Journalism

Mark Zuckerberg had just returned from paternity leave, and he wanted to talk about Facebook, democracy, and elections and to define what he felt his creation owed the world in exchange for its hegemony. A few weeks earlier, in early September, the company’s chief security officer had admitted that Facebook had sold $100,000 worth of ads on its platform to Russian-government-linked trolls who intended to influence the American political process. Now, in a statement broadcast live on Facebook on September 21 and subsequently posted to his profile page, Zuckerberg pledged to increase the resources of Facebook’s security and election-integrity teams and to work “proactively to strengthen the democratic process.”

There are real consequences to our inability to understand what Facebook is. Not even President-Pope-Viceroy Zuckerberg himself seemed prepared for the role Facebook has played in global politics this past year. In which case, how can we be assured that Facebook is really safeguarding democracy for us and that it’s not us who need to be safeguarding democracy against Facebook?

[Commentary] The situation is sickeningly familiar to anyone who works on — or reads — a metropolitan daily newspaper, whether it’s in New Orleans, Detroit or just about any other American city. The paper is hurting financially. It cuts reporters, photographers and editors to make ends meet. Then it cuts even deeper. The journalism suffers, but the paper’s work is still vital to its community. And a question looms: Will it even survive the next decade?

Digital advertising, once thought to be a savior, hasn’t materialized sufficiently. The base of possible subscribers is limited. And vastly increased chain ownership by out-of-town investors, who too often squeeze the paper to improve profits, has wreaked havoc. To say that local journalism should be saved is an understatement. It simply must be saved, and the time is now.

[Commentary] So far in 2016, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, of which Radio Television Digital News Association's (RTDNA) Voice of the First Amendment Task Force is a founding partner, at least 23 journalists have been arrested merely for trying to do their jobs. More troubling, criminal charges are still pending for more than half of those journalists; at least 12, to be precise. In the other 11 cases documented by the tracker, police either released journalists once they realized they were, in fact, journalists, or prosecutors filed but later dropped criminal charges. Particularly disturbing is the fact that two of the 12 reporters still facing criminal charges are accused of felonies and, if convicted, could each spend decades in prison.

Five of New York City’s universities announced a partnership aimed at supporting and defending journalism and independent news media --- one of the most critical elements of our democracy --- as they are increasingly under threat. This unique, first-of-its kind program and collaboration will bring together Cornell Tech, Columbia University, City University of New York, New York University, and The New School -- in partnership with the NYC Media Lab -- to investigate and understand the various threats to journalism and media, and attempt to address these challenges using design, engineering, and computational methods and techniques.

The effort will gather graduate students with backgrounds and expertise in journalism, design, and engineering/technology from these institutions in a special course to kick off in Spring 2018. In addition to the course, a speaker series hosted at news organizations around the city will launch in October around the themes of the partnership, featuring influential figures from media and technology. Inaugural media participants that will host fall programming include The New York Times, CNN, BuzzFeed, and the HuffPost.

Russia is warning the US not to take action against its government-backed media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, threatening retaliation. "When it comes down to a fight with no rules, when the law is twisted and turned into an instrument for the destruction of a TV company, every step against a Russian media outlet will be met with a corresponding response," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "And whom this response will be aimed at, that is what Washington needs to figure out as well," she added. "The clock is ticking."

Zakharova did not how Russia would retaliate to protect its media outlets. The spokeswoman has previously threatened that Russia would take "reciprocal measures" against the US if it did not return Russian diplomatic facilities seized in 2016. The Justice Department sent a letter earlier in Sept demanding the company that runs state-funded television network RT — formerly Russia Today — to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), treating its content as propaganda.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to once more defend himself and his platform. Responding to a cavalierly-tweeted charge of anti-Trump bias from the President of the United States, Zuckerberg again repeated his claim that Facebook was “a platform for all ideas,” and that, contrary to unfolding public opinion, his company did much more to further democracy than to stifle it. These arguments rest on a simple equation: The amount of information that a population shares is directly proportional to the quality of its democracy. And, as a corollary: the more viewpoints that get exposed, the greater the collective empathy and understanding.

This is what’s missing from Zuckerberg’s math—the transmutation of information into common myth. We have more data then ever before, but when you put it all together, it doesn’t add up to much.

Mark Zuckerberg wants his company’s role in the election to be seen like this: Facebook had a huge effect on voting—and no impact on votes. If Facebook wants to be a force for good in democracy, it needs to answer some questions. Does maximizing engagement, as it is understood through News Feed’s automated analysis, create structural problems in the information ecosystem? More broadly, do the tools that people use to communicate on Facebook influence what they actually talk about?

The fake news that ran rampant on Facebook was a symptom of a larger issue. The real problem lies at the very heart of Facebook’s most successful product: Perhaps virality and engagement cannot be the basis for a ubiquitous information service that acts as a “force for good in democracy.” And if this is true, how much is Facebook willing to change?

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House Communications Director whose tenure lasted 10 days, is starting his own news service, he announced in a video on Twitter Sept 27. The video was posted to a new handle, @ScaramucciPost.

Reuters’ new multimedia offering “The Trump Effect” aims to track the consequences of administration policies—with interactive graphics, a news archive, and opinion polls. “We were concerned, like many people are, about how much noise is out there, and how much of what passes for news is arguments and counterarguments, or shouting matches,” says Steve Adler, editor in chief at Reuters. “Whether you like or don’t like the impact of something, we want to make sure you don’t get distracted—that you can see for yourself what the impact is, and decide for yourself how you feel about it.” The effort will attempt to show the impact of policy on the public across all parts of government—though the rollout will be limited to four topics: energy and the environment, health care, immigration, and business and the economy.

Propaganda and other forms of “junk news” on Twitter flowed more heavily in a dozen battleground states than in the nation overall in the days immediately before and after the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that a coordinated effort targeted the most pivotal voters, researchers from Oxford University reported. The volumes of low-quality information on Twitter — much of it delivered by online “bots” and “trolls” working at the behest of unseen political actors — were strikingly heavy everywhere in the United States, said the researchers at Oxford’s Project on Computational Propaganda. They found that false, misleading and highly partisan reports were shared on Twitter at least as often as those from professional news organizations.

But in 12 battleground states, including New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida, the amount of what they called “junk news” exceeded that from professional news organizations, prompting researchers to conclude that those pushing disinformation approached the job with a geographic focus in hopes of having maximum impact on the outcome of the vote. The researchers defined junk news as “propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyperpartisan, or conspiratorial political news and information.” The researchers also categorized reports from Russia and ones from WikiLeaks — which published embarrassing posts about Democrat Hillary Clinton based on a hack of her campaign chairman’s email — as “polarizing political content” for the purposes of the analysis.