The year 2013 was a pretty good one for Pulitzer and Peabody Awards-winning public radio personality Ira Glass. According to various reports, that year the National Public Radio (NPR), which employed Glass, recommended raising his salary to $278,000 a month, but surprisingly, the show host refused and even requested that his salary be reduced to $140,000. Although still a handsome sum, it was much less than he was originally offered. 

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"I thought that it was unseemly to go on the radio and ask listeners to donate money if I was making so much money from them," Glass said in an interview with Israel Hayom. "I thought it wasn't right. The average family in America makes about $50,000-60,000 a year. So yeah, it just seemed like a lot of money."

Q: It's not very common that we hear of a person turning down a raise.

"It was public information how much I made because the public radio station discloses that on public forums. And it just seemed wrong to be making that much. I felt much better after turning it down."

Glass is the host of the well-known "This American Life" podcast, the fifth most popular one in the United States and the world. In 2001, Time Magazine named Glass the "best radio host in America," and "This American Life" has been called "the father of podcasts." 

It broadcasts on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally and is also available as a free weekly podcast, and has four million listeners a week on average. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it also features essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage.

For his work on "This American Life," Glass was awarded the 2020 inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for the episode "The Out Crowd," which demonstrated "revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump Administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy. It included, among other things, interviews with immigrants who were impacted by the former president's policies and shed light on the activity of drug cartels. 

"Some of the things we were doing had been reported by other people, but we took you there in a way that no other show did," Glass said. "It's as if you were really there. As if you were a border agent. One of the most powerful things in the show is listening to the officials who were charged with carrying out the policy, saying they couldn't sleep at night. And because they felt like in some way they were sending people to their deaths in violation of US and international law. To be able to get that on tape and present it to millions of people, that has a special valence." 

Q: Did it cross your mind when you were preparing the episode that you might end up winning a Pulitzer? 

"Well, no, because nobody had ever won a Pulitzer for a radio show. We were the first ones. In fact, there's an entire other award called the Peabody Award that was created in the 1940s simply because radio broadcasters couldn't win the Pulitzer. Like that's why it exists. So, we've won that one a lot. But no, we didn't think we were gonna win the Pulitzer because nobody ever had."

Q: You also cover much less serious subjects. Your content is truly diverse. 

"I and the people I work with are very normal. Some weeks we're really interested in talking about the new, others we want to have fun. I think that's one of the things that people like about the show."

Glass gave an example of a recent show that focused on rats. 

"I live in New York City so there's a lot of rats, mostly dead ones in the street. So one of our producers found a story about a guy who during the pandemic saved a rat, and then started to collect rats, and then found that he didn't want to bring any women over to his house because they would think he's such a weirdo."

Q: I cannot even imagine what such an episode would look like. 

"So we got two incredible comedians and basically had them play the rats. I can't say this episode made a great contribution to Western culture, however, it's just a really fun show to listen to. The advantage that we have is that we're a narrative show, so we can engage the listener the way evening news can't, and connect you to the people who are there, connect you to what's going on.

"We did a story last week on these people in Florida, who are opening up health clinics because they don't agree with the official government rules about the vaccine, and about ivermectin, which they believe helps you with COVID but science shows it does not. The value of the story is that you hear why they're doing that, and you also hear why it's a growing political movement. And you get it from the inside by meeting the people and hearing them talk. It's different than when a news crew drops by for a 15-second quote."

"The perfect level of notoriety"

Glass, 64, lives with his wife in New York. He was born to Jewish parents Barry and Shirley Glass, a businessman and clinical psychologist respectively. Glass' parents opposed him working on the radio and hoped he would follow in his mother's footsteps and become a doctor. 

"There was a sense of 'Well you're a nice smart Jewish boy, why aren't you a doctor? Why are you doing this thing which makes you no money?' And if I was going to be a journalist, then on television, to be successful. Radio seemed like not enough ambition." 

Years later, Glass was approached by television network Showtime with a proposal to convert "This American Life: into a television program. " I enjoyed making television, and I think we did a nice job, those shows are out there you know on the internet along with everything else that's ever been made. But I think our show is more special as a radio show." 

Q: Television is a less intimate format. 

"That's exactly the word. That's exactly what you give up. What's also interesting is that our audience is so much bigger on the radio than it was on TV." 

Despite the huge success of "This American Life," Glass walks the streets of New York mostly without being recognized, which he prefers. 

"It is an advantage, and when people do recognize me, that means they are a pretty serious fan, and so then they're totally lovely, normal, and gracious. It's the perfect level of notoriety."

Glass wakes up at 06:30 a.m. every day, goes for a run, and then off to work, where he writes, edits, holds meetings, and records his show. He is not active on social media, saying he doesn't "need another medium for self-expression." Hobbies are not his thing either, as he sees them as an "old-fashioned idea," and instead enjoys "seeing friends, going to shows, playing poker now and then, reading, inventing little projects with friends. Like this show I'm doing in Jerusalem with Etgar!"

Glass was referring to a show he is currently working on with well-known Israeli writer Etgar Keret, but more on that later. 

Glass' show often sounds improvised, but in practice, it is fully scripted. 

"I'm not talented at making stuff up live, sitting in front of a microphone," he explained. "It has to sound natural because that's the most effective way to communicate over the radio. You want to sound like a person who's just talking, not like a news reporter reading off a piece of paper. So in practice, I write everything I'm going to say and then try to perform it as if it's just me speaking off the cuff. I do alter words here and there as I go. Often it's not a word-for-word performance of what's on the page. But often it is."

A script also helps Glass minimize anxiety. 

"Anxiety is a big part of my life! I worry about letting people down, about making my deadlines, about work being as good as it can be, about not being as thoughtful with my loved ones as I should be. Anxiety is perhaps an appropriate response to the responsibilities we have as adults. That said, I wish I had less of it."

Q: Speaking of anxiety, do you follow the current events in Israel? As a Jew, does it worry you? I know you will be visiting us soon. 

"I'd worry about it even if I weren't a Jew. We're watching a country tear itself apart."

Fake news

Glass will be traveling to Israel in August for The Israel Festival, a multidisciplinary arts festival held every spring, with its center being in Jerusalem. Glass and Keret combine their skills for an evening of powerful and funny stories with "Half-baked Stories About My Dead Mother," and a solo show of the "Seven Things I've Learned," where he talks about the art of storytelling. 

And indeed, Glass seems to be interested in the stories of regular people.

"Exactly," he confirmed. "I wanted to do stories about everyday people, but I wanted them to be really compelling, to make you wonder what's gonna happen next. That's what gives the story enormous stickiness. We just throw you in the middle of the story, because it pulls people in better." 

When asked what makes a story truly good, Glass said, "The first thing is it just has to be surprising, something you haven't heard before, which actually disqualifies a huge number of stories. A good story can start out funny and get very emotional, start out small, and then gesture at some bigger thing in the world. Some stories just have a really particular music to them, in the same way a great song has a great melody, and you sort of can't explain why this is a great melody, just sort of like go this isn't really good listen to this one."

Q: So novelty is a crucial element.

"Yes, which is why working with Edgar is such a natural fit for our show, because he is an incredible talker, who says incredibly surprising and poetic things, and funny things. He's also an amazing writer and writes in a very compact way, that's perfect for radio.

"The show is about our moms, and for him, it's the hardest thing he's ever written, while for me it's the easiest show I ever put together; because the material he was creating about his mom was like a little bomb that goes off."

Q: At a time when more content is being created than ever before in history, how do you keep up and create meaningful content? 

"I think it's fine if the content is temporary, disposable. The most difficult struggle of making anything now is about making a contribution. And our show has a bunch of different tactics that we use. But sometimes we'll just do stuff that's amusing to us, and it won't be breaking news, and showing you something about how the government works, or how the country is put together, how the world is put together in a profound way." 

Q: Does the podcast boom alarm you in any way? 

"No, it does not worry me. I think people who do good work continue to do so and if people are making stuff that's not so interesting, it's fine, it doesn't hurt anyone."

Q: It leads me to my next question, which is, why do you think that oftentimes podcasts hosted by famous stars are not necessarily the most popular ones? 

"I have no expertise on this question, but I'd assume their fans are looking for something else from them."

The world of content has been changing and is different from the traditional kind, that is radio and television. Podcasts, in particular, have exploded in recent years, with the Podcast Index saying that there are 4,105,166 podcasts registered worldwide. 

According to data, in the US, 64% of the population listens to a podcast at least once in their life, and 42% (over the age of 12) have listened to a podcast in the past month. Most podcasts last between 20 and 60 minutes, and in the US focus primarily on comedy (22%), news (21%), true crime (18%), sports (17%), and health and fitness (17%). 

Q: Is there anything about the world of podcasts that does worry you? 

"I worry more about podcasts that are just spreading untruth. There's a whole world of podcasts that spread incorrect information.

"The biggest challenge to the press is that there's an entire ecosystem of misinformation and unfactual information. When I started in journalism in the 80s, there was still a feeling that if you got out there and documented something well, people would acknowledge the truth of something. 

"Whereas now, even if you document something perfectly and the facts are on your side, someone will make up a set of alternative facts that don't acknowledge it at all. Mainstream fact-based journalism hasn't come up with a tactic to combat that."

A journalistic nightmare 

For Glass, the subject of fake news hits close to home, due to a 2012 episode about Apple.

"We had this storyteller, a very talented guy who does monologues on stage, Mike Daisey. He was doing a show in New York and touring around the country, here in the States, about Apple and their manufacturing practices in China. 

"And he really loves Apple products and became very disturbed when he read about the conditions under which they were manufactured. And so he flew himself to Shenzhen, China, where the stuff is made, and tried to get into the factories where it was made, and talked to people who worked on the assembly lines. 

"And before it went on the air, we fact-checked it. We called people who monitor what goes on in those factories and read all the other reporting that had been done on those factories. And everything he said he saw, people who were familiar with what goes on in the factories said that it all happens in those factories, except for one thing, interestingly, that has to do with child labor. Daisy said he couldn't prove it, but that is what he saw."

Q: And what happened? Was he allowed to speak about it on air? 

"Yes. And after it aired, there was a reporter in China who heard it. And there was one fact in it, that they thought that doesn't sound right. And then they did something that we did not do. And that is they found the interpreter that Mike Daisy used when he was in China. The interpreter basically disputed the entire report." 

Q: That must have been a journalistic nightmare. 

"Right. We had to go on the air, and we basically did an hour-long show where we issued a retraction and had him come on and talk about what had happened. And then also did a whole segment where we said to the audience that he didn't meet those people, but here's what's true about those factories."

Q: How many people work on each "This American Life" episode? 

"We started with just four of us. Now it's like 15 or 20 people. And then in any given show, it'll be like six or seven of us working on that episode, with the others putting together episodes for upcoming weeks."

Q: You've said before that "at some stage," you started to love your interviewees. How does that happen? And also, does it ever happen that you don't like your interviewees? 

"It's not that I started to love my interviewees 'at some stage.' It's always been true for me. If an interview is going great, and they're talking in an honest and vulnerable way about something that happened to them, and we're really understanding each other in the conversation, as interviewer and interviewee, then it's hard not to fall in love a little. It's not a love that results in anything other than an interview.

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"But it's recognizably and undeniably a kind of love. If someone opens their heart and shares their true feelings and experiences, how can you not fall in love a little?"

Q: Over the years, including now, you've been a mentor to many young journalists. What advice would you give to aspiring journalists?

"Make the thing you're most interested in or excited about and do it now. Don't put it off till you get to some better job or some better situation."

Q: In 10 years' time, how would you like "This American Life" to be remembered? Or you, for that matter. 

"I'd like the people I love to remember me as someone who loved them and tried to do right by them. Everyone else, I don't care how I'm remembered. Who cares how strangers think of them after they're dead? I suppose I need the approval of strangers now, to keep the business going, but I definitely won't need that once I don't exist anymore.

"'This American Life' has already had about as much impact as a podcast can have. I'm not sure it needs to have more. It's taught a generation of co-workers to do good stories. It's proven that you don't have to choose between being entertaining and doing journalism that uncovers new truths. Lots of podcasters and journalists have taken up a kind of storytelling journalism, with scenes and characters and funny bits and feelings, after seeing me and my co-workers do it. That all seems like plenty."

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Computer engineers and tech-inclined political scientists have warned for years that cheap, powerful artificial intelligence tools would soon allow anyone to create fake images, video, and audio that were realistic enough to fool voters and perhaps sway an election.

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The synthetic images that emerged were often crude, unconvincing, and costly to produce, especially when other kinds of misinformation were so inexpensive and easy to spread on social media. The threat posed by AI and so-called deepfakes always seemed a year or two away.

No more.

Sophisticated generative AI tools can now create cloned human voices and hyper-realistic images, videos, and audio in seconds, at minimal cost. When strapped to powerful social media algorithms, this fake and digitally created content can spread far and fast and target highly specific audiences, potentially taking campaign dirty tricks to a new low. The implications for the 2024 campaigns and elections are as large as they are troubling: Generative AI can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts, or videos, but it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates, and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen.

"We're not prepared for this," warned A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. "To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it's going to have a major impact."

Some possible scenarios include automated robocall messages, in a candidate's voice, instructing voters to cast ballots on the wrong date; audio recordings of a candidate supposedly confessing to a crime or expressing racist views; video footage showing someone giving a speech or interview they never gave. Fake images designed to look like local news reports, falsely claiming a candidate dropped out of the race.

"What happens if an international entity – a cybercriminal or a nation state – impersonates someone? What is the impact? Do we have any recourse?" Petko Stoyanov, global chief technology officer at Forcepoint said. "We're going to see a lot more misinformation from international sources."

Legislation that would require candidates to label campaign advertisements created with AI has been introduced in the House by Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who has also sponsored legislation that would require anyone creating synthetic images to add a watermark indicating the fact. Clarke said her greatest fear is that generative AI could be used before the 2024 election to create a video or audio that incites violence and turns Americans against each other.

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As reports circulated Thursday of Russian troops on the outskirts of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, a Moscow-based journalist denied that a military invasion was taking place in a shocking interview with i24NEWS that seemed to contradict the facts on the ground.

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"There has not been any proof of troops going into Ukraine," journalist Tatiana Kukhareva said to anchor Jeff Smith.

She said that the "operation cannot be classified as an invasion because there are no troops on the ground," toeing the Russian's government line that only military infrastructure was being targeted in precision strikes.

Smith pressed Kukhareva on why she said it is not an invasion, saying that she "can't be serious."

She fired back by asking Smith if he knew the definition of an invasion, with Smith saying that he wasn't playing games.

Smith continued to press the journalist to explain her stance.

Kukhareva again repeated that no proof has been provided of Russian troops in Ukraine.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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"There's a serious problem with social media sites such as Facebook, which consists of three aspects: transparency, revenue, and control," Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel told Israel Hayom in an interview on Wednesday.

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"The built-in tension is between our recognition of freedom of expression and that the state shouldn't have control over the truth, and between ways this power can be abused. I can tell you we are in earnest discussions with [social media companies]. I've already met with TikTok's management and we are in discussions with Facebook and Twitter, and we are on the way to reaching understandings with them," said Hendel.

Hendel said regulations will be imposed, but that they will be consensual. "These dilemmas exist everywhere in the world. The debate in the United States crosses party lines – the Americans are focusing on the monopoly that's been created. We are learning from them and are trying to develop applicable models."

The communications minister added: "I am definitely not happy with the existing situation. I'm convinced we need to intervene somehow, and ultimately Israel will intervene. I'm in favor of doing this through dialogue.

"If Facebook decides, for example, to block certain citizens, the question is on what basis did they make that decision? They are essentially editing, very similar to editors at a newspaper. We will clear this up," he said.

With that, Hendel supports censorship in certain cases and even states that his ministry is in continuous communication with social media companies about censoring certain content.

"When it comes to 'fake news' from anti-vaxxers, for example, who present unsubstantiated research and false information, it's akin to incitement. This is a matter of life or death.

"On these issues, intervention is absolutely necessary," he says. "Facebook is in continuous contact with us regarding antisemitic content, for instance. When a video is posted of a young Arab man beating a Haredi person in Jerusalem, intervention is certainly called for. The question only pertains to the gray areas."

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Renowned Israeli mentalist Uri Geller is taking credit for shifting the Ever Given cargo ship, which created an international crisis after getting stuck in the Suez Canal last week.

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Geller called on his supporters to help "free" the ship.

In a tweet on Monday, Geller wrote: "We did it! We released the Ship! Well done! This was a mammoth task but with your mind-power and self belief we all together freed the ship!"

Geller added that efforts by himself and his followers also helped efforts by the crews on the ground, and congratulated them, as well.

Geller also shared an article from the British Daily Star tabloid in which he said that every day since the ship had gotten stuck, blocking traffic through the small but crucial shipping route and sending global shipping costs skyrocketing, he and his followers had "concentrated" twice a day – at 11:11 a.m. and 11:11 p.m. – on freeing the ship.

The efforts helped the tugboats, too, Geller told the Daily Star.

In a video he posted to social media, Geller said that the ship could be moved by people's minds, if "we believe in ourselves."

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Senior Chabad Rabbi Yitzhak Yehuda Yaroslavsky has issued a call to ban worshippers who have not been vaccinated against COVID from praying inside synagogues.

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In an open letter published Tuesday, Yaroslavsky wrote, "To protect your lives, only those who have been vaccinated or have proof that they have recovered [from COVID] should be allowed into synagogues."

Yaroslavsky spared no words for people who spread fake news about the virus.

"They are increasing bloodshed in Israel. They will have to answer for it on Judgment Day," he wrote.

"The need to be vaccinated is not a choice, it is an obligation according to the Torah, and must not be out-witted by various explanations that have no grounding in reality," Yaroslavsky exhorted the Chabad faithful.

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Facebook, in its first monthly report on information operations, said both networks violated its policies on foreign interference, although the world's biggest social network did not name any state actors suspected to be behind those efforts.

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The operations disseminated content sympathetic to each side of a diplomatic row that has divided the Middle East since 2017, pitting the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt against Qatar. Those countries accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism, which it denies.

Facebook said one network had been posting criticism of Qatar and positive commentary about the UAE. It linked the activity to New Waves and Flexell, two companies in Egypt, which it had already accused of seeding similar narratives last year.

Accounts connected to that operation spent around $48,500 on ads boosting their content and had more than 6 million followers across Facebook and Instagram, a popular photo-sharing app.

Citing the repeated violations, Facebook said it was banning both firms from its platforms.

Graphika, a social media research company which works with Facebook to analyze influence operations, said the operations appeared to be carried out by commercial marketing firms acting at the behest of geopolitical actors with interests in the Gulf, making them part of a pattern of "online influence for hire."

A smaller network linked to Indian digital marketing firm aRep Global had been using fake accounts to post praise for Qatar and critiques of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Facebook said in its report.

The accounts posed as local journalists and activists and drove traffic to websites masquerading as local news outlets, Facebook said. It spent less than $450 on ads and had around 100,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook previously released information about individual operations as they were discovered, but it is shifting to a more regular reporting mechanism.

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A new report from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab highlights sample posts removed from Facebook that appeared to praise incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and smear his leading opponent, Atiku Abubakar.

Many of the pages and accounts were discovered to be linked to a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm (Israel Hayom has chosen not to reveal its name). On its sparse website of African stock images, the company advertises its deliberate efforts to conduct disinformation campaigns, boasting that it takes "every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes" through "unlimited online accounts operation."

Facebook banned the group from the platform Thursday for its "coordinated and deceptive behavior" and conducted a sweeping takedown of dozens of accounts and hundreds of pages primarily aimed at disrupting elections in African countries, with some scattered activity in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Overall, the misleading accounts had reached some 2.8 million users and the pages had engaged over 5,000 followers, according to Facebook's estimates.

One of the pages that Facebook canceled appeared filled with viral misinformation attacking Abubakar, the former vice president of Nigeria. The page's banner image showed Abubakar as Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, holding up a sign reading, "Make Nigeria Worse Again."

Another page with almost identical visuals, although significantly excluding the Darth Vader mask, purported to support Abubakar, with the slogan "Team Atiku For President." The report identified the page as a covert attempt to infiltrate Abubakar's audience of potential voters and manipulate their views, gradually spamming them with antithetical content and diverting them to the "Make Nigeria Worse Again" page.

The report also featured a page that explicitly lionized and boosted Buhari, with amateur videos eulogizing the accomplishments of his presidency as though he were not locked in a tight battle for re-election.

Yet another series of pages targeted the local Rivers state elections in Nigeria's turbulent south, which was marred by widespread violence. Several of the removed pages attempted to defame a candidate from Abubakar's People's Democratic Party and boost his opponent. One page with artificially amplified audience engagement, called "Rivers Violence Watch," pumped out political propaganda while posing as a neutral monitor of election violence, using the page description to mask its efforts.

Most of the pages claimed to be run by local Nigerian users, but in fact, were managed from Israel.

Fake news flooded Nigerians and played a central role in the recent national election. Rumors, which spread like wildfire in Africa's most populous country, became so outlandish and fevered that last year Buhari was compelled to declare publicly that he had not died and been replaced by a clone. More than a dozen media outlets joined forces before the election for a fact-checking initiative, while government officials acknowledged that fake news could be deadly in a country with multiple ethnic and religious fault lines.

The incumbent Buhari, who ran on promises to clean up government corruption, and his challenger Abubakar, who campaigned more on pocketbook issues, were in a dead heat as the election approached. The vote vaulted Buhari to a resounding victory, but remained clouded in controversy, with each side accusing the other of vote-rigging and Election Day violence halting ballot-counting and sparking dangerous rumors.

Despite the overt political messaging of these inauthentic pages, the Digital Forensics lab could not assign a particular ideological motive to the Israel-based company's campaigns, given the diversity and scope of its general operations. Rather, the company, which poured over $800,000 into deceptive content over the past several years, appeared profit-driven. The report did not probe the origins of its cash flow and it was not clear whether political actors in Nigeria or other countries where the campaigns took off had paid for the company's "strategic consulting."

"The fact [that] the pages were operated by a for-profit company is a troubling sign that highly partisan disinformation is turning into a capital enterprise," the report said.

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