[DECODED] Who gets blamed when the facts don’t trend?

Have you had the chance to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2? You may have seen posts about it all over social media. It’s the sequel to the iconic 2006 film of the same title, which follows Andy, Anne Hathaway’s character, and her complicated relationship with the fictional fashion magazine, Runway.

I watched it over the weekend. I appreciated how, 20 years later, it chose to portray Andy as a journalist trying to do good work in an industry that’s more interested in online metrics and engagement. For us here at The Nerve and our colleagues at Rappler, this hits close to home.

In the first part of the movie, Andy tries to navigate Runway’s PR crisis by being honest with the readers. Though the intentions were right, and the critics approved, the numbers didn’t follow. It didn’t “get traction,” Meryl Streep’s character pointed out.

We see this play out in real life. Our information ecosystems today prioritize hate and lies over facts, meaning the loudest, angriest narratives often prevail — regardless of whether they’re true or not.

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In our latest Decoded story, our researcher, Christa Escudero, wrote about how 4Ps beneficiaries are being blamed online for the high electricity bills in April. She tracked how lies and hate dominated posts about the Lifeline Rate Subsidy, which subsidizes electricity for the poorest households. The truth is, it only makes up a minuscule fraction of the average consumer’s bill, but that hasn’t stopped the lies and stigma from spreading online.

The same hostile information ecosystem that enables this kind of misplaced blame also harms those who push back. In a study by UN Women, authored by The Nerve’s Information Integrity Initiative and City St. George’s at the University of London, we see how online violence against women in public life has become more sophisticated and damaging as AI continues to accelerate.

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The report found that 41% of the women surveyed said that they self-censor on social media to avoid being attacked. It also said that one in four surveyed women journalists is experiencing related anxiety and/or depression because of the work that they do.

This tells us that the same platforms that let lies about the poor spread unchecked are stifling the voices of the people whose job it is to correct them.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is, at the end of the day, a feel-good movie. But the newsrooms in real life don’t always get saved, and journalists like Andy don’t always get the win. Still, the movie raised an important question that we are also asking ourselves in real life: does journalism still matter in a world shaped by clicks, outrage, and AI summaries? The fact that you’re here, reading this, gives us hope. – Rappler.com