Episode 100: Transcript

Episode 100: Journalist Superheroes

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction, science and everything else. I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction. My latest book, which is out in paperback now is called Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:17] I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a sentient mushroom who writes science fiction and fantasy, and I have a young adult trilogy. The second book, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, is out in April.

Annalee: [00:00:29] And we are all very excited to read it after reading Victories Greater Than Death, which is such an awesome debut for that trilogy. 

Charlie Jane: [00:00:38] Aww

Annalee: [00:00:39] So speaking of things that we're excited about, this is our 100th episode of this podcast.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:42] What?

Annalee: [00:00:42] I know, I can't believe it. It's been almost four years, we posted our first episode in 2018. We started by analyzing the first episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. So basically, this show has lasted as long as Star Trek: Discovery has so far. So here's hoping that we both, both that show and this show, continue on into the frontier. And thank you to all of you, the listeners who've been here with us on this journey, whenever you got into the journey, whenever you joined us is great. For those of you who've been here the whole time, you know that this is a podcast that's totally independently produced, it's independently funded. It's entirely funded by you, the listeners, through Patreon. And we just can't thank you enough for allowing us to do this and come into the studio and record these all the time and just get to share our thoughts and have awesome guests. 

[00:01:44] So it's hard to have an indie podcast in these times, but we're scraping by, we're doing it. 

Charlie Jane: [00:01:49] Yay!

Annalee: [00:01:49] And this week, we're going to talk about something that's been a huge part of both of our careers, but which we rarely talk about on the show, which is journalism. You may not know this, but both of us have worked as journalists for most of our adult lives. And as a result, you know, we may have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what exactly CatCo publishes on Supergirl. And what its business model is. 

[00:02:18] There’s a ton of reporter heroes and villains in comics and science fiction. And that's what we're gonna be talking about in this episode. We'll be talking about how the journalist hero has changed over the past century, and how science fiction tackles debates about the role of media in our lives. Plus, we'll think about what these stories mean, as we watch real life journalism crumbling and flailing in the teens and ‘20s. Also, did you notice, by the way, that I just used teens and ‘20s to describe this decade and the previous decade? I would like more of that. Can we all just start calling this the ‘20s now? I feel like we need to claim that for this decade. So how do you feel? Are you willing to—

Charlie Jane: [00:03:03] They may not roar, but they are the ‘20s. 

Annalee: [00:03:05] Yeah, I feel like they’re… 

Charlie Jane: [00:03:06] They may be the whimpering ‘20s, I don't know. We'll find out. 

Annalee: [00:03:09] Yeah, pandemic ‘20s. 

Charlie Jane: [00:03:12] The terrible ‘20s.

Annalee: [00:03:13] Yeah, and by the way, next week on our audio extra for our patrons, we'll be talking about some of our most memorable experiences as journalists. And by the way, as I mentioned earlier, this podcast is entirely supported by you, the listeners, through our Patreon, and those of you who join the Patreon, you get extras with every episode. There's an audio extra, but we also post essays and conversation prompts on our Patreon. We have a Discord server that we love, where people are having all kinds of amazing conversations and teaching us about stuff that I never even heard about before. It's frickin’ great. So anything you can pay to support us, and support the production of this podcast would be amazing. It's just a couple bucks a month and to you who are already supporting us, thanks a lot. If you want to find our Patreon, it's on patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. Alright, let's start the episode.

[00:04:14] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:04:40] So one of the things that I'd kind of either never knew or had forgotten was that a seminal science fiction writer, one of the most important science fiction writers of the 19th century, H.G. Wells was actually a journalist, although I guess he rarely had characters who were reporters in his fiction. So we know that there's an early connection between journalism and science fiction. When do we actually start seeing heroic journalists showing up in science fiction as major characters?

Annalee: [00:05:09] So obviously, a really big one here is Superman. And we're just going to make this simple by starting in the early to mid 20th century. And Superman is the secret identity of a mild-mannered reporter named Clark Kent. This character debuts in the early ‘40s. We see Clark as being kind of a bumbler. He's not actually a really great journalist, because mostly he just covers himself. He just writes about what Superman is doing. And to be fair, that's mostly what his boss, Perry White, wants him to do.

Superman Clip: [00:05:42] Perry White: We're sitting on top of the story of the century here. I want the name of this flying what-cha-ma-call-it to go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs, franks and beans, death and taxes, politics and corruption!

Clark Kent: I don't think that he would lend himself to any cheap promotion schemes though, Mr. White.

Perry White: Exactly how would you know that, Kent?

Clark Kent: Um, uh, just a first impression?

Perry White: Well, anyway, who’s talking cheap? I’ll make him a partner if I have to, right?

Other journalist: Right, Chief.

Perry White: I want the real story! I want the inside dope on this guy. Has he got a family? Where does he live?

Annalee: [00:06:15] So that's that, I think we have to look at Superman in the context of the muckraker journalists who would have been really well known in the United States when the comic book debuted. These are people like Ida B. Wells, who was a Black journalist active in the late 19th and early 20th century, who reported constantly on lynchings and racist violence when nobody else would. There was Upton Sinclair, who was both a novelist and a journalist whose very famous 1906 book, The Jungle, revealed the horrifying work conditions that people were dealing with in meatpacking plants and actually that book led to a ton of reform. 

[00:06:54] And then there's Nellie Bly, who famously got herself committed to an insane asylum to reveal how abused the inmates were in New York. So interestingly, and this brings us back to H.G. Wells, Nellie Bly was herself inspired by science fiction. So H.G. Wells had published a book in the late 19th century called Around the World in 80 Days, which was this futuristic look and how air travel would allow us to go all the way around the world in such a short period of time. And Nellie Bly was like, oh, yeah, well, guess what I'm going to do, I'm going to actually do that. I'm going to take that trip in the late 1880s. And she published a book called Around the World in 72 Days in 1890, showing that it could be done and done even better. 

[00:07:41] So early on, we see—

Charlie Jane: [00:07:41] 10% faster. 

Annalee: [00:07:43] I know, take 10% off the top there, bud. But so muckrakers like Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells, were journalists who were called this because they were progressive journalists who were kind of fighting for the little guy by uncovering well, muck. They investigated crime, oppression, all kinds of problems that people were dealing with. So I would argue that in a way, Superman is a muckraker as a superhero because as a superhero, he sticks up for the little guy. He uncovers corruption. And then as Clark Kent, he basically writes up all the stuff that he's done. So basically, if you put Superman together with Clark Kent, you have one full muckraker.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:29] Yeah, well, in fact, if you read the early Superman comics, like from the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, he is constantly going after like these kinds of profiteering schemes these wartime profiteers, these people who are like… One of his first stories is there are these weapons manufacturers who are trying to start a war so they can sell more weapons and Superman uncovers their scheme. He's always finding factory workers being oppressed. And Clark Kent does actually do some muckraking in those early Superman comics as well. He actually is finding people being abused and like writing about it for the Daily Planet. It's kind of later that Superman only seems to write about himself as his main topic. But originally, I feel like there is an attempt to actually show him doing that as a journalist and as a hero. 

Annalee: [00:09:18] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:18] So okay, so that's Superman. That's like ‘30s, early ‘40s. When do we see more journalists starting to pop up as major characters in science fiction.

Annalee: [00:09:26] So we see some journalists here and there in the mid 20th century, for example, the interviewer in iRobot. The collection of stories is, it's sort of typical like, it's a journalist who's come to interview this roboticist and she tells the story. So the reporter character is just kind of us, the reader, it's just a person who gets to be there and ask questions. And of course, there's Spider-Man who also covers himself a lot. It's photojournalism. 

Charlie Jane: [00:09:55] It’s true.

Annalee: [00:09:55] Yeah, so, but then things really start to heat up again in the 1970s. And a story that I really want to pinpoint here is the movie Network from 1975. Which, it's not quite science fiction, it's sort of, I would say it's like a dystopia that's like five seconds into the future. It's a really dystopian look at the birth of the kind of cable news commentary that we get all the time today on Fox. It's sensational. It's intended to provoke emotion. And in fact, the movie Network started a huge meme, which you might actually recognize.

Network Clip: [00:10:34] I don't want you to protest, I don't want you to riot, I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and that crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad! You've got to say, I'm a human being, Dod dammit, my life has value! 

[00:10:56] So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now. And go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, “I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore!”

Annalee: [00:11:13] So this is the scene where our previously dry and objective TV anchor loses his mind on live TV, partly because he's been witnessing his newsroom being dismantled by this new young producer played by Faye Dunaway. And right after he has this complete meltdown on TV, which he's thinking is going to be like his swan song, like he's never going to be on TV again after this, the producer is frickin’ thrilled. Like we see Faye Dunaway practically having an orgasm while she's watching him do this, because she finds out that all across the country, everybody is opening their windows and shouting, “I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!” And the ratings just go through the roof. And so she turns him into a celebrity. And he becomes this like crazed commentator on television. And this… so Network is very much about the death of so-called “good” journalism. And we have a character in the story who's like the old good journalist who's been laid off, who's watching this all unfold with this look of disgust on his face. But it's also a warning about what TV news might become. Just people screaming opinions and being nihilistic just to get eyeballs.

Charlie Jane: [00:12:32] And I think it's interesting that we get that kind of quasi-futuristic dystopian view, at the same time that the heroic journalist is becoming a bigger figure in kind of the mainstream imagination. And it's the era Hunter S. Thompson. It's also the era of Woodward and Bernstein. You know, they obviously become like the heroes of an actual film All the President's Men about the Watergate scandal. 

Annalee: [00:12:56] Yeah, Woodward and Bernstein being the journalists who kind of broke the story about the Watergate break ins during the Nixon Administration.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:03] Right. So, is, in the middle of this, like warning about what journalism could become, which does seem very prescient in retrospect, is it weird that we're having that morning at the same time that journalism is having this flowering?

Annalee: [00:13:17] Yeah, it is really interesting that you see something like Network, which is basically saying journalism is dead, while in fact, actual journalism seems to be alive and well. I also think that one of the influences on representations of journalism during this time, especially as we get into the late ‘70s, and ‘80s, really comes out of the alternative media movement in the United States, which was really at its height, kind of in the ‘70s, with free weekly papers being available in almost every American city. The first alternative free weekly, was the Village Voice, which was founded in 1955. And it was a model that quickly became incredibly popular, and alternative media, these free weeklies that often had incredibly amazing reporting in them. They were important because they popularized not just progressive reporting of the muckraking type, but also criticism of media, so it was media criticizing media.

Charlie Jane: [00:14:23] I used to love Nat Hentoff. He was such a hero. 

Annalee: [00:14:26] Yeah, he wrote for so long for the Village Voice. And I in fact, worked at a free weekly here in San Francisco, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and you—

Charlie Jane: [00:14:35] You were my editor. 

Annalee: [00:14:35] I know! That was actually kind of how we met in a way. And the model of those papers was basically the same model as blogs. It was a free paper paid for by advertising. And the way that this starts to come into pop culture starts with a character who you might recognize from the 1980s

Max Headroom: [00:15:00] I think it says sad reflection on our society. that whenever a new disease appears, the media automatically spread it around far faster than people ever can. Take the epidemic that's threatening us all today. I'm talking, of course about ads. Only a few days after the first outbreak of ads in the newspapers, we had to suffer ads in magazines, ads on the radio. And of course, the quickest way to catch ads today is simply to turn on your T-T-T-T-TV TV TV TV. Within seconds, your home will be infected by TV ads. And just look what you've got to suffer.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:41] Oh my god, that of course, was Max Headroom from the 1980s show, which is explicitly set five minutes into the future. And it's about an investigative TV journalist named Edison Carter. So tell us more about this classic cyberpunk hero.

Annalee: [00:15:57] So the thing that's funny about Max Headroom is that it's kind of another version of Superman because Edison Carter, who is our main character, he's an incredible investigative reporter. He's not mild-mannered like Clark Kent, and he has an accident that leads to part of his consciousness being uploaded into cyberspace and turning into Max Headroom. But instead of having secret superpowers like flight, his alter-ego, Max Headroom has the superpower of basically, satirical media criticism. It’s very ‘80s, very Gen X. And the clip that we listened to was actually an ad for Max Headroom that aired on Canadian television. So even ads for the show were making fun of ads, you know, making fun of… It was sort of self-parodying media. 

[00:16:52] So in each episode, we see Edison investigating a story. He has his trusty video recorder, which is shaped like a machine gun in some of the episodes. Meanwhile, Max is satirizing media from inside cyberspace. And oftentimes, Max is actually making fun of Network 23, which is where Edison works. So it's this very self-conscious form of media representation where we're seeing journalism that's being heroised, but we're also allowed to kind of make fun of the corporate entities that boost that journalism. 

[00:17:28] The other thing that we see in Max Headroom, that becomes a staple of cyberpunk are these kind of punk rock media jammers, and we see them throughout Max Headroom. They're people who are able to break into TV signals and broadcast pirate news. And they have pirate TV stations in their vans. And a lot of cyberpunk authors from William Gibson to Neil Stevenson included journalist characters in their writing, who are basically cyborgs. They’re covered in recording equipment and they're merging together sort of alternative journalism and muckraking with really a slick TV or media presence. And you see this also with Spider Jerusalem, who is a reporter character from the really popular comic, Transmetropolitan. And you see it in The X-Files with the lone gunmen. So you get all of these characters in the ‘80s and ‘90s, who are kind of indie media, but they're not journalists who are writing for papers, they're broadcasters. 

[00:18:30] So I would argue that these stories from cyberpunk, and also from things like The X-Files actually inspire real life journalists kind of in the same way that H.G. Wells was inspiring Nellie Bly back in the 1890s. And when we come back, we're going to talk about how modern media was influenced by sci-fi icons like Max Headroom, and how Superman is dealing with the death of print media.

[00:18:58] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:05] Today, we want to talk about Sidenote, the podcast hosted by Greg Brown and Mitchell Moffit of AsapSCIENCE.

Annalee: [00:19:11] Mitch and Greg are the co-creators of AsapSCIENCE, a YouTube channel where they make science make sense.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:18] On their weekly podcast, Sidenote, they explain the up to date science behind all kinds of stuff, such as how brain fog works, why the James Webb Space Telescope is so awesome, and it is really so awesome. And also, whether eating ass is safe.

Annalee: [00:19:34] They always ask the right questions and they're incredibly fun to listen to. They go on hilarious tangents with comedians, celebrities and experts to ensure that you are entertained while also learning a lot. 

Charlie Jane: [00:19:49] Subscribe to Sidenote by AsapSCIENCE wherever you get your podcasts. That way, if anyone asks what's happening in outer space or inside your brain, you can tell them.

[00:20:00] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:20:05] So let's talk about our current era of death in the print news media, the rise of social media, and a bunch of other stuff, but most importantly, what is going on with Superman. 

[00:20:18] So in 2012, he quit the Daily Planet because he thought the Daily Planet was like corrupt, terrible corporate, such and such. And actually, the person who was writing Superman at that time, said that Superman would be more likely to start something like The Drudge Report or Huffington Post. Which, even at that time, was kind of an outdated reference. So Charlie Jane, what the heck is going on with Superman and his relationship to the media in the media?

Charlie Jane: [00:20:46] So Superman has been struggling with his role as a journalist and what kind of journalist he should be since at least the ‘70s, if not earlier. In the ‘70s there was a period where Superman kind of quit the Daily Planet and became a newscaster he became an anchor on a local TV news station. And it was never clear how he could be on the air reporting the news and rush off to like, save a busload full of kids without anybody noticing. 

Annalee: [00:21:11] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:21:11] But they did that. That was like several years that they were doing that and then yeah, more recently, there's been like this flirtation with trying to like move towards like blogging, and both Superman and Supergirl have kind of been bloggers at times. 

Annalee: [00:21:23] So this goes back to CatCo because we really don't know. Is it a blog?

Charlie Jane: [00:21:25] CatCo is kind of a print magazine and kind of a blogging site and kind of a you know, it's just like, it's everything. It's like some kind of weird media-like blob. And it's never clear exactly what CatCo does. But yeah, the most recent Superman show, Superman and Lois is really all about the crisis of print media. It’s super interesting, because the Daily Planet has been bought by like this evil rich person who turns out to be actually an alien. But that's kind of a minor spoiler. And Lois and Clark both have to leave Metropolis and move to Smallville. And then Lois ends up working for the local paper in Smallville. And it's all about like, whether this local paper can survive corporate consolidation, and whether it's still possible to even have local news. 

[00:22:09] And the show actually, to its credit, makes a real effort to deal with these questions and kind of noodle over them in a pretty thoughtful way. I feel like this kind of gets to a lot of like, how can our institutions, in general, survive in this new era of social media and in this new era of decentralized opinions, and whether it's possible to have journalism as we've known it. Of course, usually when we see journalists on these shows in these comics, they're mostly writing opinion anyway, as far as I can tell, you never… there's always—

Annalee: [00:22:44] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:45] Yeah, it’s super weird.

Annalee: [00:22:45] Although, Superman does uncover, like you said, I mean, Superman and covers corruption, and actually does seem to engage with the world. And I feel like Lois Lane does even more so. So maybe that's why she's become a more central character in things like Superman and Lois.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:04] Yeah, man. I mean, I feel like one of the things I like about Superman and Lois is that Lois is really the journalist of the family. And Clark is just sort of like, yeah, I used to do journalism. Now. I'm kind of a dad. 

Annalee: [00:23:14] He's a house husband. 

Charlie Jane: [00:23:14] He's a house husband. I think that that's good.

Annalee: [00:23:18] Yeah, I mean, the other thing that strikes me about the contemporary era is that we also have supervillain journalists showing up, particularly because there's now the opportunity for them to spread misinformation online. But also like, okay, I just want to run this idea by you. I was thinking about how when Stephen Colbert first launched his show, and he was playing like a fake, right wing news commentator. And I was like, is that a supervillain show? Like, it's his alter ego, right? Or is it? I don't even know. It was super confusing.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:58] It was kind of a supervillain. I mean, he was definitely playing like kind of a disruptive figure who is kind of like… yeah, I think supervillain is probably the right word. Yeah. I think that makes sense.

Annalee: [00:24:08] Yeah, so I feel like even in our semi-real news space, there are people who are playing with this idea of like the supervillain journalist figure. 

Charlie Jane: [00:24:21] Yeah, and you do get characters showing up sometimes who are just kind of, they're either so unscrupulous about trying to get the story by any means. Or they have an agenda and they're just going to mislead the public in order to kind of push through something terrible. And I can't think of a specific example, off the top of my head unfortunately, but I feel like that's a character that turns up sometimes, the unscrupulous, misleading, sleazy journalist or the kind of, obviously, the kind of paparazzi journalist is also a figure who turns up sometimes. 

Annalee: [00:24:52] Oh, yeah, definitely. The other thing that we're seeing is a new kind of media critique, which I would again trace back to Max Headroom-style journalism and science fiction journalism, which is what we see in Mr. Robot. And that show is partly about creating memes. And no, Elliot Alderson, our main character, isn't a journalist. But he does make memes. He's basically a shit poster. And at one point really early in the show in the first season, his alter ego, Mr. Robot posts this video that goes viral.

Mr. Robot Clip: [00:25:33] Hello [unclear] We are fsociety. Over the years, we've been watching you. Your financial abuse of the poor, your corruption of governments, your cover-ups of the murder of innocent, ordinary citizens all for the sake of profit. This is why at fsociety have decided you must die. We are malicious. 

Annalee: [00:25:52] This is obviously an effort to explore what's happening with modern journalism and what's happening with media communication. When we watch the full video that goes that goes viral that Mr. Robot has created, we see images of Julian Assange who created WikiLeaks. And that's, itself, a kind of journalistic experiment, you might say. And so I think that Mr. Robot is again playing with those themes that we saw in Max Headroom and also playing with trying to deal with what does it mean now that news is all social media and is all just people shitposting. 

[00:26:38] The other thing I wanted to point out is that the Mr. Robot meme that we just listened to, was also inspired by a real life incident that was inspired by Max Headroom. Back in 1987, some folks whose identities I think are still unknown, managed to jam TV signals at Chicago TV stations and interrupted a sports event, and then later interrupted a Doctor Who broadcast. And they were dressed as Max Headroom and basically just rambled and said a bunch of completely bizarre crap. They did make fun of nerds when they broke into the Doctor Who podcast,

News Clip: [00:27:29] Someone using sophisticated equipment managed to briefly and illegally override broadcast signals on WGN TV and WTTW.

Annalee: [00:27:35] Basically, what we have is science fiction inspiring a real life incident of signal hacking, which then inspired sci-fi again in Mr. Robot where they signal hack and get out their message from the fsociety. So this is a kind of fiction-nonfiction crossover, which is really a hallmark of media in the fake news age. 

[00:28:01] But I also wanted to talk about how, just as we're seeing fake news, kind of on the rise as an issue. We're also, at this moment seeing a resurgence of muckraking, journalism that investigates crimes and corruption and fights for the little guy. I'm thinking of people like Nikole Hannah-Jones, who created The 1619 Project. Who’s a new model of a very old-fashioned celebrity muckraker. And indeed, her idol is Ida B. Wells, who was a celebrity muckraker of the late 19th century. And we also have people like Edward Snowden, who was the leaker who revealed how much government agencies were surveilling people in the United States. And then he later fled to Russia, where he still lives and is writing and talking about these issues. And so those are two new models of muckraking and whistle blowing that I think are deeply both inspired by science fiction, but also inspiring science fiction at the same time.

Charlie Jane: [00:29:03] Yeah, and you know, what's interesting is a major journalistic figure who turns up a lot is like, the journalist who comes on board your ship or comes to your kind of installation and is kind of filming the crew trying to do their business. And I feel like every show has had that in recent years. Battlestar Galactica did that. 

Annalee: [00:29:21] Yes. 

Charlie Jane: [00:29:21] You know, Space Island One, which is the show that I'm weirdly obsessed with, had an episode about that. Obviously, The Expanse has had that and the character in The Expanse who kind of shows up and becomes embedded with the crew of the Rosinante. Monica Stuart, you know, she ends up becoming a bigger character in the series as a whole. And as her arc continues, we kind of get… She's used as a lens to talk about the line between kind of journalism and propaganda, because she gets hired by the government by the President, you know, Chrisjen Avasarala, to kind of make films to help people sympathize with the plight of Earth after some attacks. And they goes about as well as you might expect. And here's a part where Monica wants to talk about the war dead and President Avasarala has to admit that yep, she did actually have permission to do that.

The Expanse Clip: [00:30:14] Darcy Okuda specialist East-Asian trade zone. I heard her talking to surgeon M. Braun. Both competitive swimmers, they raced once in the Arabian Sea. They disagreed about who won.

Stuart, are you recording this?

Yes.

Stop right now. 

You said I had full access? 

You're right. I did.

Annalee: [00:30:39] So my question is, as we think through this stuff, is as we're watching journalism go through yet another crisis, as we struggle with these questions around fake news, and how does social media transform? What counts as truth? What is the imaginative work that these fictional reporters are doing for us? Like, what do they represent? Are they just a reflection of what's going on? Is that a reflection of our hopes? Are they not even really reporter figures? Did the reporters stand in for some other kind of person? What do you think?

Charlie Jane: [00:31:14] I think that, you know, increasingly, because of a lot of the work that was done in the ‘70s, and ‘80s, to sort of become media savvy, and to kind of critique the media and to have people within the media critiquing themselves. I think that there's this really intense awareness that journalists are often kind of sliding into propaganda, and that the line between, quote, unquote, “objective journalism,” and serving someone's agenda is often super wobbly. And one of the things that comes up with characters like Lois Lane is that she's super compromised. She's married to Superman. 

Annalee: [00:31:51] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:51] Any time there’s a story, this happens a lot in Superman and Lois, but also, it's a thing that happens in general. Anytime there's a story involving Superman, she has to leave out crucial facts, and basically mislead her readers in order to protect her husband. And it's kind of, you know, it's kind of compromised. But I think, generally, these days, when you see a story about journalism, either they're kind of an irritant. They're poking into things that we don't want them to poke into. Or, more likely, they're somebody who's super compromised, who is kind of trying to navigate this line between actually reporting the facts objectively versus like, protecting someone who needs to be protected or keeping people who are powerful from destroying them, or just kind of getting co-opted a little bit. I feel like the co-optation of mainstream quote, unquote “media” is a major topic in science fiction, because it's a major topic in real life. In real life, we have this debate over access journalism, and whether it's better to try to cultivate relationships with the people in power, or whether it's better to be on the outside and have the freedom to report things as you see them. And there's no easy answer to that. Both of those approaches have their pluses and minuses. And ideally, you would find a way to kind of navigate in between the two. But oftentimes more mainstream publications do seem to focus on access journalism and that is a thing that I think science fiction is uniquely kind of situated to poke at and point out the problems with.

Annalee: [00:33:24] Yeah, I think that is so true. And to be clear, when we talk about access journalism, I mean, what we really mean is cultivating relationships with people who can give you inside information. And this is where the wobbly line is because people like Woodward and Bernstein, the way that they found out about the Watergate break ins was that they had this insider who they nicknamed Deep Throat, because Deep Throat was a movie that was really popular at that time. And Deep Throat was someone in the government, very high up, who was basically leaking to them. But that is, you know, is that access journalism? Is that something else? It's, I think, in the case of Deep Throat, it's pretty clearly whistle blowing. But at the same time, it's hard to tell the difference between something like that and someone who's just leaking you information to make their particular Senator look good, or it might be insider information that's valuable, or it might be insider information that, as you said, is just propaganda. 

[00:34:30] I think the thing that science fiction is doing now, whether you're looking at The Expanse or Mr. Robot, or any number of other stories, is it's basically taking on the role of media criticism. And I think that, as you said, it's in a good position to do that because so much news media is, its credibility is being questioned. That it's really hard to have… I mean, we really don't have as much of an alternative press anymore. And it's really hard to trust a media organization that sets itself up as critiquing media, because it feels like all media is corrupt. It doesn't feel like you can find a source where it's like, oh, but this one isn't corrupt, because like, well, this guy's on a Substack. So he couldn't possibly be corrupt, right? Obviously, he's totally independent, except for the money that Substack is giving him, for example. 

[00:35:29] So I think science fiction, as we know, it allows you to kind of step outside of those immediate political concerns from real life and ask bigger questions about, for example, what does it mean to be a journalist? What does it mean to be a successful journalist? Is being a successful journalist, just having a lot of followers? Does it mean effecting social change? Does it mean being able to reach people with life saving information about vaccines? These are the kinds of questions that we see science fiction asking and that are really hard to ask in real life media.

[00:36:09] So I think my final thought about this is that one thing that science fiction reminds us is that we do still see good journalists as heroes, and that that kind of heroic figure still works for us. And the other thing is that, as I was looking through all these historical examples of science fiction reporting and real life reporting, I realized that journalism is often associated with futurism, like really good journalism. And I was thinking about Nellie Bly, and the fact that she was like, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to use the most modern systems of transit to get around the world, I'm going to like make that actually happen. Or if you look at someone like Ida B, Wells, she was like, I am looking toward a future where this is going to be illegal. We are not going to let people be lynched anymore. And it's this kind of science fictional aspect to journalism that really lends itself well to these stories about the future and stories that allow us to question who gives us information and who we trust? 

[00:37:19] All right, well, I think we're gonna leave it there. And thank you so much for listening to this episode of Our Opinions Are Correct. As you know, you can always find us on Patreon at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. You can find us on Twitter at @OOACpod. Thank you so much to our amazing, incredible, producer Veronica Simonetti, who has been with us through almost all 100 episodes.

Charlie Jane: [00:37:47] Pretty much, yeah. Actually all 100. I think. 

Annalee: [00:37:50] No, the first few episodes I think we did at my dining room table.

Charlie Jane: [00:37:53] No, Veronica, edited them.

Annalee: [00:37:56] Oh, edited them!

Charlie Jane: [00:37:56] [crosstalk]

Annalee: [00:37:56] Veronica is pointing out that she edited them.

Charlie Jane: [00:37:59] I came in here late at night and we edited together. 

Annalee: [00:38:02] Yeah, it's true. There was a lot of foolishness at the beginning. We were like, “Let's record this,” and then. 

Charlie Jane: [00:38:07] It took us three times as long. 

Annalee: [00:38:10] Yeah. So thanks to Veronica for sticking with us through all of our learning curve. 

Charlie Jane: [00:38:14] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:38:14] And thanks to Women's Audio Mission, which has been our home base when we could get in here to record when we weren't being pandemiced out into our living rooms. 

[00:38:28] And thanks to Chris Palmer, who's been doing the music for us all along, too. And especially thanks to you, the listener. I just like pointing at you, the listener. You can't see it, but I'm pointing at you. Thank you so much for sticking with us, too, for listening and for supporting us on Patreon if you can, and if you can't, we're just happy to have you hanging around and thinking thoughts with us. 

Charlie Jane: [00:38:49] And thanks to you, Annalee.

Annalee: [00:38:50] Thanks to you, Charlie Jane. Aw.

Charlie Jane: [00:38:54] Aw.

Annalee: [00:38:53] All right. We'll see you on Discord if you're a patron and if not, we will be in your ear in a couple of weeks.

Both: [00:39:02] Bye!

[00:39:02] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.