Episode 6: Rumors vs. Sources

TalkDaredevil_VideoBackground_Ep6.jpg

As the clock ticks closer to the end of Daredevil’s two-year moratorium (November 29, 2020!), our team assembles to discuss a topic near and dear to our hearts: how to distinguish between rumors vs. legitimate sources for new information regarding the potential return of our show.

SHOW NOTES

In this latest episode of #TalkDaredevil, team members Kristina, Mary, and Phyllis sit down to discuss and offer advice on a topic that comes up often for the #SaveDaredevil campaign: how to distinguish rumors from legitimate sources. They cover subjects like:

  • The spectrum of information sources out there for fans of comic book television and movies, starting with known or legitimate sources, like industry trade papers and on-record interviews (1:33)

  • Sources that fall into the “grey area” - insiders, YouTube personalities, and misleading data / headlines (5:46)

  • Disreputable or unreliable sources for accurate comic book television / movie news (15:40)

  • The types of clickbait rumors fans might see out in the wild (21:49)

  • How rumors can hinder #SaveDaredevil campaign efforts (29:45)

  • Tips for how fans can process the latest rumors and news in a responsible way (34:15)

Have some thoughts or questions you’d like to hear us discuss in an upcoming episode? Send us an email at contact@savedaredevil.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving us a rating + review on your podcast platform of choice!

LINKS:

 
 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

(Download the PDF here)

INTRO: You're listening to Talk Daredevil, the official podcast of the Save Daredevil campaign.

PHYLLIS: Welcome back to Talk Daredevil, the podcast about everything Daredevil, brought to you by the lovely people behind the Save Daredevil campaign. I’m Phyllis, and today I'm joined by my fellow team members Kristina --

KRISTINA: Hello, everyone.

PHYLLIS: -- and Mary.

MARY: Hi!

PHYLLIS: And we're discussing a topic that is near and dear to our hearts: rumors versus sources and how to cut through the noise. So why are we talking about rumors versus sources today? Well, with officially less than two months left until the end of the Netflix moratorium, as well as increased news from Marvel Studios regarding their other already in development projects, basically all of the latest phase four casting announcements that we've gotten in just the past two weeks, we're really anticipating an inevitable crossover of rumors and of clickbait that's going to fly a little bit faster than usual around the Marvel fandom. And so what better time to talk about it than right now? So I guess to jump into this conversation we wanted to cover some specific groups of information, talking about the hierarchy of sources, what kind of rumors are being put out there just for clicks, how rumors can damage our potential campaign efforts and conclude with tips on how fans like you guys can process new information and rumors. So how about we start with what are the sources of information out there for fans in the Fandom Without Fear?

KRISTINA: One of the best places for sources for really reputable information are the accepted trade papers in the industry. We're talking about stuff like Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline. These are publications that have been around for a very long time. They have a reputation to uphold. If they published something that was rumor or innuendo and it didn't turn out to be true, that would seriously hurt their reputation which they don't want. So they tend to be really reliable. And I think it's important to remember that if you read something in one of these trades and they say “a source who would not go on the record,” they're still pretty reliable because they have these relationships with their sources. And they tend to be very professional. So if I see something in one of those three publications, I'm very inclined to believe it.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, when they say -- when they talk about sources, it's usually not the guy at the water cooler. It is a source from within the network, from the studio, maybe an executive that just can't go on record yet. So, yeah, you're totally right, and I think it's also important to point out that you're not going to hear information from these trades all the time. By the time official news is ready to come out, it's because the studios or the networks or whoever's in charge is ready to put out that information publicly. So you might hear rumors about something for a few months before it actually comes out in the trades. But when it comes out in the trades, that's usually when you can be like, “Okay. This is something that we can take as fact. This is something that is officially on the record."

PHYLLIS: I would say another source of information that is probably more on the reputable side would be quotes from executives from Marvel, Disney, Hulu, whether it's through an interview that they've done with a trade or it's during some kind of media event. Specifically in our case we have heard quotes from Hulu executives at their upfront events. That is something that they do for television critics to announce upcoming TV shows. These are things, again, that executives are saying on behalf of their company on the record. The only thing with quotes and information like this is new information can obviously render older quotes obsolete or unreliable. But being able to process this information directly from the executives, it gives us a framework for how to evaluate possibilities and speculation.

KRISTINA: I think another thing to remember about those quotes is - Read the quote, do not paraphrase. Because we have seen quotes very badly paraphrased. I remember the official statement from Marvel after the last of the Marvel Netflix shows was cancelled. It said something to the effect of -- and here I am paraphrasing, right? -- something to the effect of “We love these characters and they will be back," which a lot of people misinterpreted to say, “Oh, my gosh, they're bringing the shows back!" And we had to say, read what it said. It said,”We love these characters. They will be back." It did not say, “We are going to resurrect the show." It did not say that we were going to get the same cast. It didn't say that at all. It said the characters will return. So definitely, if you hear a quote or if you hear someone talking about a quote, look for it and read it for yourself.

PHYLLIS: And read it in context because --

KRISTINA: That's another really good point.

PHYLLIS: Quotes taken out of context, the meaning can shift so much. If you're reading a quote that was pulled out of an article and then you read the whole article, you could find that there is a different filter through which to examine these words or information that you didn't realize was part of the context until you actually read the full source. This is something that we have done. We include a bunch of quotes on our FAQ page and our Why Hulu page, and we've had to update those pages as we've gotten new pieces of information from different executives.

PHYLLIS: So I guess that kind of wraps up our known official reputable sources of information. And now we kind of come into the gray area, and so just to be clear, gray area shouldn't have an inherently negative connotation or anything. It is just what it sounds like. It is a gray area, especially with comic book news and comic book information. There is a whole ecosystem out there for sources of information that range from specifically pop culture comic book news outlets like Comicbook.com or IGN. And it can go down to specific insider accounts that are on Twitter or on YouTube or on Facebook. And even when you're on YouTube, there are personalities on YouTube that might talk a lot about Marvel news but mostly in a speculative way. They're not actually sharing any information that they have heard or that they know to be fact. They're just kind of like -- people like hearing their opinions, so why don't we talk about this, guys?

MARY: Well, as far as the insider accounts and scoopers, people -- we get pretty regular DMs from people saying, “Hey, I saw this on a YouTube video. This guy has a good reputation. He's known as a very reliable source." And I get that. We're not saying that these people are making things up. But their information may be very, very preliminary. They may be talking to somebody at the water cooler at the set or it isn't necessarily the most direct route. And that information can change over time. So it may have been true at the time, but it is no longer true. And you just can't rely on that. I think of it as sort of like batting averages. A good baseball player might have a 300 batting average. But that just means not every time they're at bat are they going to get a base hit.

KRISTINA: Something else is sometimes - these people, they're not being malicious at all. I've seen it happen where someone would say something like, “Wouldn't it be great if this happened?" And it turned into “So-and-so said this is happening." No, he didn't. You can't really blame the person for saying that. He was expressing an opinion, and it would get picked up and turned into “Oh, so-and-so said this was happening." So it's not necessarily malicious.

MARY: Yeah, it becomes a telephone game.

PHYLLIS: Yes.

MARY: And you try to chase down the original source, and the original source was this little bit of informal speculation that was never in print with a quote. You never actually get back in, and the source isn't named. So you can waste a lot of time trying to go down that rabbit hole.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, for us, like you said, we get a lot of DMs from people about this, and generally speaking we don't mind kind of knowing what's being talked about and what people are bringing up out there even from the insiders because it does kind of give us sort of a sense of the temperature and what things seem to be getting talked about more. But the reason why we don't share stuff like that directly with the Fandom Without Fear is because we don't want to be spreading unverified information to you guys and adding to that chain of misinformation. And that's why you don't hear as much from us usually as you might want to because we are waiting for official sources of information that we feel comfortable sharing with the Fandom Without Fear and being able to tell you guys, “Yes, we can stand by this news that you're reading from us right now."

MARY: Another thing that we've run across is misleading data or headlines. Since I love data so much, this particularly ticks me off. I remember, gosh, before the cancellation even there was an article circulating that said season three's viewership, and this was in the U.S., was less than half that of season two in its first week. That's the part that kept getting dropped off as the telephone game was circulating this information. It sounded very discouraging and some fans, I remember, were saying, “Well, I guess there's no hope because viewership just plunged." Well, if you look at it, first, there was a notable decline in the show's promotion from season two to season three. In fact, there was around a 70% decrease in the number of promotional images released. Also, I tracked it: the teasers and trailers were not released nearly as far in advance. It was the third season of the show. Typically you don't do as much promotion for the third season. And as we've discovered over time, Netflix doesn't tend to take shows more than two or three seasons now because they don't get as many new subscribers for the expense. Secondly, the Netflix original scripted programming landscape changed drastically from 2016 to 2018. They went from having 31 original scripted series in 2016 to nearly 900 by the time Daredevil season 3 came out. So that gave their recommendation algorithm a lot more content to chew on. In fact my account didn't notify me that season 3 was out until after I'd already binged it, okay? And here I am, a Daredevil fanatic. I re-watch. Their algorithm should know that! I have re-watched the seasons one and two at that point so many times. I've re-watched Defenders so many times, and I watched a lot of superhero shows. So it was really surprising to me that I didn't hear squat. I knew that Daredevil was coming out because I followed it on social media and I read news articles. I was tracking its production. And I'm not the only one who's complained about that. One of our team members, speaking of promotion, Sam, noticed that there was a profound lack of promotion among Netflix's Hispanic social media accounts. One of them didn't even mention it at all. But people did find the show, and season three, and again, I like numbers, so it spent 27 consecutive weeks, that's more than six months, on Parrot Analytics’ top 10 digital originals list for the U.S. It was very competitive among very popular shows on Netflix. It wasn't on the same tier as Stranger Things, but it was on the tier right below it because Stranger Things was in a tier all by itself. And I don't expect everybody to go, “Well, I shouldn't necessarily believe this. I'm going to Google this till I get to the bottom of it." I don't expect that. However the people in our campaign, we gladly do this. We want to know the lay of the land. We don't want to waste our time chasing something if it's not worth it, so I do recommend, if you have questions about that, you can bring them to us. Check out our FAQ page. We have updated it. We've even got archived FAQ questions because we've covered so much territory in the last two years.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, and that's going to be found at SaveDaredevil.com/FAQ. A lot of this research that Mary just cited can be found under that specific question that talks about the viewership headline that was shared.

MARY: Next, because I'm an admin on one of our social media accounts and of course I follow all of them, another thing that I've noticed, people in the comments, especially people who are just coming to our page and don't know that much about us or about the cancellation, authoritatively stated assumptions by random people on social media. That is a category here. So we've seen comments on some of our posts, some person who we don't -- who's not affiliated with the show as far as we know, not an insider as far as we know, will say, “Well, this is stupid. Everyone knows it's going to Disney Plus.” And then another commenter might pile on with, “Well, I don't want to see a Disney version of Daredevil. They're going to ruin it." Sprinkle in a few more comments punctuated by crying and angry face emojis and now you have a steaming pile of emo based on zero evidence. So I'd like to reiterate in that example that, one, Disney never said the Marvel Netflix shows were going to Disney Plus. And there's way more information about that in our FAQ. Two, Disney has owned Marvel since 2009. Season one came out 2015, six years later, so it is, all -- this show in particular has always been a Disney property. As for responding to that, a lot of times there's no point in responding to it because something untrue was just said very authoritatively. So why just get into a flamewar over that? But occasionally, I'll just politely ask, “Where did you read that? Would you mind dropping a link?" Nine times out of ten I get no response. One time out of ten they may come back with something along the lines of, “Well, everyone knows."

PHYLLIS: Yeah.

MARY: And there's still no supporting evidence. They're just, I guess, maybe trying to save face at that point. I try not to be rude about it, but really if you just ask people, “Where did you get that? This is important information. We need to know this." You'll not hear anything. It'll be crickets.

KRISTINA: Just like Mitchell Ellison at the New York Bulletin, we take our sourcing very seriously. We need to know and if I do -- I am more likely to respond which is because I'm just a -- that's who I am. And if I respond it'll be, “State your source. Give me your source." If you can give me a source where someone said that, okay. We can talk. If you cannot give me a source, I'm not interested. And the source cannot be some guy on YouTube or some guy on Reddit. And a lot of times people will respond with, again, we were talking about paraphrasing. I remember someone had posted, “Oh, Charlie Cox isn't interested in playing the role anymore." “Give me your source." “Oh, he did this interview with Comicbook.com." No, I saw that entire interview. He never said that, so a lot of times people will paraphrase. State your source. That's it.

PHYLLIS: So kind of the last category of information sources are the ones that are not quite as reputable amongst comic book news outlets. You may have heard of them: sites like We Got This C-vered or C-smic Book News. In the ecosystem of comic book news, there is a role for everyone. And these particular sites, I see their role as just exclusively peddling rumor and speculative pieces that can be basically used as click bait. And the thing is, comic book fans love news. They love information. They love rumors and speculation. If a headline sounds good, they will probably click it. So I kind of don't blame them for using that as their strategy. But the information that's contained within is usually just not very good. Either they are providing a second-hand summary of what an insider might have said about something else, or they're just creating their own speculation and passing it off as an authoritative headline. If you like being thorough in how you keep on top of your comic book news, that's great. Just keep in mind that there are sites like this that churn out articles at a rate and a frequency that is completely unrealistic for actual news to be coming in. So when you read that kind of stuff just take a look at the site. Take a look at what their track record might be. These two sites in particular don't have a great track record with accuracy, and just take it with a grain of salt. If you see other people sourcing them and you can't actually figure out the original source, take that with a grain of salt. Do a little bit of your own research, but if you come to us with links from these types of sites, we can tell you pretty definitively not to worry about it because if it was true, you would have heard it somewhere else first.

KRISTINA: They can be very entertaining, and it could be fun to read and go, “Oh, yeah! That's an interesting idea! How about that?" But just keep in mind there is a difference when Variety will not name a source to protect their identity and We Got This Covered does not name a source. There's a difference. Look at the longevity of these two publications. Look at their track records. Keep that in mind.

MARY: Well, and look to see if anybody else is reporting the same thing because if that's an actual nugget of truth there, then eventually it will appear someplace in like a Variety or in a bunch of other sources. But it doesn't -- this tends to be one of the last stops before people just start circulating everything.

PHYLLIS: Although actually I would say that sometimes they are the first stop and you'll see all of the other smaller sites sourcing them. But it's none of the big sites. I frequently see fans go, “Oh, I did see this headline here, here and here." And they'll list off sort of like three or four outlets I've never heard of. But none of the big sites have talked about it yet. I haven't seen it on Comicbook.com. And I haven't seen anywhere else, so I don't know, and it's like, well, there's a hint for you. Again, kind of the way -- I won't go into a tangent about this, but there is a way this stuff works on the internet. A lot of these sites get paid by click. They are out there to get you to read their thing even if it's no good. And so when this gets passed along to other small sites, and this is the way they make money, by people visiting their site and clicking on their articles. Just know that if you're not seeing it repeated somewhere reputable, it's a pretty good chance that you can pass.

KRISTINA: And there's one other point. I can't remember where i read this, but I remember seeing a study that said that over half of people who retweet or repost articles look at the headline and don't even click on it. And what can happen is that -- I've seen this happen a couple of times where a writer will write an opinion piece. If you read it, it's clearly an opinion piece. But their editor for some reason decides to change the headline so it looks like a factual piece. And then you actually click on it, and the guy's saying, “I was just thinking about how I would like to see blah blah blah happen." And it's not a factual piece. That's something else to keep in mind, that people will often circulate things without even reading them.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, and that's actually a really interesting point you bring up because that reminds me of some of the news that went around after Save Daredevil Con. There were some headlines that came out regarding some of our panels. And there were some inaccuracies in certain articles. And we reached out to the writers to get them corrected which all the writers were really great about that. But almost every time they would say, “Gosh, someone changed my headline.” Or, considering that piece of information that most people don't look past the headline, you can see how easy it is to kind of get trapped in this cycle of misinfo.

MARY: There is a flip side to all this, so we're always trying to look for the silver linings here. Daredevil fans are obviously worth a lot of clicks. They wouldn't keep rehashing this stuff. We've seen a bunch of Charlie Cox is in talks or Charlie Cox said he doesn't want to ever do this again. Or we've seen this pendulum swing back and forth fairly regularly.

KRISTINA: Often from the same source.

MARY: Yeah, and it's because Daredevil fans are very passionate people. There are a lot of them. They wouldn't publish this stuff if it didn't -- if they didn't get something out of it. Another bright spot here is that it does generate more buzz and discussion within the fandom. There are downsides to this, but it actually keeps the show in people's minds. It keeps it out there. So for as negative as it can be, we might as well use it for the positives.

PHYLLIS: That's a great point, and as of this recording, kind of the most recent example of that would be the news about Jamie Foxx returning as Electro in Spider-man 3. And that's setting off a whole chorus of people on the internet going, “Well, now there's no excuse not to bring back Charlie Cox.” That's the kind of thing we enjoy seeing on the internet and being reminded that hey, we're not the only ones that keep talking about this and want to see this happen. A lot of people do.

PHYLLIS: So you guys kind of brought up a couple things, but there are a few rumors I thought would be interesting for us to kind of break down as far as the types of things you see out there for clicks. I personally broke this into three categories, and you guys can kind of add your thoughts. I see a lot of rumors that are based on fan service or wish fulfillment. So there could be a fan out there who -- this is a bit -- this is kind of something you had pointed out, Kristina, but a fan out there who just points out like, “Man, it would be so cool if we saw Matt Murdock as the lawyer that gets Peter out of his whole problem from the end of the last Spider-man movie in Spider-man 3." And fast forward however many tweets and retweets later. Suddenly there's a headline that says Daredevil is going to appear in Spider-man 3. I cannot keep track of how many of those headlines we have seen about that and how long lasting they've been because obviously there was a lot of that chatter after that movie came out. But it's been very persistent since then. I don't even know if there was an original source of that opinion. But that whole thing has kind of taken off on its own. That's kind of an example that I can point out as hey, I can see why fans like this, and I can see why fans want to see this happen, but I haven't actually seen anything that says this is gonna happen.

KRISTINA: Yeah, and I'm trying to remember too if we even know how that started, and I think it might have actually been several different individuals, again, not saying anything misleading, just speaking from their fan heart of, “Oh, my gosh, wouldn't that be cool? I would love to see that." I don't think that they ever would have intended for this to turn into a huge controversy about whether or not it's going to happen. But it's that game of telephone again. It just kept growing and growing until it was this huge rumor that was being touted.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, and this leads me to my next sort of example which is rumors that are based on misleading headlines or misattribution of quotes or rumors that just end up being accidental misinformation. Kevin Smith basically did what you said on an episode of his podcast. This was in the spring, late spring earlier this year. He had mentioned that he had heard that Matt Murdock was coming back in Spider-man 3. And there were so many headlines that got run about it that in the next episode he had to be like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I have no inside information. I just read the same internet rumor that you guys all read.” But because of his position as a celebrity and someone who is a very famous Marvel comic book fanboy, people just assumed, “Oh, Kevin Smith knows something that we don't know. He said it's true. It's going to be true." That's how easy it is, right?

KRISTINA: And then also the problem is much more people heard the original Kevin Smith comment than they heard his retraction. So there, it didn't get as much airplay, if you want. It didn't get as much traction on Twitter that actually Kevin Smith walked this back. So there are still people who heard the first thing and they didn't hear the second thing.

PHYLLIS: Oh, yeah. Absolutely, it's always like that - that first bit of information is the piece of information that goes the furthest, right? If it happens to be kind of an accidental piece of misinformation, well, there's kind of no putting that back, right? It is kind of out there now and you have to hope that fans either heard the retraction or can use their own critical thinking skills to be like, “Well, would he have that information? Would Kevin Smith who's not affiliated with the film and has no role in its production know this crucial piece of cool surprise stunt casting? And why would he be telling us about this now?" These are the questions that you should ask yourself in your head when you hear stuff like this. And actually kind of along the same line, around that same time, maybe like a month later Comicbook.com had hosted that really cool Daredevil quarantine watch party. And they interviewed Charlie Cox. And I think, again, one of you guys had mentioned this interview before, but he was asked point blank, “What about these rumors about Daredevil showing up in Spider-man 3? Are you gonna come back?" And Charlie basically was like, “I have never heard this rumor,” which if you know Charlie Cox is not surprising because he's not on social media. And he really doesn't seem to follow any comic book news out there. So he said, “I've never heard of it, so if it's happening, it must be happening with someone else. It can't be happening with me because no one's told me about this." Now, that kind of morphed into its own, “Well, Daredevil's not showing up." Or, “Daredevil's not coming back,” or “Charlie Cox doesn't want to come back." There was a whole segment of that interview where he was also asked about “What do you think about a future Daredevil season 4?" And he's like, “Honestly, I’m not sure. But I would love to come back if I were asked,” and that turned into, “Well, Charlie Cox doesn't want to be playing this role anymore." Again, it's like these -- the cherry picking of information and taking it out of context and having that be the headline and having that headline go out. It's just so easy for those types of rumors to catch fire.

KRISTINA: Yeah, I still keep seeing people saying Krysten Ritter doesn't want to play Jessica Jones anymore after she was misquoted. And she actually put out -- she tweeted almost instantly, it's like, “I would love to come back as Jessica Jones. I just don't think it's going to happen." And those are two very separate statements that people are still saying, “No, it's never going to happen. She doesn't want to do it."

PHYLLIS: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the last type of rumor that I'm going to mention in this little series before we move on: rumors based on a mix of vague insider info but kind of paired with factual information that we might know about the situation. One headline that we've been seeing quite often right now is Marvel Studios wants to bring Charlie Cox back. Marvel Studios is going to meet with Charlie Cox in December. Marvel is reportedly in talks to do blah blah blah with Charlie Cox. Now, I haven't read all of the articles attached to these headlines. I'm assuming that some of these articles are coming from insider sources. I'm assuming some of them are probably speculative based on the fact that we know the Netflix moratorium is ending in less than two months. All of this gets pieced together into something that sounds really nice and really positive for fans of Daredevil. And you know what? Fingers crossed. They could be right, but just because someone said that they hope something might happen and the timeline kind of maybe works out, just due to the fact that we can't verify it, you just have to take it with a grain of salt.

MARY: Well, and being in talks versus actually having a contract drawn up and signed are two different things. I mean, he very well could be in talks, but that is no guarantee it's going to work out. And so personally, the way I am, I'm not going to put my money in that bank -- until some ink is dry.

PHYLLIS: And, well, the funny thing too is when you’re making that distinction, when you read in a trade that someone is in talks, that means they're currently signing a contract usually. Typically it seems like the pattern is someone has “is in talks” this day, and the next day you'll hear that they've been confirmed. When I hear an outlet that is quoting an insider or an outlet that I can't use as a verified source of comic book news say that, “Hey, we think that Marvel Studios is in talks with Charlie Cox,” that doesn't mean very much to me. If I saw in the Hollywood Reporter, “Marvel is in talks with Charlie Cox to bring him back," that will go way further because I know that they wouldn't have reported on that unless they were ready to take the next step.

KRISTINA: Yeah, and we also have to remember that Marvel is so secretive. Anyone who works for Marvel will tell you that they have to sign an NDA and they have to be very careful about what they say publicly. So again, if someone goes to the -- if the Hollywood Reporter is saying an insider at Marvel said something, you could imagine that an insider at Marvel might have told someone at the Hollywood Reporter something off the record or something, “Don't use my name." But if they're telling a very small comic book related internet blog about it and nobody else, you kind of have to raise your eyebrow and say why would they do that? Would they risk their job to do that?

KRISTINA: So something I think people might not realize is how rumors can damage campaign efforts when it comes to what we're trying to do. And a lot of people would say, “Well, it's just rumors. It's just talk. It's just fun. It's just speculation,” but we try very hard to weed through the noise and only report on what we know. I’m also a moderator on our Facebook page. And I have declined certain posts because they are posting links to some articles that we just don't feel is factual enough to share. And people sometimes ask, “Well, why? Why can't we talk about this?" I just want to give a couple of examples. Lately our petition has been posted in a lot of new places. A lot of people are finding it for the first time. And if you go to these places where it's posted and you look at the comments you will see why it can be so damaging. You'll see things like, “Why are you doing this? Give up. Everyone knows that the show is dead. Kevin Feige hates the Marvel Netflix shows. He hates Charlie Cox. He's never going to bring it back because some guy on YouTube told me." Or if you look at the very next comment might be, “Well, the show's already been saved, right? It's coming back. Everyone knows it. I read it on Reddit that they already have season four in production." And so people won't interact with the campaign. People will not get involved because they figure it's either a done deal or it's impossible. That's why we take these things so seriously.

MARY: Well, another thing, because I'm also one of the Facebook moderators, is even among the people who follow us and who really are trying to save the show, rumors can confuse our focus. Every so often somebody will say, “Well, so-and-so just said this and now we need to write letters to this executive right now! Why aren't you guys doing this?" And it's because when we ask the fandom to expend their collective time and energy on a certain initiative, we want to make it count. We want it based on factual information. There have been a lot of changes at Marvel and Disney over the last couple of years. And we're tracking that. We've got our own little homemade org chart on our FAQ page. So we really are on top of this, but there's a strategy behind what we do. And if we act on every little thing, we're going to dilute our efforts. A lot of people that follow us -- so there are some people that, “Okay, I'm willing to sign the petition." But they don't have time to write a letter. We need to make it very easy. So when we are doing a big ask like that letter writing initiative we did to Kevin Feige and a couple of other people last December, was it? We don't want to ask too much too often, so it really needs to be focused. It needs to make sense, and it takes a lot of our time too, in the campaign. We're just volunteers. Every initiative we put together, we've got to come up with copy that we put out there on our different sites. We have graphics to put together and edit. We have meetings about this. We have a process that we want to go through to organize all this stuff. So we don't want to be wasting our time either.

MARY: Another thing with all this misinformation circulating around: Fans can really burn out on this. They're very passionate fans. This is a very passionate fandom, and there's an emotional toll to being jerked around by conflicting rumors. When the cancellation first happened, I used to follow entertainment news almost religiously. But since I had a family and everything, I haven't been that on top of it. And so I kind of went from not even being on Twitter except just having an account sitting out there with nothing in it to all of a sudden I was on Twitter. And there were all these rumors from all these sources. And it was overwhelming, and a couple of times I thought, “I just can't keep up this pace." It's the positive rumors, they give you really high hopes. And then the negative ones just dash them against the rocks. It’s a roller coaster which, we're already on a roller coaster with the changes that have happened at Marvel and Disney over the last two years. And I’ve seen people tap out of campaigning. They just -- their heart couldn't take it. But most of them have come back. Some people just need a break. We totally advocate taking a break if you need a break. Priorities, but, yeah I think several of us within the campaign have gotten DMs here and there from fans who read something discouraging and wanted to know is there really still hope? That's a major downside to all these rumors. So I hope people listen to this and learn how to filter some of this information out. And we're not going to continue a campaign that we think is fruitless.

KRISTINA: Yeah.

MARY: So if you need a pep talk, we're here.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, those are some great points, Mary. So to kind of wrap up this episode, I thought it could be nice to conclude with just some tips on how fans can learn to process all this new information and the rumors and how to do that in a responsible way. So, Mary, why don't you start us off?

MARY: Well, one of my passions is -- one thing I always say is cite your source, so when reading articles with enticing headlines, check for the original source. Is it reputable? Is it disreputable? Is there even a source cited, or is it something speculative, and if they have a link to the original source, follow it and check the context.

PHYLLIS: We've already mentioned this earlier in the episode: there's a lot of ways for you to find out, to track those sources back to evaluate the context and see if this is even worth your time. Another tip: check against the facts that we know, so for example, is the information you're reading lined up with our understanding of, say, the Netflix and Disney moratorium? Is it consistent with our understanding of the development and production process, or is it even realistic? So let's say if this was a year ago and we were hearing rumors about Charlie Cox being asked back to reprise his role. That makes absolutely no sense because we know there is a two year cooling down period where Disney cannot touch this property. So right off the bat there can be no credence to this because we know they are not allowed to do anything with developing this character until those rights are back from Netflix. An example of the development and production process: when everyone was talking about the Spider-man movie and Daredevil being in the Spider-man movie, what process are they in with the writing? Have they started shooting? Obviously a lot of things have changed with the scheduling of the shooting and COVID. But there was a period of time where Spider-man was supposed to have been shooting this summer. Again, knowing what we know about their limitations on using the character before the moratorium is up, there's just no way they could have written in Daredevil and shot his scenes, realistically put that in the movie at that time.

KRISTINA: Something else that I think has to be brought up is beware of confirmation bias. Don't find yourself believing something just because you want to believe it. Here within the team, we don't look at whether the rumor is positive or negative. We treat it the same. We still say what's the source? Where is it coming from? Is there a quote? Who said it? When was it said? I would love to believe that right now on some secret New York street that they are already filming season four. But if I saw an article that said that was happening, I would not necessarily believe it, depending on where it was coming from. Keep your emotions in check. We all want him back. We all want the show back, but don't let that cloud your judgment when you're looking at these rumors.

PHYLLIS: And again, like we mentioned before, we have a great FAQ page on our website, SaveDaredevil.com/FAQ. It has a lot of just really interesting information and data that we've sort of accumulated over these last two years. But we hope that you found this helpful. We're just like you guys. We are fans as well. We are hoping for the best. We are trying to maintain our hope and optimism. We have a lot of reason to believe there is a reason to stay hopeful and optimistic. Kind of as Mary said, if we knew for certain this campaign was fruitless, we wouldn't be doing it. So we're really just glad a lot of you have hung on with us for these nearly two years. We're so grateful to those of you who are just finding us now, and again, just a reminder, there is officially less than two months until that moratorium is up. And we are planning to make as much noise as we can. And so, kind of on that note, to wrap us up - we just want to make sure you're following us on social media. We are @RenewDaredevil on Twitter. And we're @SaveDaredevil on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We have a lot of great content on our YouTube, including panels that we did during Save Daredevil Con. And we put up our podcast episodes there for Talk Daredevil. You can also find that wherever you listen to podcasts. And just keep following us because we're going to keep rolling out initiatives. We're going to keep rolling out events. By the time this airs, I'm not entirely sure what's going to be the most current. So I'm just going to let you guys go find us online, follow us and check there for the latest news. Other than that, I think we can call this episode a wrap. So thanks for talking about this today, guys.

KRISTINA: Thanks for letting me talk about it. This was awesome.

PHYLLIS: All right, bye.

MARY: Bye.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening to Talk Daredevil, the official podcast of the Save Daredevil campaign. For more information on Save Daredevil, please visit our website at Savedaredevil.com. Remember, Murdocks always get back up.

talk daredevilPhyllis Saepisode 6Comment