Backup vocals and funky beat plays that's one of many remixes that donald trump's false claim that haitian immigrants are eating household pets has spawned that one by the musician the kiffness. False it may well be but the claim has dominated news cycles, and onejournalist set out to find the source of the nowdebunked rumour. Jack brewster is enterprise editor at newsguard and he's been telling us about how he did it. Yeah, so finding the source of this claim is almost as interesting as the claim itself. We went to the screenshot that everyone was sharing online, purporting to come from the person who originally shared the claim, and it was posted first in this private facebook group. And when it was shared on x which is where it went viral somebody had redacted the name at the top, so you couldn't tell who was the original poster of this claim. But my colleague and i noticed that a couple of the letters were exposed at the top and so, we zoomed in and after about a few minutes of searching, we guessed that the name might be erica, just by the way that the tops of the letters were exposed and then, we went sleuthing. We went searching across facebook groups for pet lovers and other kinds of people in springfield, ohio to try and see if there was any match for this profile. And eventually, ifound her in this springfield pet group and was able to contact her. And when you contacted her, what did she tell you about why she did it? who was she? she was, you know, a rather longtime resident of springfield, ohio who said she wasjust concerned about what she had heard from her neighbour. She said that she wanted to alert people in the town about what she thought might be happening to pets and warn people and so she posted, again, in this private facebook group. She was said she was shocked that it ended up on the presidential debate stage about a week later. But crosstalk. But did she have any remorse? was she worried that it was false? did she know it was false? what was she saying about all that? no, she pushed back on that. You know, when we told her that city managers, city officials had told her that the claim was false, she pushed back on it and said that she didn't believe those claims and she said again that she heard this from her neighbour. And so, she said she trusted her neighbour as a source and said that haitians had, indeed, caused some problems in the town and she thought there was validity to what her neighbour was saying. And then, she connected us to her neighbour, who again said that she did not see this firsthand. Right? so, again, this is like a game of telephone. The person that we were able to speak to, even one down the line, said she heard it thirdhand so, this was a rumour that spread from, you know, one person to the next person to the next person, eventually ending up on the presidential debate stage. And what impact do you think it's had, this rumour, on springfield, ohio? oh, it's had a massive effect. I mean, there's been bomb threats. You know, there's people who are descending on the town to report on it. So there's been. . . There's been a lot of disruptions there. The town has become, you know, this focal point of this this viral false narrative and has distracted from some of the real issues going on, you know, with immigration in the united states. And, you know, that's part of why this claim went viral. There's been so much talk about immigration in this election and this is kind of a distraction, right? there's not there's no epidemic of immigrants eating eating people's pets. There's been, in fact, no verified report about this happening. And yet, it's dominated our political discourse in the united states. And it has taken on a life of its own, as i was saying, via memes shared by all sides of the political spectrum and i want to talk more about that and their impact with a] bauer, who's assistant professor at the department ofjournalism at the university of alabama. Hello. How did it go, then, from debunked rumour to meme? just talk me through that. Yeah, so one of the benefits of the kind of proliferation of ai and other sorts of technologies means that nowadays, it's kind of democratised the access to mememaking, right? before, you used to have to be able to use photoshop or something like that in order to put together images that didn't really exist. Nowadays, you can type it into a, you know, chatgpt or ai search cue, grok on twitter, and get images right there. And so, i think that once someone like donald trump says something before, you know, tens of millions of people on a debate stage, then you're off to the races. And for those who haven't seen them who might be listening or watching, how do you describe the memes from trump or his supporters? how would you characterise them? yeah, so trump himself has been sharing images of himself with aigenerated cats and ducks. Those are some of the claims around these racist claims about immigrants eating animals. It typically focuses on ducks and cats, and so images of trump with them. There was one image of a cat holding a sign that said, save me from kamala, or, i hate kamala, or something along those lines. So, there's been a whole lot of. . . There was another one, i think, of a cat holding a gun to defend itself from immigrants, so kind of cartoonish images. And are they being used memes and videos on the other side to debunk the claims? that's usually what happens. Yeah, so i think that it's the way that it's being used on the other side is kind of to mock trump in some ways and make fun of republicans for this kind of ludicrous claim that migrants would be eating pets. But i think that there's a real problem with that as a response in that, yes, it's making fun of trump and vance, etc, but it's also amplifying this issue of immigration which ends up, in the long run, benefiting trump and vance. The reason why they're emphasising this is because they want to prime voters to make immigration the top issue as they're going into the election month and so, i think even the attempts to counteract it with funny memes are kind of not doing the work they think they're doing. And do you think these memes can sway political opinion in that regard? um, yes. I mean, i think that these memes are not so, memes don't function like debate, right? it's not like anybody's going to see one of these images of a cat and then be convinced about something about immigrants that they don't already believe, right? the goal here is to basically prime voters to put immigration on the top of their list of issues they're going to be voting based upon this year. And donald trump makes immigration his kind of primary issue and so, he wants the primed voters to think about that issue. issue and so, he wants to prime voters to think about that issue. And jd vance, you know how have people responded to the fact thatjd vance looked like, this week, he was kind of almost admitting that the story was made up in order to get attention? yeah, i mean, ithink that that was pretty shocking. For those of you that don't know, here in the united states on sunday mornings, we have political television programming that a lot of people tune into ande vance went on, i believe it was meet the press, which is an nbc show, and basically admitted that it was a fake story and said that he would continue to make up fake stories, as long as it helped him politically. I think that this was a pretty big gaffe, actually, and actually made the story more about the lies that trump and vance are telling in order to get elected, as opposed to actually about anything that immigrants are doing or any issue relating to immigrants. And so, i think they kind of overstepped a little. They thought that they were going to be clever, amplify this issue of immigration and instead, what they did is kind of made the issue about them. That was jack brewster of newsguard and journalism professor aj bauer. Now to china and life as a foreign correspondent. David rennie has been the economist's man in beijing for the past six years but his posting has come to an end. And when he came in to the media show, i asked him why he says that life as a foreign correspondent in china has become increasingly lonely. The numbers are pretty shocking. You know, i came in 2018. It was actually my second posting i was there in the *905 as well. If you just look at the number, particularly american journalists, because there's been this longrunning titfortat kind of visa war between the american government which really started under donald trump's administration and the chinese authorities, and the number of, you know if you look at the three biggest papers, the new york times, the wall streetjournal, the washington post, when i arrived this time in 2018, they had 27 foreign correspondents between them in china, as you would expect china is the world's secondlargest economy. It's an absolutely gigantic, important story. Of course, big western news organisations need to be there on the ground. As i leave, those same newspapers don't have 27 correspondents. They have five. And at moments, it was lower than that. The uk media, partly for economic reasons, partly for, you know, people having trouble getting visas to go in the bbc has had an unbelievably torrid ride the last few years in china. The press corps in beijing, as i left a couple of weeks ago, was basically around the same size as it was when i was there in the 19905 and remember, the chinese economy was something like 15 times smaller back then so it's dangerous, i think, and just totally bizarre how fewjournalists are covering this absolutely enormous country. And let's just drill in first to what it's like to work as a journalist in china. You've been covering it, as you say, since the *90s. Were you prevent what were you prevented from doing as a journalist? how difficult was it to operate? i think there's two real pressures that have become worse. One is, as you say, simply, if you go to xinjiang, from the moment you board the plane in beijing, there's a secret policeman sitting next to you on the plane. When you land in the capital of xinjiang, there are armed police who come tromping down the aisle of the plane, take you off, photograph you. . . We should just make clear for people listening, xinjiang is the far northwest province where the uyghurs live and are being brutalised as we speak, presumably. Yeah, so it's run with an absolute iron fist because they're very concerned about islamic separatism and the uyghurs in particular. And so, tibet, the other giant separatist region not separatist, the other giant ethnic minority region in the west is completely closed to journalists. We can't even go there. You need a special permit to go there. In my ten years in china in all, i've asked for permits, i've never been allowed to go to tibet. So, that's one pressure is physically stopping you doing things. So, you would have people sitting next to you on a plane? then you're followed by, you know, a dozen people. So, every interview you try and conduct, people are listening in, people are filming it, people are photographing it. So, the effect of that is if you go somewhere like xinjiang, where we know that uyghurs and other minorities will end up in real trouble, if not in a kind of reeducation camp, for being in the western media, essentially, i'm one of the journalists that would sort of subscribe to the view that you shouldn't interview any uyghur in xinjiang. It's just not responsible. Or any tibetan in tibet. That's one issue. The other big thing that we have to worry about is the safety of the people we speak to, even in less sensitive, you know, villages, farms, businesses. If you're doing a story about youth unemployment or pollution or, you know, droughts, climate change things that are just the normal business of being a foreign correspondent the pressure and the threats and the dangers for people you interview and their sensitivity, that has gone up and up and up. And it's not an accident it's a deliberate policy. You know, when i was in a village recently, you know, within minutes, the local party secretary comes kind of panting up the hill, says that the villagers have all reported me immediately because they'd seen a foreigner in the village, and he was very proud of this. He said, you know, we are trained to look forforeign spies. We're trained to look, to think about national security, so as soon as they see a foreigner, then they'll report to the authorities, and noone is going to speak to you. And he was very proud of this. And that, in my kind of, you know, ten years in total, over a quartercentury, that has got worse. And that was crosstalk. And was it always, i mean, was it like that everywhere or were you sometimes freer to go about your business? no, it's got a lot worse. And you know, there was a time back in the 19905 where the bestjournalism was being done by really talented chinese investigative reporters some of them working for state and partycontrolled newspapers but they had more freedom to report. Not to say the communist party was a bad party but to say, you know, there's a factory pumping pollution into a river and giving people cancer. That kind of really important public service journalism was possible in the 19905 in a way that is really almo5t completely impossible now. And presumably, you are still asking questions difficult questions of chinese officials. How were they responding to you? were they surprised that you were talking to them in a way that, presumably, people, journalists working for the stateowned media just don't? it's partlyjust a huge culture clash because the chinese media have been so controlled and, you know, even to get their annual press card renewed now, they have to pass a political kind of obedience test and show how well they've studied xi jinping, the thought of the chinese leader. You know, to give you an example, i very rarely went to press conferences with chinese state journalists but i was on a trip to a poverty alleviation project, where the only way of getting there was on an official trip. The first question from the main chinese state news agency to these party secretaries in a village square was, this appears to be a tremendous success. Could you tell us some stories? goodness. So, you see that, you know, when a western journalist says, well, actually, did they choose to live here? are they happy about being relocated? it's a culture shock to chinese officials. They don't understand why we're so aggressive. And is that how you're seen as aggressive? i mean, does he presumably, the president, he wants china's story to get out there, does he? does that mean that they are combative with you when you speak to people because they're aggressively kind of pushing the chinese message? yeah, so an order has been given by the very top leader, supreme leader xijinping. He said, you know, i want people to. . . Speaks mandarin. . To tell china's story well, and so, that translates in the real world to the kind of people who call you in for a rollicking as a foreign correspondent are now forced to be stricter and more severe and the rollicking is longer. There's also tremendous pressure to say, you know, media like