Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.

I'm Gareth King.

Today we're asking, has the Internet ruined journalism?

A promised unlimited reach, direct engagement and a more informed world, but instead devalued expertise, creating a clicks and outrage economy where speed reigns over accuracy?

To help us get the full story, we're joined by John Dedekis, an award winning novelist, writing coach and former CNN senior copy editor.

John, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Thanks Gareth, it's good to be here.

Before we get into it, can you tell us a bit about what you do and the journey that led you to this point?

What I do now is I'm a writing coach, a manuscript editor, a novelist, a public speaker, and I've been doing that since I retired from CNN in 2013, although I was doing some of those things while I was still at CNNI was a journalist for 45 years, covered the White House when Reagan was president, went to CNN in 1988 in Atlanta and was with the network for 25 years, the last 7 as an editor for Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room.

Yeah, wow.

So it's quite a quite an extensive repertoire and background that you've got there.

So obviously you've been in the world of journalism and and writing long enough to have seen the arrival of the Internet and also its effects play out.

From your perspective, what's been the most fundamental change across the industry?

I think that the I mean the most fundamental change, at least for me, because I existed before the Internet did the the biggest change is the connectivity of it.

I mean, you and I are half a world away and we are able to talk in real time.

Being able to see each other.

I mean, that was unheard of when I was growing up.

And so I think that's the biggest thing, the reach that we have to be able to connect with people around the world.

I mean, that's just spectacular, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think just on that point of reach, you know, as you said, it would have been unheard of, but but looking back to that time, what did the initial impact of the Internet and technology look like on the industry and and what was the reaction at the time?

Well, in in journalism there was certainly a fair degree of scepticism about the Internet.

I mean, we used it, but we had to be very careful about knowing if the information was reliable.

And so for the longest time, you know, the, the, the Internet was available as sort of a tip service.

We would get heads up about things, but we would still check it out the old way where you pick up the phone and call somebody you know in authority at a reputable organisation, a government agency or one of your contacts or something like that.

So you know, it took a while for the Internet to become more insinuated into daily life.

Yeah, interesting to hear that.

It almost generated those leads easier to to people which he then still had to investigate.

And I think one of the things we'll probably get into as well as we go through this conversation is the speed that everything operates at these days and how that plays out.

Would you say that it was the Internet as a as a tool for journalism was taken seriously right off the bat, like right away, or do you think the industry was a little bit slow to react?

It's been a while now, but I, I think that there was a fair amount of scepticism and, and I think you know what, I think at reputable news organisations, there's still a lot of scepticism for good reason, because there is just so much BS out there and there's so much, there are so many lies and conspiracy theories.

It's just gotten like it's the Wild West.

And so I think, I think reputable news organisations are still cautious about it and yet it's used quite a bit as well.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially, I mean your point there around reputable news organisations.

And I think as we know, as it expands and and the rise of say citizen journalism as well, the lines are kind of getting blurred.

And as I guess we've seen play out over years now, that trust even in these reputable organisations seems to be breaking down quite a lot too.

So obviously that's another challenge to to try and address as everything keeps going.

But I guess on that point, what would you say beyond maintaining that reputation and I guess that trust from the audience, what would be the biggest challenge for an editor trying to manage an outlet or publication in the digital age?

And how would that compare to previously when it was kind of just implicitly trustworthy?

I'm not sure I can add much to that just because journalists are sceptical.

And so the the problem is the sources that are making things up and it's just a matter of trial and error.

I mean, the, the sources that journalists tend to rely on are sources they trust.

And so a lot of people are competing for attention.

The, the problem now is that, I mean, you even, look, you even have the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who I'll be honest, he, he lies constantly, reflexively, you know, and, and so if he says it, you have to be sceptical.

But of course, if you ask him questions, then you're, you're considered treasonous.

You know, it's, it's gotten to the point where, you know, Trump himself has done a tremendous disservice to the to the Internet because of the falsehoods that he spews and then claims that the mainstream media is fake news.

And what he's done, it's not.

And he's not just undermining journalism.

He's undermining the intelligence community, the judiciary, the scientific community.

And that's what dictators do.

They undermine trust in everything so that you believe them.

And I mean, he said when he first ran for president, only I can solve it.

Yeah, look, that's, that's an entire, I guess world that we could probably spend hours going down.

And what it appears to me, you know, I'm in Australia, I'm not on the ground in in the US seeing what it's like over there.

But what I can kind of see around all of that is the way that him or his team or whoever it is is kind of using the Internet in like Internet culturally rather than an official sense.

And I think that not just him, I think all officials do it to to varying degrees, where they've got a team that manages their social media or something.

And the team is not staffed by people like them.

It's staffed by young people totally plugged into, you know, the way to communicate to people online.

So, so that communication is formatted as Internet information, not kind of official information.

And then I think, you know, wires get crossed somewhere along the line.

That's obviously one of the disservices that the democratisation of information provides via the Internet.

One of the things that's happening right now in the White House press corps is that they have made room for what they call new media.

And, and it's a rotating thing.

And they get the first question in the briefing.

They sit to Caroline Leavitt's immediate right along that that Rose Garden wall and the New York Times just did a piece on one of the, you know, the new media people and the guy make stuff up.

I mean, he he's he's he's already got a reputation for not being reputable, but that's OK for the White House because, you know, he says what they want him to say and he slavishly asks softball questions.

It's, it's, it's so it's complicated because you're right about, you know, young people, you know, using the technology to get the, the message out as effectively as possible.

They're not necessarily dealing with the content.

They're dealing with the, the way to make sure that the reach is as far as it needs to be.

But you know, you've got people in the White House, in the, in the in the briefing room who aren't journalists, but they've got hundreds of thousands of followers, but there's no editor on their shoulder going.

Where did you get that?

How do you know that's true?

Yeah.

I mean that's that's an interesting point as well around kind of I guess the speed that everything needs to operate.

We know that headlines Dr clicks, which drive revenue and you know, the byproduct of that, of course, is the need to create that kind of viral content that you know, is going to get a lot of eyes, a lot of clicks and get that revenue to keep the the network or your own small publication, whatever is going.

But seeing them somewhat of the model head down that path, you know, where everything is just, you know, we've seen the rise of opinion pieces as as like, you know, quite polarising by their nature for that, I guess for that purpose.

Does that kind of cheap form of content, Does that mean that expensive investigative journalism and writing just becomes too expensive to produce for the most part?

And and does that shift towards clickbait and headline, You know, a lot of people don't read beyond the headline.

Is driving things through headlines rather than content simply a necessity of a business model that might be struggling?

Yes, that's that's a real danger.

And what's happening is, in fact, the Internet is probably responsible for a lot of newspapers going out of business because they had to monetize what they were doing.

But people wanted free news.

And, and so they were, you know, a lot of a lot of newspapers were late to put up a paywall.

And so they're, they were kind of caught flat footed responding to the Internet.

And so you're absolutely right, it really puts a chill in investigative reporting because in order to do effective investigative reporting, you have to be backed up by a news organisation that has deep pockets and skilled lawyers that can protect you.

You know, if you are branching out on your own and you're doing investigative reporting, you are very likely going to get sued.

And even if you are in the right, even if truth is an absolute defence, someone with deep pockets and a lot of patients can run out the clock and run out your bank account.

Even though, I mean, look at we're we're seeing Trump shake down, you know, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, The New York Times, you know, he's suing, you know, some of these people for $20 billion and they're settling.

And these are big news organisations, you know, they're not settling for 20 billion, they're settling for 16,000,000.

Just to kind of get it off their plate now, of course.

And look, it's, it's, I guess just for context, it's very different over here in terms of the litigious nature of, of things.

I think over here our legal system doesn't allow, well, not from what I can see anyway, like that level of, of suing over of kind of everything.

But you said you said something there around orgs, you know, and publications being slow to put up a paywall around their content.

Why did they originally just decide to start giving away the content for free?

What was the strategy behind that and how did they imagine they could capitalise on that economically?

It's hard for me to, to know for sure, but my hunch is they still had the, the physical newspaper and they, I don't think realised that, you know, people were moving to the Internet.

And I think that they still trusted in the history that people will still gravitate towards the actual paper.

And I think they just were slow to realise the tectonic shift that took place in news consumption.

And that, that makes total sense.

And you know, on that point, how the how do you think the rise of that citizen journalism that we we mentioned a couple of minutes ago, which is obviously fueled by the Internet and the ease it is to publish and and share your own stuff.

How do you think that changed the way traditional media outlets do their jobs?

Like now, with the ability for anyone to curate their own unique interest, News feed is the one size fits all, let's say broadcast model a thing of the past and like how much future do you reckon it has?

That's an intriguing question.

I think that the search for truth, I don't think that the principles involved with that have gone away or will go away.

You know, you still need to verify your sources.

If you're getting something anonymously, you need to be able to confirm it with two other sources at least.

There are still reputable news organisations, The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, just to name a few.

So I, I still think that the fundamentals of journalism still still exist.

But the problem, of course, is that even the Russian government, I mean, the military, they are, they have, they have, what are they troll farms?

You know, they, they are planting false information.

You know, that that is something they're doing on an industrial strength level, on a state level.

And, and it's, it's weaponizing falsehoods and that's hard to fight against.

It's hard to fight against.

No, absolutely.

And I think that, you know, that's something that I'm sure you you'd understand that comes up here as well.

You know, anytime there's an election or anything to do with government going on, it's this kind of it's whether whether it's it's real or not.

It's almost the go to now that they're they're these Russian troll farms are doing these kind of interference jobs.

And I'm sure that they're not the only ones.

Like I'm sure basically every nation is probably.

China as well, you know, and one thing you haven't mentioned is the is artificial intelligence, I mean.

Yes, yes, the.

Deep fakes that are becoming much more sophisticated.

We can segue into that now because that's a.

It's a great, great thing to talk about.

I remember, you know, when that must be a few years ago now, playing with the first kind of image generators and they were terrible.

You know, they were laughable at what you would get back from them.

And then seeing the first examples of, of when you could kind of make an image of somebody doing something and then when the first video came out where you could just take an existing video of put someone else's face on it.

Even then, you know, I remember having conversations with people around this is going to be really bad.

Like once this kind of starts exponentially increasing quality wise.

You know, it's so funny.

We've, we've spent the last decade.

You, you mentioned the, the term fake news just before and whether anyone likes it or not, that has just become part of the vernacular for, for everybody now.

And, and, and it's kind of just refers to everything that somebody doesn't like.

They can kind of call it that.

And, and it's so it's so interesting to me that we've spent so much of the last decade fighting against fake news and, and things that are misinformation, disinformation, etcetera, to now be barrelling at super speed into a digital world full of stuff that's fake and we'll have no way of telling.

And it's just quite an interesting irony that all of that fight against fake stuff seems to have fallen by the wayside as we now embrace, you know, generative AI and other forms of AI.

How do you think that's going to happen and play out?

Well, here's the thing.

I mean, technology is morally neutral and the, the, the problem is the people and, and what people do with it.

And, you know, going forward, I mean, I think that one of the points you made about AI being so sophisticated that we won't be able to tell the real from the fake.

But I think that there are ways that there might be able to put watermarks on things or, you know, a digital watermark for authenticity's sake.

I mean, this is way beyond my understanding or ability to deal with.

And, you know, in, in this country, there's, you know, the 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

And so, you know, you, you really want to be very careful about fiddling with content because that was that was always the case.

Even when we're talking about the printing press, you could still lie, you know, and use a printing press to do it and reach a lot of people.

So, you know, lying is nothing new.

It's just that the technology in the pipeline is more sophisticated, but the responsibility is still on us to be discerning.

There's no surprise that there's lying out there, so that means we've just got to be alert to it and not just swallow everything whole.

Yeah, no, totally.

And I think that your your point you raised there about watermarks or or something like that.

You know, I have seen certain pieces of, of content that might be shared on various platforms that will have kind of a watermark identifier built in.

People do want that, you know, because we've seen the amount of what they call slop out there in terms of text and and and writing is insane.

And everybody, you know, they have these debates around how you can tell formats.

It's got a certain tone, etcetera.

Like the use of an M dash.

She's like a big one, but that's short form content.

Obviously you're you've got a background in journalism, but you're now a longer form writer in the world of novels.

And I make it up.

Yeah, yeah.

But I guess that's coming from your from your, your own mind.

How do these are these tools, are they starting to impact that world at all or are they OK?

In what ways?

I want to say, I want to say one thing, though, to go back to, you know, the future.

I think a lot can be said for the education system.

I think that there really needs to be not just, you know, in education where people learn how to use it, but I think that there needs to be some classes in, you know, being more sophisticated in using it responsibly and being able to discern what's real and what's fake.

So I think education in elementary school on up, you know, I think is, is important, but as far as AI is concerned, that's something I've been playing with because I teach a lot.

I do a lot of writing classes.

And so the, the question comes up a lot.

And so I've, you know, I've fiddled with AIA little bit and it's here to stay.

And I found that it can be useful as a research tool as long as you get, you know, sources that you can check out.

But you know, AI isn't really creative.

It just regurgitates information.

And I actually tried that.

I had to write a short story, which is not my specialty.

And so I plugged in the parameters.

I need a short story, 5000 words, this style.

This is the title.

These are the elements.

And it's spit out something in nanoseconds and it sucked it.

Suck.

And that then was a reminder that I hadn't lost my chops and that, you know, there is something to say for the human element here.

And it is definitely, I mean, there's a lawsuit in the US about copyright infringement because, you know, people's books are being used to train AI.

But, you know, ChatGPT is not buying these people's novels.

They're just stealing them.

And and that and that's still going through the courts.

So copyright infringement is an issue.

But, you know, it's almost a moot point because the damage has already been done, Although it could protect, it could protect people who are now writing, but their stuff hasn't, you know, been published yet.

Yeah.

And on the, on the kind of, I guess copyright infringement stuff, as you've alluded to there, it is just pulling from all information available to it and kind of summarising it, which if you, if you play that out over a long enough time, the more it does that, the more of itself it's putting out there and then the more of itself it's kind of drawing from.

So it should theoretically just come to this ultimately beige point that it's just nothing.

You know what I mean?

Once it loses, as you said, all that humanness, that's, yeah, not very exciting to think about.

I would bet though that AI is becoming is going to become much more sophisticated to the point where it really can replicate the human thought and the emotions.

I read or I heard a story recently that you know, unstable people are using ChatGPT or or you know, generative AI to to be their therapist and that it actually can talk them into committing suicide.

Yeah, I've seen a couple of the same stories and that's very, very scary that not only are we so insularised, I don't know if that's a word, but we're so interested now, you know, our devices and things and our digital lives where we're not interacting with real people offline, that turning to a screen for therapy is it seems like a very dystopian next step.

And then seeing as you said, these stories of these these young people ending up kind of committing suicide be because of what it said or whether it's because of what it said directly or not.

It's just a so tragic.

And hopefully there gets to be some guardrails and, you know, regulations around that because that's awful.

If you were a nefarious actor, you could easily sabotage that and, and commit some kind of OP.

But that's, that's a very dark place to go down.

But what I did want to talk to you around, as you said, those large language models and, and generative AI to, to make pieces.

If we rewind back to the context of, say a, let's say, a book publisher or even a newsroom or, or anything that deals in words, theoretically, could they get to a point where you could be running just agentic AI systems producing all the content drawing from what's happening out there in the world?

And so you could be running an entirely fake newsroom or, or book publisher.

Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, have a nice day.

Yeah, God, that sounds awful.

OK, another, another thing, if we go back to that citizen journalism, I'm sure you've heard of platforms like Substack, right?

Would you say that on, on an individual level that the Substack model is potentially A viable future for journalism?

Or is it just a niche where I guess if you've got a big enough name and platform already, you can capitalise on that?

Oh, well, I think you you can definitely do that.

I mean, there are a couple of people who left the Washington Post and, you know, started their own Substack.

I've always seen Substack is more of a newsletter kind of thing, but you know, technology evolves.

I don't know if I don't see it necessarily replacing, you know, day to day journalism, but it certainly supplements it and it can be a useful, valuable contribution to the search for truth that and I mean, that's the thing.

It's, I think that anything is possible and that it can be used for good or for I'll.

And it goes back to being discerning and being able to use things responsibly with the understanding that there are going to be a lot of people who don't use it responsibly or use it nefariously or even in an evil with evil intent.

But that's been the human condition since the beginning.

It's it's just more sophisticated now.

Yeah, on that point, you said something.

They obviously the search for truth and you got to be a bit discerning around whether it's your sources or what you're producing.

A little while ago we touched on kind of how the Internet affected, say, newsrooms and journalism right at the get go.

How has that changed over time now that there's this 24/7 news cycle and just constant demand for new stuff and the speed that everything operates at?

Well, in in some ways, it's it's very useful because one of the things I noticed when I was at CNN is that, you know, we could, it was hard for us to do interviews with people who didn't live in a Bureau city.

In other words, you had to get a camera in front of them.

And, you know, that took time, it took effort, travel, all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, the newsmakers were in the big cities near where we had a camera.

Well, now with the Internet, we can hook U to somebody in Function Junction, Utah.

And that's great because the technology allows us to reach more people and draw from the expertise and the experience of people who aren't just in the elite gatekeeping kinds of places.

So I think that's a value you have now.

You know, everybody who's got a cell phone, cell phones are very sophisticated in that they have that camera function and the video function.

So people can go live during a traffic stop that goes South and, you know, people see it in real time badly.

However, mass shooters have also live streamed their crimes.

It's sick.

But just because the ability that is there doesn't make the Internet sick.

It means that people misuse it.

But as far as journalism is concerned, it's been wonderful in terms of getting video fast from people right on the scene.

You know, if you've got, if, you know, when Trump was shot in Butler, PA, everybody had it on tape.

You know, I mean, you, you get so many different angles of the same thing.

And that is helpful to law enforcement as well.

Yeah, Look, I think that that as well, as you said, if theoretically any event that happens, you've got somebody on the scene.

And and we know that people not even interested in producing news, they're just interested in getting likes online, putting a video out there.

And, and one of the things that we've all noticed is whether big or small doesn't really matter.

Sources of news do scour the Internet and and social media platforms to find those stories that might originate on someone's Instagram or TikTok account or as you said, a video just shared somewhere.

How how much of that goes on?

Would you say there's people that that's their job just to like be trolling the Internet for things like that that can turn into stories or or do you hear the story and then find?

I don't think, I don't think news organisations are doing that.

Again, we're talking reputable news organisations.

I don't think that's where they get their news.

Now, there's a friend of mine in Baltimore when the, you know, the Key Bridge was hit by a barge and it collapsed.

There was video, there was there was surveillance video and they had to go through a rigorous check to make sure they had to check with, you know, the police, you know, is this is what we see is this did this happen?

And so that then means though, that there are people out in the hinterlands who will, you know, send you a video and say, isn't this amazing?

And it is amazing, but it's, is it true?

And so I think again, the reputable news organisations, they're not searching for that kind of stuff because the stuff comes at them.

One of the things I'd like to see, and maybe they actually exist, is look, if you've got a video of some event that you know is stunning, but there's no, you know, no one else happened to be there with a camera, did it really happen or is it fake?

I would think there need to be people in newsrooms that are able to tell if a news event is really a news event.

There have been a couple of cases where Fox News, which is sort of a very conservative network in the US, sort of Trumps personal, almost personal website.

They were giving stories about, you know, burning down cities, but the video was from something entirely different.

But, you know, you got to be able to show where the original came from, show how they're using it.

And I mean, that take.

That's Investigative Journal.

Yeah.

Look, that's, that's a great point.

And I think that that is one of the problems with this.

And and you know, as we, as we mentioned a little while ago, like a lot of people are not doing any deeper digging on anything.

You know, they see the video, that's the truth.

They see a claim, that's the truth.

You know, I've seen things like that, even those US ones that you're talking about, like I might have seen it in my feed.

And I'm like, this just seems absurd, whether it's about fires or something else.

And within a minute of further, you know, amateur investigation that I can do, I can find that it's fake.

But let's be honest, the vast majority of people aren't doing that.

That's true.

It's totally understandable how this stuff spreads and I guess.

Which which goes back to, which goes back to my feeling that the education system needs to step up as well.

Because people are, you know, they're sheep in many ways.

They'll believe whatever they want to believe.

And that when you have an informed electorate, when you know, civics is taught, when science is taught, you know, the education system I think really needs to step up to let people know that at a, at a young age, that, you know, the dangers of falsehoods, the consequences of that.

I mean, I, I think we can turn it around if we educate people.

I mean, that's not a, that's not meant to be a panacea, but I think it is at least one place where we can start to make a difference.

Yeah, No, absolutely.

I totally agree with you there.

That kind of teaching digital, digital literacy, I mean, look, if you're in, if you're a 14 year old kid now, you, you don't know anything other than having a the supercomputer in your hand at all times.

So you know how to use all of this stuff.

But it's like, as you said, being able to discern the objective truth versus the subjective truth is, is a skill that I know it'd be interesting to see whether people want that or they want their own opinions, whatever they are to to be nurtured and kind of coddled in that regard.

You know, you mentioned Fox News there and, and you've got publications on the other end.

And look, everybody's got their bias and, and kind of angle to different things.

But would you say that journalism is in better shape when when you've got a strong public broadcaster that needs to appeal to a broad audience representing the entire nation?

Like in Australia we've got the ABC and so obviously being publicly funded, they need to appear right down the middle.

Now, that said, I don't think there's a single person in Australia that thinks the ABC is that.

Everybody thinks that it's catering to the views that they don't like, which is probably an indicator that they're actually doing quite a good balanced job.

But those publicly funded broadcasters that do need to play right down the middle, how do you think that they keep the truth in journalism alive?

Well, the problem is that Trump is defunding them.

And so that, you know, that's one of the problems we have.

It's not that, you know, they never were, well, I shouldn't say never, but you know, at this point it's not publicly funded.

There's, there's a public stream of money, but it's, it's a small percentage, but it's, but it's enough that when that money goes away, that does have an impact on, you know, the quality of reporting.

And I, and I think though that they're really, I have a problem with, with publicly funded news organisations because if you've got a dictator, that then means the information is curated by somebody who really has an axe to grind.

I don't.

I don't see public as necessarily the same as as unbiased.

I mean, yeah, that's that's a fair fairpoint.

I guess the flip side of that is that hypothetically, let's say Donald Trump destroys it.

Couldn't someone just reinstate it in a few more years?

Sure, absolutely.

And you know there was a time in the US where they had the fairness doctrine and equal time provisions.

It got to be very difficult to administer and and a lot of broadcasting organisations got their licences from the government.

So in order to get their licence renewed they needed to play it straight and to be fair to all sides.

And when those particular rules went away, it was the Wild West.

It it gave rise to talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, you know, people who you know, who didn't have editors, they could spew whatever they wanted.

I think it's a pendulum.

You know, we talked about truth.

We talked about objectivity.

I think on a fundamental level, people really do appreciate truth.

We don't like to be lied to, certainly don't like to be lied to in relationships.

And that's really what we're talking about, a relationship between, you know, the people and a president, the people and their government.

So I think that on some fundamental level there still is a desirable for reliable information.

Yeah, 100%.

And I think that that's one of the benefits that the access to finding that truth for anybody that is interested is you can just see how much these stuff is kind of curated and you know, it's it's gives you a little bit that doesn't give you the full story that you can find.

So you can obviously see what anyone's agenda and how much anybody is is lying to you.

Do you think people still value journalism as a public good even if they're not willing to pay for it?

And does the amount they value it, You know, like I, I value it quite a lot and I, I read a wide mix of things.

But do you think for a lot of people that the amount they value it depends on how much it aligns to their own, I guess mindset?

Yeah, because look, going back to when this country, the US, was founded, you know, they didn't have anything called objective journalism.

You know, there were a lot of newspapers, but each newspaper was spouting a particular political position.

And it wasn't until probably the 1920s, maybe 100 years ago, where the concept of objectivity even entered journalism, entered the public sphere.

And, and so that was then curated and it became more sophisticated.

It was always controversial.

I think the Vietnam War was, was probably a perfect example of that because, you know, Nixon was prosecuting a war and lying about.

And, and it wasn't just Nixon, It was every president up until Nixon and beyond, you know, lying about it.

And during the Vietnam War, the reporters that were actually in Vietnam covering it, they go in the field with the troops and then they'd come back and there would be a briefing in Saigon from the military leaders.

And they called the briefing the

5:00 follies because there was no, there was no coherence, because there was no, there was no comparison to the lies that were told from the podium and what these guys were seeing in the field.

But Nixon's vice President, Spiro Agnew was going around the country calling journalists nattering nabobs of negativism and and a feet core of impudent snobs, which is just another sophisticated way of saying fake news.

So, you know, I I think we are fooling ourselves if we really think that this is going to be solved.

There is no matter what the technology is, as long as people are as involved, there is going to be funny business.

And I just, I sound like a broken record, but it just means that those of us who care about the truth need to be discerning and need to do what we can to let others know that not everything you see on the Internet is trustworthy.

I think we all know that.

But I think that politics has gotten to be a blood sport.

It's all about power.

It's all about power and winning.

And truth doesn't matter anymore because the bottom line is being in control.

And that's so sad.

It's really sad.

Yeah, look that that again, 100% agree with that.

And I'm only speaking in an Australian context.

And from what I can see from the US, it seems just kind of on another planet in that kind of sense that even here it has kind of broken down to a team sport to varying degrees.

You know, it's kind of and just that that hypocrisy and almost not holding anybody to anything that they say of or promise.

Yeah.

Do you see any spillover from the US where you know our craziness is starting to seep into your politics?

Really.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look, I mean, rightly wrongly, good or bad, like obviously the US is probably one of the, if not the most influential culture in in the world, right.

And I think that being that highly visible, let's say leader of the of the Western world that your political, cultural, whatever it is, issues definitely bleed over into other Western nations.

And I think one of the, the biggest ones is it's almost like we have bootleg versions like you've got over there, you've got mega, right?

And then someone will, will repurpose that here and, and it's make Australia great again.

And, you know, similar kind of sentiments, obviously, like Australia put Australians first and, and, you know, same kind of thing.

And I think that it's not a, a uniquely Trumpian thing.

I think that it's just very easy to spread around so much shared I guess culture and values in general.

Does that then mean that?

You don't really have any other places to go for reliable information because the Internet has been so polluted entirely.

Look, I would I would say.

That look and I could be completely wrong here, I'll just talk from my perspective.

I feel that, as I said, the US being on another level with all of this stuff, it again comes down to that like, I think here people aren't, from what I can tell, as supremely emotionally invested in politics as as what they are in the US.

Like, you know, don't get me wrong, we've got kind of politics super fans here, but they seem to be in in far smaller numbers.

And I think that that what it's like here is most people generally have this perception that the political class is just completely mediocre.

And so that doesn't have this weight to the normal person.

Like normal people are kind of somewhat detached from it.

And I think that that's a benefit that we can enjoy.

How did it get that way?

How do?

Just how can we?

How can we learn from you?

Look, I think.

I think find the least charismatic people you can find, the least interesting people you can find and you know, like straight down the middle inoffensive never rocked like they're, they're careerists, right.

And look, I'm and again, we, we'll go off on a tangent, but it is an interesting one.

But it's like, you know, we know that politicians are careerists, right?

Like what a what a job like get on that gravy train and you can just ride it.

And it's the same here, like, you know, except here there's the salaries are probably far less than what you would get in the US Politics here is kind of got that control lever, but it doesn't have the cultural cache that I guess, you know, like during election, someone might put a a core flute or a sign in their yard or on their fence if their local candidate.

But it's like there's they've never videos of someone driving their car through someone's yard to smash them down.

And fights breaking out and things like that.

It's just, it's just not like that.

And I think that at the end of the day for the vast majority here, we are able to kind of interact with each other.

It does it hasn't broken society tribally is is what I can observe.

But I think on on that while we were talking around, you know, public broadcasters and and the search for truth, like, I think one healthy thing on that here is this inherent cynicism, like any, any claim that you might see from the from the government, so many people are just like, that's bullshit.

You know, I'm gonna try and look, I'm gonna find why that's wrong.

So that's I guess that's one benefit.

And like I said, there is of course, sycophants and mouthpieces, but I don't know, it just doesn't have the cultural weight here.

I think that it might in the USI think though that.

Roughly the US is broken into thirds.

You know, there's the extreme right, the extreme left, and then I think that there's the middle that really isn't as tuned in anymore.

There's sort of fatigue about it.

And I and I think that's where I'm hopeful that those people, you know, might actually, you know, swing it one way or the other if they're not persuadable by 1 extreme or the other.

Yeah, absolutely.

And look that.

That pretty much sounds like like here, most people are in that kind of grey area.

And I think that the, the, the good thing about that is obviously being able to find common cause with people that aren't on your team as such.

And then that's that shared humanity, which obviously can help hopefully move, move society along.

I think we're, I think you're really on to something.

I feel very strongly about that, that common human ground.

Yeah.

Look.

Fingers crossed.

But while we're on a positive note, what would you say one thing that the introduction of the Internet and and technology has enabled in the world of journalism and writing that's made you more hopeful about the future of it?

Being able to have this conversation I.

Think is a perfect example I mean you're concerned about what the Internet is doing to society, the world, and we're talking about that.

We are half a world away talking about it.

I think that is what gives me hope.

Awesome.

On that point then we.

Need those people to believe in and and deliver that hope moving forward from from within the industry.

What would you say in your opinion is the most important skill for a young writer, whatever form of writing that they're, you know, looking to pursue?

The most important skill for them to have today that was not needed, say, 20 years ago.

Boy I I hadn't.

Thought about that one because I mean, you know, the obvious skill is just being able to have a vocabulary and be able to put into words succinctly and quickly whatever it is that you're trying to communicate.

I think here's here's one thought just off the top of my head, and that is it's almost the antithesis of the Blizzard of information that we get.

It would seem to me that the ultimate is to be able to say something quickly and succinctly and speak in sound bites, get the point across without belabouring it.

And now I'm going to stop.

No, that's that's an interesting.

Point there around especially since we've been talking about people reading that headline or just the top level of it.

So I wonder if that's the skill to develop is figuring out a way to deliver a real truthful headline or or sound bite that is actually going to deliver that truth rather than just that click and that intrigue to then deliver.

I don't know something else with a different different agenda A lot to think about.

I know a lot to.

Think about.

Just to finish up then, what advice would you give to anybody either you know currently within the industry or thinking of getting into it sometime in the near future or or down the line, what how would you advise them to not only navigate the current landscape and world of journalism and writing, but also help future proof themselves as well?

Be curious.

I think that's.

Fundamental I I don't think that that will ever go away.

And not only be be curious, but be assertive about your curiosity.

Don't be afraid to ask questions and and why is a wonderful question.

5 year olds, you know, get it, You know, it's time for bed.

Why?

Because I said so why and so on.

So I think curiosity will never go out of fashion and and asking The Who, what, where, when, why and how questions.

Yeah, I think stay curious.

Is a great piece of advice not just for anybody in that world, but obviously anybody in the world itself.

That's how people adopt that as it's kind of a mindset and we can maybe get through this quagmire of mess using the Internet to to help find those pieces of truth.

I'm hopeful for no apparent.

Reason.

That's good.

Me too.

Me too.

Thanks so much for that, John.

What have you got coming up on the horizon?

Where can people follow what you're up to?

Probably the best thing is my website.

Which is myname.com, johndidakis.com, JOHND as in dog Ed as in dog Akis as in samjohndidakis.com.

And I think that there are actually some Didakis is living in Australia.

Oh, really?

I have to look that up.

Yeah, that.

Migrated from Lofka.

In in Greece on the Peloponnese, I was just there where my grandpa and great grandpa were born.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, we do have a decent.

Greek population here, so it wouldn't wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah, right.

Pasiotis is another.

Greek family that moved to Australia.

So yeah, my website is probably the best place to do.

I'm doing more public speaking now on helping people use writing as a way to heal from grief.

I'm working on my 7th novel.

I have a short story that's that's with an editor and I've written a memoir that's with a publisher and they're deciding whether to publish it.

So I've got, you know, plus I'm teaching classes online and because it's online on the Internet, you could even take one of my classes even though you're in Australia.

And where can people find find?

Those it's just at your website.

Go to my website, go to upcoming events.

And you'll find it awesome, John, thank.

You so much.

Thank you, Gareth, it was wonderful talking.

To you.

Thank you for more info on what we've discussed today.

Check out the show notes if you enjoyed this one.

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I'm Gareth King, see you next time.