Opinion: The Problem We Were Warned About
In 2017, I interviewed Rob Reiner and David Frum on disinformation & democracy. Today, as the shocking news of Reiner’s death spreads faster than facts, that conversation feels devastatingly urgent.
One September morning, back in 2017, I got an assignment to discuss what was then the biggest political crisis on everyone’s mind, ‘fake news.’ The term was popularized in 2014/15 by journalist Craig Silverman, but of course most of us associate it with then candidate now President Donald Trump. He pretty much threw it at any kind of reporting he didn’t like, but false or misleading information masquerading as news was flooding social media, where most Americans were going to get information. Who were my subjects for this ‘day-of-air’ story? None other than, producer, actor and director Rob Reiner and journalist and republican speech writer, David Frum. My task? Interview them about their solution to the bot lying problem, a new website, InvestigateRussia.org.
In all honestly, I was starstruck. I was sitting across from a man I had been watching on TV and in movies since I was in pre-school, but I wasn’t at a meet and greet, I was the journalist. Intellect demanded more than admiration, it demanded precision.
Right out the gate, Reiner did not mince words about his mission. When attacked, he said, Americans usually, traditionally unite, but during the 2016 presidential election campaign, something drastic had changed. “For the first time in our history,” he said, “we haven’t come together as a country to understand what actually happened to us.” It was that moment, he argued, that required a response grounded in evidence, not politics, but that’s not what leadership gave us.
Frum clarified the mechanism. “If you get your information from your Facebook feed,” he explained, “you can be on the receiving end of disinformation… a lot of rumor, a lot of accusation.” He emphasized that Americans needed factual clarity: a place to learn what is true, what is open question, and what has already been debunked. Yet the distinction between rumor and fact was rapidly blurring in the digital feed.
I remember thinking, ‘this sounds useful and obvious, but what previous celebrity fueled movement had taught me, the messenger matters as much if not more so than the message. So I pressed them on the question I don’t think they were expecting, why should people trust you?
Frum said that with so many voices online that seemed to be multiplying by the hour, not all were honest or true. Russian operatives, he explained, created fake identities that claimed to be everyday Americans: “a mother of two in Wisconsin… a retired veteran in Pennsylvania.” A move he called identity theft on a national scale.
But it was Reiner who underlined their credibility didn’t come from their fame, it was actually from political friction. “Hopefully,” he said, “they’re looking at two people who are at opposite sides of the political spectrum who have come together… to say this is not a partisan issue. This is about America.” Yet even then, Frum acknowledged, the political winds set limits on their partnership. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had just been charged with investigating crimes, not breaches of democratic trust or un-American behavior writ large. AKA what the president would lament as ‘The Russia Hoax’ or as he complained, “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Their project was rooted in context and caution. Eight years later, the environment they tried to prevent feels deeply rooted and incurable. Misinformation is no longer a one-off problem to be solved; it is the ecosystem we navigate our lives through.
Last night’s news about Rob Reiner’s death and the swirl of speculation that immediately followed on social media (Twitter) even before any details were confirmed, illustrates just how thin the line is between news and rumor. Law enforcement is investigating the deaths of two people found at his Brentwood home and has categorized the case as an apparent homicide. The family has identified the victims as Rob and his wife Michelle, however, as of midnight on December 15th, authorities still hadn’t confirmed who the victims were. Speculation on who was the killer and why has already begun to swirl.
This dynamic of partial information turning into full narrative is precisely what Reiner and Frum feared. They were not merely decrying the existence of false stories; they were cautioning that our digital architectures make it easy for unverified claims to become unquestioned truths. In 2017, they were beginning to map the problem. In 2025, the problem has engulfed the map.
As a journalist today, many of us find ourselves walking the fine line of reaching audiences where they are and holding their attention, while responsibly parsing the gap between certainty and speculation, and doing so with discipline. The public discourse demands not only what happened, but what we know actually happened.
In the years to come, we will judge this moment not by how fast a story spread, but by how deeply we demand accuracy amidst ambiguity.
And that challenge, the one Reiner and Frum tried to articulate before misinformation became infrastructure remains unfinished.