discussion

Instructions:  Please tell me 2 things you learned from reading each of the  4  news articles/websites below about Hollywood's past and more recent portrayals of Native Americans and about how "fake news" is nothing new in some late-19th century publications and in some media today (Facebook):

1) https://time.com/3916680/native-american-hollywood-film/

2) Washington Post

Hollywood typically depicts Native American stories as sad and one-note. The 'Rutherford Falls' creators had other ideas.

By  Valentina Valentini

April 22, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. CDT

Native Americans' stories in Hollywood are, more often than not, depicted as sad and monolithic. And while the stories of historical trauma inflicted upon our nation's first inhabitants serve a purpose, it seems a sea change may be afoot.

"Rutherford Falls," a half-hour series for NBC's Peacock streaming service, is one of a few Native narratives coming down the television pipeline (along with FX's "Reservation Dogs," NBC's "Sovereign" and Marvel Studios' rumored "Echo") that tells a different story about America's Indigenous peoples. The comedy follows two best friends — Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) — who both have a loyalty and love for their heritage, but whose histories come head-to-head when a statue of Nathan's ancestor, their town's founder, needs to be removed.

The minds behind "Rutherford Falls" — co-creator Mike Schur ("The Office," "Parks and Recreation"), showrunner and co-creator Sierra Teller Ornelas ("Brooklyn Nine-Nine," "Superstore") and lead and co-creator Helms — wanted to take Native Americans out of the box in which they're so often put.

"We very intentionally wanted to tell a story that had Native joy," says Ornelas. "Diversity of Native perspectives was the big thing [in our writer's room]."

Helms and Schur, who first worked together on "The Office," decided to take their decades-long creative back-and-forth to the next level in 2016. They were interested in exploring the issues that they, as two White men, saw happening around them.

"In particular, all the ways people cling to historical narratives and derive so much identity from them," says Helms. "It's an endlessly fascinating question, right? What is history? Essentially, it's just stories that our culture tells itself. Especially at this time in American culture where identity is becoming inextricably linked to other facets of our personal histories — it just felt so precious and fascinating."

It was in this abstract place that Helms and Schur began to shape the idea of the main character, Nathan Rutherford: He is a good guy with blind spots; a small-town man who takes immense pride in his family's history without any objectivity or context for the legacy the Rutherfords built on the backs of the Minishonka, a tribe who settled in that area long before White Europeans arrived.

"This meant that the tension and the comedy of the story needed to relate to Native American people," says Schur. "And that's not really our story to tell."

Ornelas, who originally linked up with Schur on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and developed a pilot for Helms in 2017, is a seasoned TV writer and producer who was perfectly positioned to take the reins of "Rutherford Falls." For a room of 10 writers, Ornelas staffed five Natives, including herself (she has a Latin-Navajo background) and Schmieding (who is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux tribe). Decisions about the show — from the beadwork to the artwork to wardrobe to choosing Red Lobster as a hangout spot — came directly from the writers' lives. Creating "authenticity" — a word that's problematic in its own right — was effectively baked in.

The staff "had very different views on certain issues and not just Native issues," says Ornelas. "It was so great to have those conversations [both in the room and] on the show. I have a lot of Native friends who have made films that depict trauma in really incredible ways [that are] moving and wonderful. I think that is what people assume they want to see from us, [but] I feel very reticent to present my trauma because there's so much of my life that has been joyous."

Adds Schur: "I wanted us to do a show where there's a scene where three Native people are hanging out and they're not talking about being Native, because that's what actual, legitimate representation is; it's the normal, boring, everyday stuff."

It was the same mundane stuff that Schmieding was wading through in late 2019, just before she was hired as a writer on the show. At 38, she was still trying to transition out of public education and into full-time standup comedy and TV writing. At the end of her rope with the Hollywood hustle, she made a pact with herself that if she didn't get staffed by spring of 2020, she was going to move back home with her parents.

"All of my writing samples featured a Native female lead," says Schmieding, whose parents and grandparents taught her that representation mattered, especially in the small Oregon town where they were one of only a few Native families. "I don't want to say that there was no interest in my samples, but I was worried that there was no market for Native roles. I was betting on my own identity and it wasn't working out until it was. Until Sierra."

Schmieding — who grew up loving to perform, went to the University of Oregon for theater arts and did the rounds on the New York City stand-up and sketch circuit — had no intention of acting on "Rutherford Falls." Without a trace of self-pity, she explains that she just didn't think that what she had going on was "marketable," motioning to her body.

But Schur is known for casting his writers, probably a holdover from his days on "Saturday Night Live" where the line between behind the scenes and on-screen is often nebulous. Writer Paul Lieberstein famously ended up as Toby on "The Office," and Schur himself played the fan-favorite Mose.

Schmieding thought that they'd given her the audition pages for Reagan Wells as a joke, giving it her best shot anyway. But Ornelas had her eye on Schmieding from the beginning, having followed her comedy for years. "She has this winning quality where you just cannot help but root for her," says Ornelas.

"Jana was the funniest," adds Schur. "That's what it came down to. I come from an ethos that has never failed once — whoever wins the audition gets the part."

As the entire team worked to bring this first-of-its-kind story to the small screen, Schmieding was able to focus her efforts not only behind the scenes, but on visibility in front of the camera, too. And while the story is built around the issues that come from a statue that needs to be moved from the center of town, she's quick to remind that — much like the real-world protests over historical monuments — that is simply the inciting incident.

"It becomes much more personal than whether or not we should take down a statue," says Schmieding. "What we're really seeing is how historical narratives manifest between a friendship, which is something that I experience all the time as a Native person. In what ways has my life been in service to or supporting other people's narratives about their life? And because people don't have that deep level of literacy about Native history, we often get trapped being in support of other people's dreams and visions. We don't have that autonomy, that sovereignty, to go to bat for our history and when we do, it doesn't get mainstream attention."

The point of "Rutherford Falls" is to challenge the thinking around history: Is there a right or wrong history? A good or bad one? What parts of it are relevant and to whom, and how do we explore all those gray areas? But no one from the series is looking to give a lecture or wag a finger.

"The best TV and movies and art is prescriptive in the sense that it doesn't just illustrate a problem, it gives you a path to work through or correct that problem," says Schur. "This is a comedy show and we want it to be funny first and foremost, always. [But we also want it to] feel like a prescription for how people can be better in their lives in any way."

Adds Schmieding: "These are complex narratives we're having with each other. People from different walks of life, different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, coexisting in solidarity, but also having real issues with each other about this stuff. That's real."

Rutherford Falls (10 episodes) available for streaming on Peacock.

3) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yellow-journalism-the-fake-news-of-the-19th-century

4) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/26/indisputable-harm-caused-by-facebook/

Today's WorldView

Analysis

The indisputable harm caused by Facebook

By Ishaan Tharoor

Columnist

October 26, 2021 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

You're reading an excerpt from the Today's WorldView newsletter.  Sign up to get the rest , including news from around the globe, interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.

In this 2014 file photo, people pose in front of a screen projected with a Facebook logo in Zenica, Bosnia. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

A decade ago, Facebook could do no wrong. The rising social media company was at the vanguard of America's embrace of tech positivism. Its leading executives were treated by the media not just as industry trendsetters, but as gurus on everything from the future of work to the new face of feminism.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company's hoodie-sporting CEO, was made Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year. He was dubbed, simply, "the Connector" — a recognition then of the vast population of people around the world who had found a voice and each other through Facebook.

Earlier this month, however, Time again placed Zuckerberg on its cover and it reflects the profound shift in the zeitgeist since then. "Delete 'Facebook'?" the cover's caption line says.

Facebook and the other apps it owns, including WhatsApp and Instagram, are now increasingly seen through  the prism of the harm they appear to cause . They have become major platforms for misinformation, polarization and hate speech. At the same time, Zuckerberg and his colleagues rake in billions of dollars each quarter in profits. The company also keeps growing its user base, which now encompasses nearly half of humanity.

In recent days, The Washington Post began publishing  a series of reports based on internal documents  from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The documents were reviewed by a consortium of media outlets and, according to Haugen, disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The so-called "Facebook Papers" include a mix of presentations, research studies, discussion threads and strategy memos. The Post and other media companies obtained partially redacted versions of the papers through Haugen's counsel.

What the documents reveal about Facebook's behavior is stark and damning. They show how some of Zuckerberg's public claims about Facebook's principles and activities clashed with internal company findings. For example, he once told Congress that Facebook removes 94 percent of the hate speech it finds. But the inverse was true — according to internal estimates, the number was probably less than 5 percent.

Ahead of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Facebook's efforts to stem the flow of misinformation proliferating on its networks fell short. Company employees were unhappy as far-right groups spread the call to join the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the attack.

"This is not a new problem," one unnamed employee fumed on Workplace, an internal message system, on Jan. 6. "We have been watching this behavior from politicians like Trump, and the — at best — wishy washy actions of company leadership, for years now. We have been reading the [farewell] posts from trusted, experienced and loved colleagues who write that they simply cannot conscience working for a company that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects on its platform."

Outside of the United States, Facebook has also failed to rein in misinformation. In one instance, as documented by my colleagues, two employees created a dummy account for a 21-year-old woman who lived in North India. They wanted to examine what a young woman's Facebook experience looked like in one of the company's largest markets.

Soon after the profile was created, the dummy user was encountering posts that included fake news, anti-Muslim hate and jingoistic support for India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"An internal Facebook memo, reviewed by The Washington Post, called the dummy account test an 'integrity nightmare' that underscored the vast difference between the experience of Facebook in India and what U.S. users typically encounter," my colleagues reported, pointing to the real-life episodes of violence provoked by online misinformation in South Asia. "One Facebook worker noted the staggering number of dead bodies."

Yet in part due to lack of attention, but also likely due to pressures from the Modi government, Facebook has fallen short. "Their investment in a country's democracy is conditional," Pratik Sinha, co-founder of a leading fact-checking site in India, told my colleagues. "It is beneficial to care about it in the U.S. Banning Trump works for them there. They can't even ban a small-time guy in India."

The Facebook Papers also make clear how Zuckerberg prioritized maximum engagement and the company's bottom line over ethical concerns about safety and best practices. While he espouses a form of free speech maximalism in public in the United States, he has participated in enabling regimes of censorship elsewhere. My colleagues also pointed to  a 2019 episode in Vietnam , where Zuckerberg personally decided to comply with demands from the autocratic government in Hanoi to censor dissident voices on his platform.

"Ahead of Vietnam's party congress in January, Facebook significantly increased censorship of 'anti-state' posts, giving the government near-total control over the platform, according to local activists and free speech advocates," my colleagues reported.

Zuckerberg and his colleagues have cast the slate of negative coverage as orchestrated by detractors and misrepresentative of the company's work. "My view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company," he said on an earnings call Monday.

"We have no commercial or moral incentive to do anything other than give the maximum number of people as much of a positive experience as possible,"  Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever said . "Like every platform, we are constantly making difficult decisions between free expressions and harmful speech, security and other issues, and we don't make these decisions inside a vacuum."

But the bare reality of what Facebook has unleashed is increasingly available for all to see — and recognized internally by many of its employees.

Haugen, the whistleblower, appeared Monday before a parliamentary hearing in Britain. She confirmed that she had seen a lot of internal research that Facebook "fans hate" because of the way its algorithm works. "Bad actors have an incentive to play the algorithm," she said. "The current system is biased toward bad actors and people who push people to the extremes."

The Facebook Papers "are astonishing for two reasons," wrote the Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance. "First, because their sheer volume is unbelievable. And second, because these documents leave little room for doubt about Facebook's crucial role in advancing the cause of authoritarianism in America and around the world. Authoritarianism predates the rise of Facebook, of course. But Facebook makes it much easier for authoritarians to win."