Mad About Media Episode 5: How Do You Decide What’s True?

From fact-checking and fake information to AI, deepfakes and phone dependence, the final episode asks how we decide what to trust in a world that never slows down.

In this final episode of Mad About Media, students from FET College Dhúlaigh look back on the series and take on their toughest challenge yet: trying to survive with an old-school brick phone instead of a smartphone.

Guest: Stephen McDermott, Assistant News Editor with The Journal and editorial lead of its fact-checking unit: on journalism, misinformation, bias, bad actors, online outrage, immigration narratives and why getting the truth out can be harder than it looks.

Guest: Dave Curran, Head of Media at FET College Dhúlaigh: on AI, education, phone use, authenticity, regulation, confidence, connection and why media literacy has never been more necessary.

Theme: Truth, AI & Phone Dependence

Student challenge: Use a phone that is only a phone. The students try living with an old-school brick phone instead of a smartphone.

Listen if: you’ve ever wondered how anyone knows what’s true anymore.

In Near FM’s Mad About Media, students from FET College Dhúlaigh take on the big questions, interviewing journalists, academics, and experts about the forces shaping the media we consume every day and finding out how to navigate the world in 2026.

This series is co-funded by Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán and supported by your television licence fee.

Music credits: Demented Nightmare by Darren Curtis and Madness of Linda by Rafael Krux