Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, accused right-wing student reporters of waging “disinformation campaigns” at the University of Chicago’s Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference.
The three-day event concluded Friday after spawning multiple viral interactions between student reporters for the school’s independently-run newspaper, which identifies as holding “conservative and libertarian beliefs.”
In one viral moment from the conference, the Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum was asked by a student reporter with the Chicago Thinker why the media mostly ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story until recently.
“Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not reality?” asked student Daniel Schmidt, who writes for the Thinker.
Applebaum dismissed the laptop as uninteresting.
“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I think it’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have
The Pulitzer Prize winner added: “I don’t find it to be interesting, I mean, that would be my problem with that as a major news story.”
In another viral moment, CNN’s Brian Stelter was challenged by the Thinker’s Christopher Phillips on disinformation.
“You’ve all spoken about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation. But CNN is right up there with them,” noted Phillips, who invoked numerous examples where CNN failed to accurately report stories.
“All the mistakes of the mainstream media, in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction,” the student said, before he asked, “Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence or is there something else behind it?”
Stelter appeared taken aback. “It’s too bad, it’s time for lunch,” he joked. He offered an answer in which he concluded critiques of CNN are part of “a popular right-wing narrative.”
On journalism as a whole, Stelter concluded, “We have a lot of work to do, I think.”
The Chicago Thinker has used such interactions to drive engagement online throughout the week.
Friday, standing next to David Axelrod, Goldberg appeared to refer to the student-run outlet as a purveyor of “disinformation.”
“I think one darkly humorous but inevitable measurement of our success is that our disinformation conference has been the subject of disinformation campaigns on social media already,” he said.
“Congratulate yourselves for that. We’ll study that at next year’s [conference].”