Thomas Kent
Congress needs to clarify mission and oversight of Voice of America
President Donald Trump’s attack on the Voice of America, calling its content anti-American, has led to polarized battle lines that are common now on national issues. President Trump supporters say the US needs an unabashedly pro-American voice to rally world publics to its side.
Fake news is about to get so much more dangerous
The most powerful false-news weapon in history is around the corner. The media industry has only a short time to get ahead of it. If technology continues its current advance, we may soon face totally convincing videos showing events that never happened — created so effectively that even experts will have trouble proving they’re fakes. “Deep fake” video will be able to show people saying, with the authentic ring of their own voices, things they never said. It will show them doing things they never did, by melding their images with other video or creating new images of them from scratch.