Media literacy is not faring well. If we look at OECD countries, most of whom are described as high-income economies, do you know how many of their fifteen-year-olds can distinguish between a fact and an opinion in a text? Fewer than听.
Teachers are often overworked and underequipped to educate their students: it鈥檚 no wonder that many of them will turn to high-quality YouTube videos to help their students understand science and history. Anecdotally, one of the YouTubers getting a lot of airtime in classrooms is Johnny Harris.
Harris made his name turning his obsession with maps into the show听叠辞谤诲别谤蝉听蹿辞谤听Vox, in which he would travel the globe and report on what happens when countries rub shoulders with each other. When听叠辞谤诲别谤蝉听飞补蝉听, Harris decided to continue doing journalism on his own YouTube channel, growing a team around him and churning out stunning videos that are edited within an inch of their lives.
The quick cuts and dazzling montages, as well as the dramatic shots of Harris absorbed by a document he鈥檚 unearthed, highlighting it suspensefully in tight close-ups, all lend credence to the often-excellent work he does. But it also makes it easy to mask his mistakes. And for someone who takes journalism to heart, his mistakes are big, leading to oversimplification and an occasional lapse in skepticism.
To quote his refrain, 鈥淐ome! Let me show you.鈥�
Can you pronounce the name of this ingredient?
Johnny Harris hates American bread, calling it 鈥渋ndustrial, mass-produced garbage.鈥� Fair enough, but his issue is not merely with taste. In a听听that currently sits at 5.6 million views, Harris takes American bread to task for being 鈥渕ade with ingredients that are literally illegal in the EU.鈥� Over the eerie tones of听The X-Files听theme, Harris attempts to pronounce the following name: 鈥渁zodicarbonamide.鈥� The esotericism of this chemical name is somehow relevant to his argument that this very molecule is also used in the manufacturing of yoga mats and has been banned by the European Union and other countries. Commandeering footage of听Breaking Bad鈥檚 Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in protective gear cooking up illegal drugs, Harris tells us in voiceover that many American bread manufacturers use additives to keep bread soft and white, even though these chemicals are 鈥渒nown to cause cancer and inflame asthma and do all of these terrible things.鈥�
If you are a regular reader of our website, you will have heard these chemophobic arguments before. They were popularized by Vani Hari, commonly known as听The Food Babe, an activist with a degree in computer science who led numerous campaigns against major food retailers who were employing 鈥渃hemicals鈥� whose names she found hard to pronounce. Get a molecular biologist tipsy enough and ask them to pronounce 鈥渄eoxyribonucleic acid鈥� and see what happens. It鈥檚 the technical name for DNA; just because the tongue struggles with it doesn鈥檛 make it enemy number one.
Azodicarbonamide creates the air pockets our yoga mats need听and听it helps make bread fluffier. The one use does not contaminate the other. Azodicarbonamide is not known to cause cancer. That scare comes from limited rodent studies done in the 1960s and 70s which showed an increase in a specific type of lung tumour in female mice (but not in male mice or in rats of either sex). These tumours are听听in humans, and the mouse model used often spontaneously develops these types of tumours. A tumour of blood vessels was also seen slightly more in female mice exposed to azodicarbonamide, but not in male mice.
This has to be put into perspective: compounds known to cause mutations and/or cancer听naturally occur听in small amounts in some of the natural food we eat, like the common mushroom which contains trace amounts of nastier molecules belonging to the same family as azodicarbonamide. It鈥檚 the dose that makes the poison. Why some regulatory agencies ban an ingredient that others don鈥檛 often boils down to how risk-averse they are and thus how they interpret the precautionary principle.
As for azodicarbonamide鈥檚 potential to worsen asthma, the evidence is not clear cut. There is no reason to believe this would affect bread making or consumption听, only occupational exposure. But the studies done and the cases reported in the literature are听, and we have to remember that exposure to airborne flour itself in large enough quantities will irritate the respiratory tract. This kind of nuance, unfortunately, is missing from Harris鈥� attack on American bread.
Zooming out, his video is dangerously perched on the appeals to both nature and antiquity. Rustic bread made in France for centuries is pure and good, you see, but modern American bread is stomach-churning because it uses 鈥�15 ingredients instead of three鈥� so that 鈥渢he bread can sit on a shelf for not just one or two days听like it should听but a whole week.鈥� By that argument, we shouldn鈥檛 consume corn, banana, or watermelon because听听(and much less appetizing) and their modern iterations are just unnatural by comparison.
Then, there鈥檚 the paranoid streak.
In a听听that garnered 8.5 million views and which Harris thumbnailed with the words 鈥淲E HAVE PROOF,鈥� Harris explores the recent craze over UFO sightings鈥攕orry,听鲍础笔听sightings, meaning unexplained anomalous phenomena. In passing, he mentions听, who has done excellent work debunking a lot of blurry footage of what is alleged to be high-tech spy drones or aliens.
But the bulk of the video is spent leering at report after report鈥攁 total of 144 are being investigated by the U.S. government right now!鈥攚hile original music amps up the mystery. The emphasis on听听is key to Harris鈥� style: flood the space with visuals that keep your attention and elicit questions and only occasionally pull back to explain. The number of UAP reports may seem impressive, but a historical context he fails to mention brings it into perspective. The US Air Force investigated over 12,000 of these reports in the 1950s and 60s 蹿辞谤听听and concluded none of them revealed threats to national security or the existence of extraterrestrial life forms. They tended to be regular airplanes, weather balloons, clouds, and stars. We have been here before, and given the proliferation of satellites and high-definition cameras since, you would expect the quality of the evidence to be better than an out-of-focus blur.
As for the claim that Air Force pilots are super-observers and that what they report seeing in the sky must necessarily be truly out of this world if these experts can鈥檛 recognize them, that is simply wrong. Pilots are human beings, with the same biases we all share. UAP encounters are often of the 鈥渂link and you miss it鈥� variety, making on-the-spot identification difficult. I鈥檝e seen pilots described less as trained observers and more as听: interpreting the slightest visual cue as a potential threat to their survival, as they should. When they say they think they saw a craft moving in ways that defy physics, we should not simply believe them because of their occupation.听
To Johnny Harris鈥� credit, he reveals that many of the tantalizing videos of strange aerial phenomena he started with were shown to have mundane explanations. A mysterious airborne triangle wasn鈥檛 triangular after all: it was simply a trick of optics, where an out-of-focus object recorded by a camera through night-vision goggles has its light bent in strange ways. But Harris isn鈥檛 willing to let it go: 鈥淭hese objects,鈥� he immediately听, 鈥渁re probably foreign drones trying to spy on U.S. military maneuvers. Yeah, they may not be triangular in shape, but, like, that鈥檚 still really useful information.鈥� As was pointed out by听, I would like to know why it is that a secret spy drone would have FAA-compliant blinking lights, as is clearly visible in the footage.听
A few months earlier, in a听听about the Bermuda Triangle, Harris had admitted to getting 鈥渋ntoxicated by a good, mysterious story.鈥� He has to be vigilant as a storyteller and journalist. Yet many of his videos lean into this conspiratorial, borderline paranoid tendency that transforms his journalistic investigation into a quest to uncover a secret plot. That鈥檚 what happens when accumulating nuggets of evidence is prioritized over zooming out to provide context. Skepticism takes a backseat to spectacle.
Leaving the science behind, it would be easy for me to fall under the spell of Gell-Mann amnesia. Author Michael Crichton coined the term in reference to physicist Murray Gell-Mann, with whom he had once discussed it. It鈥檚 when you read the newspaper and notice that a story about a subject you know well is riddled with errors. You turn the page, forget about it, and believe what the same outlet has to say on topics outside of your expertise.
I noticed what Johnny Harris got wrong about science and topics typically dissected by skeptics. Other experts have chimed in to show where else Harris鈥� journalism strays from facts.
Visual artifice
Many videos have popped up on YouTube critically analyzing the claims made by Johnny Harris. You may not have seen them. With a subscriber count of 5.39 million at the time of writing, Harris鈥� own channel often dwarfs his critics鈥�. Some take minor issues with his interpretation of historical events, but many reveal major mistakes that Harris and his team made.
Harris claimed that the U.S. is听听nuclear submarine technology freely to Australia, which elicits shock from him: 鈥淗ere are the designs to our most powerful weapons! Take them, foreign country!鈥澨�. This was famously estimated to cost Australia between 268 and 368 billion dollars to acquire. The听even designed a graph comparing this hefty price tag to nine other things the Australian government spent or could spend its budget on, including Medicare rebates and early childhood educator salaries. The nuclear subs were not a gift.
Harris鈥� definition of inflation, which he claimed was the simplest, also drew arched eyebrows听听, and his portrayal of history is routinely criticized for oversimplifying, when it鈥檚 not downright wrong. When Harris tackled听, he strongly implied that one man was responsible for the inception of this idea: Christopher Columbus. Apparently, Columbus arrived at the New World to trade; but upon seeing that the Indigenous people were showing no resistance at all, he and听听to change his plans. He would claim the land and thus become the first European imperialist.
As Jochem Boodt pointed out in his own听, this is simply not true. Columbus鈥� contract stated that he should claim the land he encountered and that he would become a sort of governor of this new property. Moreover, the idea of colonization had precedent, with the Portuguese in Africa and with Spain in the Canary Islands. In the comments to Boodt鈥檚 video, Harris admitted to having dramatized this piece of history as a 鈥渄evice/symbol.鈥� In his Bermuda Triangle video, he would briefly mention this mistake before begging, 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry. Can we move on, please?鈥�
YouTube is a peculiar platform for education. It allows creative people to stretch their wings and craft video essays in their own unique style, away from the limitations and oversight of traditional media. As wonderful as it can be, this freedom can also be abused. Last December, popular YouTuber James Somerton, who made videos appraising gay media, was revealed in听听to have plagiarized the majority of his scripts, while听听showed that some of what hadn鈥檛 been plagiarized was simply made up, leading to egregious statements. This sent shockwaves through the video essay community, with many deciding to add sources either on screen or in the description box when making claims. It is surprising to me that Johnny Harris did not originally cite his sources. He only started to do it in听听(as far as I can tell) after Boodt鈥檚 criticism.
To both teachers and casual viewers of Johnny Harris鈥� slick videos, I would invite a healthy amount of skepticism. High production values give the illusion of scholarship. A torrent of visuals and pulsating music does not clarify; it drags you in and dulls your critical thinking skills. It鈥檚 harder to assess if what you鈥檙e being told is accurate or complete when your senses are being assaulted by bright stimuli. Harris himself is aware of this danger: in听, he said that 鈥渢he idea of trusting your viewer to go fact-check everything you say is irresponsible and na茂ve.鈥� I agree.
Quality also takes time. Harris鈥� mini-documentaries are full of visual artifice that takes a lot of time to animate. In the last three months, he has released nine videos. That鈥檚 three videos a month, with an average length of 27 minutes. Doing comprehensive research on thorny topics of the kind Harris has an interest in is time-consuming, and I worry that glitz is sometimes overtaking facts in priority. This is deeply ironic. Harris has听听that 鈥渢he [American] news has become way too fun,鈥� tricking you 鈥渋nto feeling informed.鈥� I鈥檝e never watched a newscast that had the entertainment value and visual dazzle of a Johnny Harris video.
This can lead to stunning skids on the road to reporting the news. A听听Harris released called 鈥淗ow China Became So Powerful,鈥� and which was indistinguishable from his usual journalistic documentaries, turned out to have been co-written in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF). A version of the script for the video was even posted听, with Peter Vanham, its head of media, listed as first author. The disclosure was made in听the last minute听of the video. This was neither education nor journalism, but an ad for the WEF鈥檚 meeting in Davos and its founder鈥檚 latest book, made to look like reporting coming from a trusted source, not unlike the sponsored content in newspapers. Video essayist Tom Nicholas even went further, denouncing it as听
I have no doubt that Johnny Harris ultimately means well and tries to do what educators struggle with: being both accurate and engaging in order to make the world around us more understandable. And we all make mistakes: learning from them and correcting them with full transparency are key. I just wish that instead of the whirlwind of visuals thrown at his viewer鈥檚 eyes, he invested more time researching his topics so that he doesn鈥檛 become the incarnation of the very thing he was trying to repudiate: infotainment.
Take-home message:
- Johnny Harris is an independent journalist who makes visually dazzling mini-documentaries on YouTube
- On scientific issues, he has made a number of mistakes, such as unfairly demonizing an ingredient used in bread manufacturing and ignoring a large body of investigation on UFO sightings
- On historical and economic issues, subject experts have taken him to task for oversimplifying and for producing a video sponsored by and co-written by the World Economic Forum without adequately declaring it as such
