Yes, new media forms have always had the power to turn people against each other with misinformation and disinformation (Brill begins with Cleopatra).  But The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World–And What We Can Do argues that current politics and technologies take that power “from the slingshot age to the nuclear age.”  Thankfully, he also offers solutions to the problems that modern media present.  

Brill is a lawyer, journalist and media entrepreneur, founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer, and most recently NewsGuard Technologies, a news service that uses actual editors and analysts – not an AI or an algorithm – to rate the reliability and credibility of news and information websites.  A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and author of hard-hitting books on health care, education, homeland security and more, he also teaches journalism at Yale College, where he and his wife, Cynthia, founded the Yale Journalism Initiative.

Pre-talk reception at 6:30pm.