JUDY WOODRUFF: The attack on
the U.S. Capitol nearly one
year ago was based on a big lie

about election fraud in 2020
and the hope of supporters for
former President Trump that

they could stop the certification
of electoral vote results.

But starting that day, there's
been a new misinformation
campaign to recast, downplay,

and misrepresent the events that unfolded
at the Capitol.

Amna Nawaz reports.

AMNA NAWAZ: They broke through
barricades, assaulted police,
smashed their way into the

Capitol, and sent lawmakers into hiding.

Yet, even as the attack was
playing out, there were already
alternative narratives being

spun about who was to blame.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX News: There
are some reports that Antifa
sympathizers may have been sprinkled

throughout the crowd.

DREW HERNANDEZ, Investigative
Reporter: Possibly Antifa
insurrectionists possibly could have

infiltrated some of these movements
and maybe instigated some of this.

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): The
Washington Times has just reported
some pretty compelling evidence

from a facial recognition
company showing that some of the
people who breached the Capitol

today were not Trump supporters.
They were masquerading as
Trump supporters and, in fact,

were members of the violent
terrorist group Antifa.

DAVID GRAHAM, Staff Writer,
"The Atlantic": In the first
hours and days afterward, you

could see Trump and his allies
and supporters sort of groping
for what the appropriate narrative

was.

AMNA NAWAZ: David Graham is a staff writer
at "The Atlantic" magazine.

DAVID GRAHAM: So, on the one hand, you had
Trump coming out with his video on the day

of saying: We love you, but now go home.

But you also saw people saying,
oh, this is agitators, it was
Antifa, it was Black Lives

Matter.

AMNA NAWAZ: That despite
contemporaneous texts between
pundits on FOX and the White House

showing they thought Trump supporters were
responsible.

When subsequent arrests confirmed
that publicly, the narrative on
the right shifted to downplay

the violence that day.

Here's former President
Trump on FOX in March.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President
of the United States: Right
from the start, it was zero

threat. Look, they went in.
They shouldn't have done it.
Some of them went in and they're

hugging and kissing the
police and the guards.

REP. ANDREW CLYDE (R-GA): There
was no insurrection. And to call
it an insurrection, in my opinion,

is a bold-faced lie.

AMNA NAWAZ: Republican Congressman Andrew
Clyde at a hearing in May.

REP. ANDREW CLYDE: You know,
if you didn't know the TV
footage was a video from January

the 6th, you would actually think it was a
normal tourist visit.

DAVID GRAHAM: It was strange to
see somebody like Congressman
Andrew Clyde, who -- of Georgia,

who we saw in videos and footage
from January 6 helping to bar
the doors, suddenly saying,

well, these were just tourists, they were
walking through.

AMNA NAWAZ: Another recurrent
theme, shifting focus away from
January 6 and towards protests

for Black Lives Matter the year before.

Republican Congressman
Clay Higgins of Louisiana:

REP. CLAY HIGGINS (R-LA): Nineteen people
died during BLM riots last year. Hundreds

and hundreds were injured; 2,000
police officers were injured
from BLM riots last year.

AMNA NAWAZ: Voices on the right have also
recast those awaiting trial for their part

in the attack as political prisoners.

Here's Republican Congressman
Paul Gosar of Arizona last month:

REP. PAUL GOSAR (R-AZ): These
are dads, brothers, veterans,
teachers, all political prisoners

who continue to be persecuted and
endure the pain of unjust suffering.

AMNA NAWAZ: So too with the
death of Ashli Babbitt, the Air
Force veteran shot by Capitol

Police as she attempted to
breach the speaker's lobby.

Here's Republican Representative Jody Hice
of Georgia in May:

REP. JODY HICE (R-GA): In
fact, it was Trump supporters
who lost their lives that day,

not Trump supporters who were
taking the lives of others.

AMNA NAWAZ: Former President
Trump reinforced that in
a July interview on FOX.

DONALD TRUMP: Who was the person who shot
an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman,

a military woman?

DAVID GRAHAM: The idea that
they were all motivated by these
good intentions, they believed

the election was stolen, which,
of course, was false -- it was
a lie that had been peddled

to them by the president and
many of his allies - - but they
were going in and they wanted

to stand up for what was right,
that they were sort of like
the American revolutionaries

or like the Confederate rebels,
who wanted to really uphold
the best of the Constitution.

AMNA NAWAZ: In an October piece
in "The Atlantic," Graham explored
this idea, how those who committed

criminal acts to stop a democratic
process have been recast
by the far right as heroes,

patriots and martyrs for a
just cause, much like the
Confederate soldiers celebrated by

the mythology of the Lost Cause.

The fact that those people are referred to
by some in these circles as patriots, what

does that do to the narrative?

DAVID GRAHAM: It makes them into the heirs
of what was right. It turns something that

was one of the darker moments
in American history into one
of the brighter ones, into

a moment of unity and rebellion
against what's wrong and standing
up for what's right, which

I think is really dangerous.

If we can turn that something
that's an assault on a
constitutional process into a moment

of triumph and a moment of -- a
sort of lodestar for what's to
come, I think that doesn't bode

well for American democracy.

AMNA NAWAZ: These
efforts could be working.

An NPR/"NewsHour"/Marist poll
conducted last month showed
a sharp partisan divide over

how Americans view what happened
on January 6, the legitimacy
of investigations into it,

and decreasing blame for President Trump,
even as the former president continues to

push the lie at the heart of January 6.

The durability of that lie,
where does that fit into sort
of the larger misinformation

campaign, the very thing
that brought people out on
January 6 in the first place?

DAVID GRAHAM: Well, it's essential
to the legitimacy of Trump
as a political actor today.

If he's somebody who had the
election stolen from him, that
makes him still a sort of heroic

figure and a more legitimate
leader perhaps than Joe Biden,
in the eyes of his supporters.

And that makes it -- that enables a lot of
other information.

AMNA NAWAZ: Information or,
more accurately, misinformation
questioning or undermining

everything from measures to
stop the spread of COVID-19,
to the safety and efficacy of

vaccines, from bogus stories
about vaccines tracking and
controlling Americans, to campaigns

to stop teachers from talking
about race or racism in schools.

DAVID GRAHAM: So, when people
in the Trumpist orbit spread
misinformation about Joe Biden,

or they spread misinformation
about vaccines or about COVID,
all of these spring from his

legitimacy as the real elected
leader, which depends on the lie
of the election being stolen.

AMNA NAWAZ: For more on the misinformation
surrounding January 6 and how it's spread

and evolved, I'm joined by two people who
track and study just that.

Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior
political strategist at the RAND
Corporation. She co-authored the

book "Truth Decay" about the rise
of misinformation. And Claire
Wardle is the U.S. director of

First Draft. That's a nonprofit
that tracks misinformation online.

Welcome to you both, and
thank you for being here.

Claire, I will begin with you.

As we just saw, immediately after
the Capitol attack, there were
already alternative narratives

being spun, despite live pictures, live
reports, people seeing it in real time.

In our latest "NewsHour"/NPR/Marist
poll, it shows a divide
on how Americans saw that

day; 89 percent of Democrats say
January 6 was an insurrection,
was a threat to democracy,

but only 10 percent of
Republicans agree with that.

How does that happen, Claire?

CLAIRE WARDLE, U.S. Director, First Draft:
Because there was a foundation being laid

all the way through 2020, and
then from Election Day onwards.

This Stop the Steal narrative
was emerging, this idea that
the election was not safe,

that the election was stolen.
There was this drip, drip, drip
throughout November and December.

And so, when we had the events
of January, very quickly, very
smart people began shaping

these narratives that already
had a foundation that made sense
to people who wanted to believe

a certain world view.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jennifer, talk to
me about the role of news and
journalism in all this, because

you have studied this about
the declining trust in news,
Americans' skepticism around

news.

How much do you think that
contributed to people being willing
to say, what you're reporting,

what you're showing me, I don't believe?

JENNIFER KAVANAGH, RAND Corporation:
I think it played a big role.

I mean, people get their
information from specific sources.
And when they see information

coming to them from sources
that they don't trust, they tend
to discard that information.

It's also really hard to change
people's minds once they have
made it up. So, when people

see additional information
coming at them that contradicts
that, they're not ready to

discard what they have been believing for
months or what they have been hearing from

their trusted figures.

So, the fact that people have
such low trust in media plays
a big role in their lack of

- - their lack of ability to
change their mind, and the
difficulty that we face in trying

to spread accurate
information after the fact.

AMNA NAWAZ: Claire, we know
one of the main ways in which
that information was spread

even well before the Capitol attack was on
social media, right?

We saw even leading up to that
day the whole Stop the Steal
narrative, how those groups

not only organized online,
but then mobilized online, got
people to show up in real life

to commit criminal acts
after that organization.

What responsibility lies
with the companies behind
those social media platforms?

CLAIRE WARDLE: When you look
back at the timeline, it was only
September of 2020 when Twitter

started marking as false tweets
from the president, for example,
saying that the votes couldn't

be trusted.

So, I think the platforms were
-- absolutely weren't ready
for this. And then, as we saw

on essentially January 7 and 8,
they panicked and, like dominoes,
they all started changing

their policies and deplatforming.

But the disinformation ecosystem
is really participatory and
engaging. And that's what's

happening on these platforms.
Not that much has changed in
a year. And that's what we

should be more worried about,
not to see it as a one-off, and
what changes have the platforms

made? And I would say, not enough.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Jennifer, you
have used this phrase truth
decay in your work, and nowhere

have we seen that more potently
than when it comes to the
pandemic and disinformation

on social media and other places
around the efficacy of vaccines
and the efficacy of mitigation

measures.

And these are all things that
are backed by science. They're
backed by data. But, as you

lay out, there's declining trust in those
two things. So, can that decay, as you lay

it out, can it be reversed?

JENNIFER KAVANAGH: Well, the
challenge is that disinformation
tends to have an emotional

component. As Claire described,
it's participatory. It becomes
part of the believer's identity.

And so, trying to reverse the
decay, as you described, is
not simple. It's very, very

challenging, because you're
actually having to break into
people's world view and change

how they see the world.
This is a challenge for a
whole range of stakeholders.

Social media companies are
one. Researchers and scientists
are another. How do we make

data, whether it's about vaccines or COVID
or election integrity, how we do make that

data, that narrative compelling to people
who are not inclined to believe it?

One piece of that is thinking
about who provides the messages.
There's a concept of strategic

messengers, trusted people within
communities that are vulnerable
or at risk for believing

conspiracies and disinformation.

I think election integrity is one of those
cases where identifying allies within the

communities that are vulnerable to
that information is a challenge.
And I don't think it's a challenge

that has been addressed yet,
which is why this -- the
conspiracies and disinformation

around the 2020 election
continue to thrive.

AMNA NAWAZ: Claire, you have
also done some work on this about
how people can arm themselves,

right, how they can outsmart
misinformation or disinformation
campaigns, whether it is

around elections or political
candidates or vaccines or the pandemic.

What are some of those tactics?
What should people know?

CLAIRE WARDLE: What the
research shows is, whilst it's
important to have fact-checking,

what we should be doing is actually,
rather than focusing on the
individual rumor or conspiracy,

teaching people the tactics
of those who are trying to
manipulate them, because what the

research shows is, whoever you
are, whatever your political
persuasion or even education

level, nobody wants to believe that
they're being hoaxed or fooled.

So, the more that communities
can work with each other to
teach them, well, if you see

a text message that says, my
brother works for the government
and he's telling me, dot,

dot, dot, an anecdote, as Jennifer
just said, that, in itself,
teaching people, well, just

be a little bit more savvy about
that, because that's a known tactic.

So, the more we can teach people
tactics and techniques, rather
than waiting for the rumor

and then kind of playing
Whac-A-Mole, we're actually
seeing the research show that's a

much more effective way of building
the resilience that means that,
when they see misinformation,

they're more likely to
identify it as that.

AMNA NAWAZ: Claire, I have to
ask, after all the work you
have done -- and, Jennifer, I

will ask the same thing of
you -- with misinformation and
disinformation so prolific, now being

pronounced and perpetuated from
even the highest office in the
land at times, do you have hope

that that can be brought
back under control?

CLAIRE WARDLE: I still have hope.
Otherwise, I wouldn't get up every day.

But I think what we have to
realize is, this is a very
long game. I'd say, this is the

battle of our lives for the next 20 to 30
years around climate, elections, vaccines,

health. And we need to start thinking that
this is a long game. There's no quick fix.

We can't just shift the Facebook algorithm
and make it all go away.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jennifer, what about you?

JENNIFER KAVANAGH: I agree with Claire.

I think it's important to
recognize that this - - that the
challenge that we face now has

evolved over several decades.
And it's going to take just
as long to figure out a way to

manage the situation, so really
thinking about this as a --
from a holistic perspective,

and understanding that, whatever future we
work to, that's hopefully better than what

than what we face today.

It's not going to look the
same as 20 or 30 years ago. The
goal isn't to put the cat back

in the bag. The goal is to
figure out sort of what we want
online spaces to look like,

what we want our society to look like, and
how we want to interact in that way.

I guess that's what gives me
hope, is thinking that we can --
we can work towards that better

future, rather than thinking about how we
make things go back to the way they were.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Jennifer Kavanagh and
Claire Wardle.

Thank you so much to both
of you for joining us.

CLAIRE WARDLE: Thank you.

JENNIFER KAVANAGH: Thanks for having me.