of Trump's mouth into a few statistics. Categorize and classify the lies under a few catchy names, and reporting on Trump's twitter feed can become as simple as:

23 Tweets today, 20% on the "I'm not a crook" category, 30% on the pure Bullshit category, and 48% on the "I'm better than anyone" category. We'll be covering that interesting 2% later in the show. That brings the accumulated bullshit for the month to 856 Tweets.

Trends and statistics can be extracted, graphs can be plotted, and predictions can be made:

He is traveling tomorrow to France, we predict a 75% chance of bullshit divided into the following categories...

This removes all of the punch and just makes a joke out of the whole Trump strategy.

The same strategy can be applied to Congressional Republicans in general and to Fox News or the right-wing media as a whole. Once the format is implemented it can lead to its refinement and evolution. It might be perceived as non-serious at the beginning, but it would slowly become prevalent as the outrage machine gives it free publicity. Do note that this strategy could not be easily emulated by the Right, as that would imply that they would have to expose their viewers to real news to do it. Thus highlighting the conflict with reality where currently their viewers perceive none.

This is the report from The Alternative Reality: today's main topic was the Muller report exonerating the president, which had 80% of the coverage. Second, with 10% came how North Korea just made a marriage proposal to Trump, and Qanon dropped today to only 9% of the coverage. This graphic maps how those topics where distributed among the main players, including the Russian Bots in Facebook and Twitter, of note is that Fox only had 22% of truthful news today, hitting a new low for the month of June...

For the viewers that are more interested in specifics, online web coverage can take the slack, directing the viewer to actual sources and fact checkers. A simple QR-code on the corner of the screen can allow anyone to follow along the story and see the data behind the labels and closely examine the graphs and trends. It will become a fun game, a water cooler conversation starter, and even some betting pools might arise around it. All of this would increase the flow of information through society, particularly information of how the alternative reality is developing. Light is the best disinfectant.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics model

For this to work, the presentation has to be as transparent as possible. Leave no room for any mistake, correction, of misinterpretation to be used against it. Particularly when the rate of information flow is at a level the makes mistakes quite likely. That makes absolute and blatantly obvious transparency key. It's not enough to issue a correction at a later date, or to put a hard to see footnote at the end of the article. It should be a clearly demarcated, standardized, and visible section of any associated data point. Something that can be seen alongside the heading of the article itself, and in article listings.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is always providing preliminary information on its monthly reports, and revising it up or down for a few months afterwards. This guarantees the immediate flow of information, and more accurate historical information on which to base predictions. People know that the initial information is flawed and the direction the previous information was corrected, so they adjust their expectations accordingly. This is particularly powerful as cautious journalism would probably err towards the direction of giving the alternate universe the benefit of the doubt, thus making most corrections in the "wrong" direction.

Of course, this idea can be taken forwards using a model similar to the investigative organization Propublica. There are already several individual attempts that are trying to combat the problem. To provide browser plugins that classify news sites in a truthfulness scale, to modify search results and social media streams so that fact checking is front and center. All of these ideas can be incorporated into a larger organization with the resources to deal with the problem. An Alternative Reality Watch Bureau of sorts.

The game show model

If you introduce the possibility of audience participation into a news segment (or create a game show roughly modeled after Wait Wait don't tell me), you could exploit the dynamism it introduces to lead the audience towards being informed. QR codes to specialized sites, tweets with tags, SMS codes, polls. phone calls, dedicated game apps, actual prizes and the possibility of interviews, live comment streams. All the tools that modernity gives us. TV Networks are always looking for a new show, News Networks could jump into the bandwagon.

Audience participation could decide the topic of the day, which of all of the crazy stuff the audience wants to hear a more in-depth coverage of. An audience poll of what's the wackiest Fox segment or Breitbart article. Participants could gain the prestige that Jeopardy participants get, and the public would start following their performance, and getting actually informed in the process.

Gamification of the process

The game show model could be brought fully online and even create a whole new market segment for the distribution of information. Gamification is a modern tool that has been proven useful for the teaching of languages, for expanding charity work, and for other social endeavors. Maybe it's time for actual news to enter the fray. Compete with other users, create different teams: the CNN team, the MSNBC team, the Fox News team. Create an artificial incentive for people to become informed.

This is a market segment that the providers of real news could excel at, new app categories and revenue streams could be created out of it. Something that they are sorely in need of at the moment.

How can this be done?

It should not be that hard. It would have to start from one of the more left-leaning networks such as MSNBC. They could hire John Stewart and some of the Daily Show people as consultants, I am sure they would come out of their retirement to help create something like this. The networks already have plenty of people that can compile statistics and polls, and the fact checking sites and newspaper divisions could surely be invited to participate in the generated social media traffic.

The challenge would be to make it serious enough for it to have lasting presence and influence. With just the right dose of humor to get people hooked. It would be a large project overall, but it doesn't have to start that way. Small segments like the Thing 1/Thing 2 segment of Chris Hayes could start testing the waters. Put them in specific time slots on TV and online, so that all can become aware at the same time.


Serious media outlets have to do something like this to deal with the noise avalanche that comes from the president, his party, and his propaganda outlets before the 2020 elections start in earnest. It is their social duty. Democracy itself might be in peril if they don't act.