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 now—debunked 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 long—time 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 first—hand. 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 third—hand 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 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 meme—making, 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 ai—generated 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 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 �*90s as well. If you just look at the number, particularly american journalists, because there's been this long—running tit—for—tat 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 second—largest 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 1990s — 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 re—education 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 no—one 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 quarter—century, 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 1990s where the bestjournalism was being done by really talented chinese investigative reporters — some of them working for state— and party—controlled 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 1990s in a way that is really almost 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 state—owned 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 bollocking as a foreign correspondent are now forced to be stricter and more severe and the bollocking is longer. There's also tremendous pressure to say, you know, media like the economist or the bbc or the new york times, who do they — who are they to decide what is right and wrong? we're actually going to democratise our coverage and so, they're very proud of having influences from places like the uk or other western countries coming on trips — sometimes paid by the chinese — to go to places exactly like xinjiang, to stand next to the one mosque that is open under intense surveillance and say, look, there's a mosque, you know? the western media is lying to say there's no freedom for muslims in this place, you know. There's a mosque. Now, if you know any detail at all, you know how strictly controlled, how minutely surveilled that mosque is, but this push to say, you know, we're going to try and reach out to the sincere people who mean well, who are not trying to attack china and hold china down and so, that's being used as a weapon against those western media who are still in the country. And you were obviously living there through the pandemic. There was the controversial zero covid policy that saw millions of people in china quarantined. What impact did that have on yourjournalism? well, it was used fairly cynically during the pandemic. You know, we would still try and go out and do reporting. I would sometimes go to villages, you know, early on during the pandemic and as soon as the local police or the propaganda bureau turned up, then their new weapon to use against you is to say, well, you can either leave immediately and go back to beijing and stop reporting or we mightjust have to quarantine you in this village for the next two weeks because potentially, you're a danger and you've been infected. I remember one time, they set up a bogus roadblock — a police roadblock — just to stop a colleague and i going to the border with north korea and said it was a covid pandemic control measure, although traffic was pouring past us, no other car was being stopped, so they were very cynically using that additional control mechanism to try and limit annoying foreign reporting. And when you look back and think about your time there and the reporting you were able to do, which was obviously very powerful, how do you reflect on it? do you feel that you told the stories as well as you could but you would have wanted to do more? or how do you think about it? of course, you'd want to do more. I mean, the task that i tried to set myself, cos i had the tremendous privilege of being in china, on the ground, was to try and explain how chinese people see the world through their eyes, rather than just kind of looking from the outside. You know, china is not a completely closed country. It's not north korea. It's actually, you know, you can talk to chinese people about pretty sensitive subjects if you don't directly ask them what they think about the communist party orxijinping. They're incredibly open in some ways to talking to foreigners like me, despite all of the torrent of propaganda, which, you know, has been effective. People have — people will say, oh, if you're from the bbc, you're going to say bad things about china. I'm glad you're not from the bbc. These are people who've never seen a single minute of bbc coverage but state media has told them that the bbc kind of is mean to china and wants to sort of damage china. But generally, you can ride a crowded sleeper train, talk to other passengers until late in the night. You can go to talk to parents about whether they feel their children are going to have a better life than them, as long as it's not explicitly political. One of the greatjoys, the delights, the things i'll miss most about china is that chance to get out and talk to real people, and it's an incredible credit to them that, despite all of the propaganda and even the risks that they're sometimes running to talk to a foreign journalist, they're still willing to say what they feel. Absolutely. While we have you, though, you may have seen that australia is planning to ban children from using social media and yesterday, eu rules are thought to have prompted meta — which is the owner of facebook and instagram — to introduce age restrictions as well. The app you were mentioning, the chinese equivalent of tiktok, already does restrict use. Are there — is china leading the way on this? yeah, china is very strict and it's partly political amd it's partly — the communist party is also, in some ways, with a small c, a very conservative party. It's very paternalist. The top leader, you know, he worries about things like children being unfit or overweight or not wanting to join the army or not wanting to work hard and so, he worries that they're spending too much time on their screens, on their phones. You know, he's kind of a grouchy old granddad in some ways, despite being communist party top leader. My thanks to david rennie from the economist. Finally on the media show this week, i was joined by parmy olson from bloomberg. She's just written a book about the ai arms race and the battle between openai and google�*s deepmind and at the heart of it, the rivalry between two men. There are so many different players in this, in al, but i really wanted to focus on these two men. And when chatgpt came out almost two years ago now, i remember thinking at the time, like, wow, we have — i don't think people really understand the story or know about the story behind all this. And when you say two men, it's — well, name them. Yeah. Demis hassabis. Yes, demis hassabis, who is the founder of deepmind, which is the ai lab here in london which was bought by google in 2015 and sam altman, who's the founder of openai. The reason i focused on those two men is because they were the first to try and build companies or organisations that would create superintelligent ai, human—levelai, and they both had these humanitarian ambitions that once they built this ai, it could solve all sorts of problems. Just unpick that. So, this is about developing artificial general intelligence. Right. What is that? just spell it out. It's a theory. A lot of people don't believe that it's even possible, but these guys did. It's essentially a machine that can do the cognitive labour of our human brain as well as our human brain. So, robots become humans, essentially. Not become but be able to do the same tasks that we can. As we've seen with chatgpt, you know, a few years ago, who would've thought that a computer program could write a poem or synthesise a bunch of details into an essay? and for them — for sam, at least — this is one step towards even more smart intelligence that could solve bigger problems. There's these kind of vague ambitions that both had around curing cancer, solving the climate crisis, elevating everyone�*s wealth. And what i thought was really interesting, and the reason i wrote the book, is that what ended up happening is that those ambitions completely flipped in service of the business models of these larger tech companies. And before we get to that, how did their personal rivalry affect the development of ai? well, i think it was important. I mean, all of this really started because of demis, the guy in london. So, in 2010, he started this company, deepmind, to build agi, put his neck on the line as a scientist because. . . That's artificial general intelligence. That's right. . . And provoking scientific ridicule — it was a fringe theory at the time. And then five years later, just as he was really kind of gaining steam, he had sold his company to google because he was getting offers from lots of different big tech companies and he couldn't really maintain independence. Sam altman, in san francisco, also started an organisation that was going to build this agi — artificial general intelligence — for the betterment of humanity. So, here you have two organisations kind of racing to build this powerful ai for the good of humanity. And what i thought was really interesting is that both knew early on, both these men knew that they needed to protect their technology from corporate interests because they wanted this technology to benefit people. And so, sam tried to build his as a non—profit organisation. And what i found through researching my book is that demis, after selling to google, spent years trying to break away, trying to become an independent non—profit organisation, and both failed in those efforts. In the end, microsoft took greater control of openai, google took complete control of deepmind. And so then you, in your book, talk about an ai arms race. When did it become that? and is that — did they lose sight of the original intentions, do you think? i think there's always been a little bit of — a fair amount of competition between tech companies on al, particularly since 2012. But november 2022, when chatgpt came out, i mean, that was really the starting gun for a race between companies. They were all trying to replicate chatgpt because everybody could see how potentially transformational this technology was going to be. And absolutely, what ended up happening is companies releasing software or ai models that make mistakes, that are encoded with bias, because the data that they're training the models on is biased, and that is extracting a huge amount of energy through these data centres, and. . . And do you believe that winning this race has meant compromising the original principles that they laid out? absolutely, and that's already happened. If you — i mean, just look at deepmind. . . How? just look at deepmind's website, for example, that used to be all about the different ways that al was going to do these — address these humanitarian causes, like, you know, making scientific discoveries, treating disease. Now, all of that is gone from the website and it's all about google�*s gemini. It's very — that's the ai model that google has. It's very product—focused. Openai is now — reporting has shown that they are planning to get rid of their non—profit board next year or sometime soon in order to make it easier to attract investment so that they can continue to grow. So, it's really about, you know, the endsjustifying the means. They had to get to a61 and, in the end, they kind of forgot about their principles along the way. And how do you think they justify these compromises on those previous values? i think you investigate an idea popular in silicon valley called effective altruism. Yeah, that's part of it. I think both visionaries were really buffeted by all these different ideologies and they each had their own kind of unusual personal motivations for building agi, this powerful ai but in the end, it didn't really matter what was motivating you because they were both kind of sucked into the centre of gravity, which was these huge technology companies. And one thing i really wanted to make clear in the book is that we've never, in human history, had companies or organisations that touch as many people as the likes of google and facebook and microsoft and apple and these are the companies that are going to become even more influential now because of the technology they effectively took over from these two visionaries. And it is worth, probably, me saying that google, deepmind and openai have maintained their commitment to developing ai that benefits the whole of society, they say. Openai recently said in response to reports it was changing its non—profit structure, we remain focused on building ai that benefits everyone and we're working with our board to ensure that we're best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non—profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist. And google deepmind's website maintains that its mission is to build ai responsibly to benefit humanity. They will continue saying that to the end of time, i'm sure. Well, thank you. We will continue reporting it and also interrogating it. That was parmy olson, author of a new book — supremacy: ai, chatgpt and the race that will change the world. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for your company. Goodbye. And if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search bbc the media show wherever you get your bbc podcasts. Hello there. Well, following the recent heavy rain, there's plenty of saturated ground out there, particularly across the south midlands, and a lot of standing water too. This photo taken by our weather watcher in warwickshire on tuesday, when there was a bit of a break in all of the wet weather. A drier—looking day, but there's more rain to come, including here over the next couple of days, and then it turns colder but also drier as we head into the weekend. So this was tuesday, then, on the satellite picture. You can see this break in the weather systems there, a nice little gap. But wednesday's low pressure system approaches from the southwest. And ahead of that for the rest of the night, there will be some heavy showers across parts of southern england. Clearer skies further north, and actually across parts of scotland, temperatures could drop as low as freezing. This is a sign of things to come, of course. But a lot milder further south under quite a lot of cloud and, of course, some misty conditions over the flooded fields. And then on wednesday morning, heavy, persistent rain will push into south—west england, moving further northwards and eastwards up through wales, approaching the south midlands and central—southern england by the time we get into the middle part of the afternoon. It does stay largely dry further north and west, a few showers across northern scotland, the cloud amounts increasing across eastern england as we head through the second half of the day. And then on wednesday night into thursday, our low pressure system continues to push further northwards and eastwards. Notice the brisk easterly winds developing across parts of north—east england, just driving more rain into northeast england. This is where we'll see the heaviest downpours, particularly over the higher ground of the north york moors. The rain stretching further west, out into northern ireland. Some showers to the north and to the south, but plenty of dry weather too. Feeling coolest, of course, across parts of scotland. And then our front starts to take a bit of a dive further south. It will really take its time as we head through thursday evening and into friday, not really clearing until the end of the day on friday. But behind it, we draw in more of a northerly wind, so temperatures are going to drop away to well below the seasonal average. And actually on friday night, as we see high pressure build in from the south—west and the winds lighten, there could be quite a widespread frost. So, these will be the temperatures as we head through the weekend. Feeling cooler but largely dry, i think, for many on saturday. Bye—bye for now. Live from washington. This is bbc news. The death toll continues to rise in lebanon, where at least 500 have been killed and thousands more displaced, following the latest israeli strikes. Joe biden addresses the un, appealing for an end to the fighting. Full—scale war is not in anyone�*s interest. Even a situation as escalated a diplomatic solution is still possible. And, a �*succession�* style battle to decide the heir of the murdoch empire wraps up. But who will be the chosen one? hello. I'm catriona perry. You're very welcome. President biden has led calls at the un general assembly to prevent a slide into full—scale war between israel and hezbollah in lebanon. He says a diplomatic solution is still possible. Authorities in lebanon say more than 560 people — including 50 children — have been killed by israeli strikes since monday — the deadliest bombardment the country has seen in decades. Fierce cross—border clashes are continuing —