Fifty Answers in Half an Hour About the Future of News

This post responds to the fifty questions posed by Richard Gingras at the Newsgeist Unconference in Hamburg, Germany. He chairs the board of Village Media and is a co-founder and board member of the global Center for News, Technology, and Innovation. 

My response comes from two perspectives: first, as an observer and commentator on news and new media generally, and second as a sometime journalist with my own online publication. I'll present Gingras's questions in italics.

Why are we here?

Gingras is asking why people are at the conference, and I'm not there. Why am I not there? Because they're still doing conferences like this in person. 

The internet, for all its benefits, disrupted publishing and public discourse in ways we do not fully understand. How do we address that? 

The conference addresses traditional media for the most part - it's sponsored by organizations like the Knight Foundation - and from my perspective I think it is important to understand that traditional media no longer holds a monopoly over news and media. maybe address that by accepting that.

How can we fix our fractured societies? 

Stop fracturing them. New media is one of the primary drivers of discord. The focus is to drive eyeballs to advertising, and the best way to do that is to focus on disputes and divisive issues. I think that once news media serves readers, there's a greater incentive to find points of consensus. 

What do we need the future of news to be?

The news needs to be by and for people, not advertisers or corporate owners. It needs to be accessible to everyone. Its function should be to inform and to provoke thought. It should view itself as part of society, not part of the governance of society. 

Plato said democracies would fail due to the freedoms they enable, specifically freedom of expression. Was he wrong?

Plato was wrong. He had very specific ideas about the way society should be, with everybody in their place, serving their proper role, governed by kings.

Our societies are divided. Can journalism bring a society together?

Maybe understand what's happening first. The idea of a society bound together by a commonality (of language, of religion, of philosophy, etc). This commonality would be represented by, and promoted by, the news media. This model of society no longer exists. The attempts to 'bring a society together' more often push it apart.

Media should start with the idea of describing (and understanding) where people are. There's nothing wrong with different media promoting different points of view, but media should understand that stories along the lines of "they should be like us" are promoting division. Ideally, media would create a place where people can express heir individual perspectives and find points where they can cooperate. 

Might we help craft a society’s shared reality, a set of common ideals and principles? 

You might. But it might be better to recognize that society is filled with very different realities, ideals and principles.

Can we provide impartial frameworks that empower societies to address their opportunities and challenges?

Probably not. Certainly not as currently constructed, as corporate-owned and advertiser-funded. There's no real mechanism that will challenge these constructs, and yet an impartial framework must necessarily work against those interests.

At a minimum, today's media should look at whose point of views they cover and represent. I am proud that my newsletter cites a wide array of voices and perspectives, thousands of them, from all sectors of society. It could even be improved, and I'm always trying to do that. 

But run an analysis of whose voices are heard in any traditional media, and it's a much smaller class of people. We hear from government, business and other news media a lot. Spokespeople from lobbying institutes earn a disproportionate amount of air time. Sometimes experts and academics are cited, but usually from the local business school, or if it's a technical topic, from 'elite' institutions. Labour is cited only if they dissent. 

What is our mission? 

To help people share what's important to them with other people.

Is it simply to hold power to account, as many would say in North America or the UK, or is there a better framing tuned to our time and place?

If I had a choice, it would be to have news media disempower power. If I had a choice, it would be to help people without power have more say and influence in the events that impact their lives. Sometimes this means holding power to account. But more often, it means pushing back against power.

Are we the voice of moral certainty or the “voice from nowhere”? 

Neither. There is no moral certainty, and there is no voice from nowhere. What's more important is that media understand this. 

Are we the detached stenographer or the analytical arbiter?

Again, neither. People don't need stenographers any more; they can publish for themselves. Analysis continues to be useful, but the media plays no role in arbitration. There is no arbitration needed. We don't need to find some sort of resolution of our different interests, we need only a nechanism to negotiate our way through them.

Are we the adversarial watchdog or the builder of communities?

The media is not some sort of police or security force, so the 'watchdog' analogy is inappropriate. Again, instead of 'being the voice', the role of media should be to give voice to others. Similarly, we don't need the news media to build communities. We already have communities. News media should meet these communities where they are, and if anything, facilitate communication between them.

Stop trying to be the thing we are, and instead, focus on helping us be the thing we are. 

Is partisan media part of the solution or part of the problem? Does partisanship bridge the gap or widen it?

I think that media that calls itself 'non-partisan' is as much the creator of gaps (not just 'the gap') in society as anything else. People claim they are 'non-partisan' only if they're happy with the way things are and don't see any pressing need for change. In this, being non-partisan acts against the interests of a large majority of the public. 

Do we change minds by telling people what to think or by giving them what they need to make their own decisions?

Why does media think it's part of its job to change minds? 

People may or may not have the information they need to make their own decisions. What they need from media is the recognition that these decisions are their to make, not media's to shape. 

People can benefit from media in many ways without having to have their minds changed. If a mind is changed, this should reflect the interest of the person, not the influence of media.  

Do we understand society's trust in us? 

No. Which probably explains why there isn't a lot of trust in media at the moment.

What we trust right now is that media represents the voice of power. 

How can we earn and re-earn that trust in an untrusting world?

What would foster trust would be to see our own voices in media, accurately and charitably presented. We can still disagree with media and with each other. But distortion breeds mistrust. 

We present ourselves as sources of truth. Might it be arrogant to suggest we have the answers? 

Most of what is presented in media is not 'truth', properly so-called. The facts of the matter form a very small part of any instance of reporting. What we see much more of is reactions to facts of the matter, both from various interests, and from the perspective of media itself. And what we see is a lot of speculation: what could be the case, what ought to be the case.

Might expressing our own humility and doubts help? 

No. I listened to a journalist reporting on the Wainwright fire yesterday. he offered five minutes of speculation about possible causes and impacts, and ended by saying, "ultimately, we just don't know." It would have been better had he not speculated at all, and just said "we don't know," and reported on what we do know.

If there isn't more to be said about an event, move on to another topic. The public can think about more than one thing at a time. 

Might we grasp the difference between epistemic arrogance and epistemic humility?

Maybe grasp epistemology first. The two major parts of reporting on states of affairs are: stating what is known, and stating how we know. If we don't have a satisfactory answer to the second (and things like 'informed sources' or 'speculation' are not satisfactory) then we don't actually know. Lead with that.

What does it take to know, or even to arrive at a reasonable belief? If media could find a way to be epistemically honest, that would be a start. 

What is objectivity? 

While objectivity is often presented as 'having no point of view', we know that this is impossible. That doesn't mean objectivity isn't valued in news media, but it does mean that objectivity isn't what it is presented to be.

To my mind, objectivity is honesty - honesty about your sources, honesty about what is known, honesty about the points of view people have, honesty about whose interests are being served. 

Some say “I can’t separate my personal views from my work.” Is Marty Baron right in telling us journalists should be objective in the same way we expect police, judges, and doctors to be objective?

I think that the difference between these professions and journalists is that the professions are working from what might be called an established source of truth, and media are not. For police and judges, the source of truth is the law. They are not entitled to pursue their profession according to what they think the law should be, they are obligated to follow it as it is. Similarly with doctors, the source of truth is the physical state of the person in front of them and the body of medical knowledge they work from. They don't get to work according to idiosyncratic theories of medical science. 

What we find in journalists is that they believe they have access to a source of truth, and impose this on the people or events that they are covering. They present something along the lines of 'what ought to be the case' as 'objective', and interpret events in the light of that standard.

Do we provide sufficient context to avoid stimulating undue fear?

This is a great example of what I just said. What, objectively, is 'undue fear'? People are genuinely freaked out by what is happening to the climate, but coverage has been tailored to quell any 'undue fear' about that.  

Is that horrific murder an anomaly or a dangerous trend?

That's a question that can be answered with mathematics. However, news media rarely approach it that way. The very phrasing, 'horrific murder', is designed to elicit a specific response. Whether or not it is a trend, it becomes one by virtue of its placement in the media.

Can you imagine what news media would look like if it covered murders only if the numbers demonstrated that there is an emerging trend?  

Is absence of context its own form of disinformation? 

This is a leading question, of course - another specialty of media. The term 'disinformation' means very specifically to feed a person false or misleading information. 

If a context is omitted with the intent of suggesting that something untrue is in fact true, then sure, that's disinformation. But it is impossible to present the full context of anything. There's always a presentation of a certain selected context. The presentation of context can also be disinformation. 

We see that a lot in the news. From a certain context, productivity is 'good', GDP and stock growth are 'good', declining profits are 'bad'. The money paid to people doing the work is presented as a 'cost', and not as a net benefit of the enterprise.  

Can we provide the information readers need, but also the constructive guidance that enables their sense of agency?

I think people can have agency without the help of the media. What would be better would be for media to first recognize that agency, rather than to try to shape it.

Elon Musk says empathy is a bug, not a feature. Can a society work towards its common best interests without empathy? 

Why reference Elon Musk here? What does the vast majority of humanity say about empathy, as opposed to one overly-privileged billionaire who appears to operate without any?

And why is the question phrased in the form it is, assuming that society must define and work toward common best interests. We all have different interests, almost by definition - you need to feed yourself and I need to feed myself. Two different interests. 

A better question would be, can we manage to accommodate both our different interests without empathy? 

News media should stop trying to make society into one thing. 

Can we help our societies see the value of empathy?

This is an example of the 'source of truth' journalists believe they have access to, that I alluded to above. The framing here is that 'empathy has value'. There's no real questioning of that framing. We should be asking questions like, "is empathy even the kind of thing that can have or not have value'? Are we putting a price on empathy? A number on it? 

Maybe empathy is just a thing people have, like a sense of smell, that is sometimes helpful, and sometimes not. 

Do we practice it ourselves?

Again, one wonders about the framing here. What is it to 'practice' empathy? 

Journalists should go back to where people are. Do people have empathy? Is it a type of sensation that can be refined? Does everybody need to? Do some people lack this sensation? How does this change their view of the world?  

Can our audiences respect us if we don't respect them?

I don't really think of 'respect' as transactional. 

Do we understand the societies, or markets, we serve, or do we assume we do? 

I think that's a very telling fudge, from 'societies' to 'markets'. 

Journalists report on society. But for the most part, the 'market' they serve is advertising. They extract thgat part of information about society that will serve advertisers' needs the most, but exposing more people (or the right people) to the advertising message. 

(I find it interesting that journalism is extractive in almost exactly the same way AI is extractive, except that journalists are able to exercise copyright over the content they generate). 

Do we understand them enough to define successful editorial strategies, product strategies, business and revenue strategies?

It is telling again that three of the four strategies have nothing to do with reporting the news, and are essential only insofar as news is a business.'

I know that it can be asserted as a 'fact of the matter' that journalism is a business. But from a wider perspective, commercial journalism represents only a small part of how we in a society let each other know what's going on.

We proclaim the press is critical to a self-governing society. Do we see the difference between the value we think we bring our society versus the value our society perceives we bring? 

If a (functioning free and objective) press is critical to a self-governing society, then we are not a self-governing society (I'm not sure exactly what a non-self-governing society looks like - Somalia, maybe?).

It is widely argued that democracy depends on the free press. The change we are seeing today is that in the future, it might not. We have always had alternatives to the commercial media, and have sometimes had to govern ourselves in spite of the commercial media. Today, these alternatives are now in the hands of everyday people. But also: they are in the hands of billionaires.

If the press worked against the interests of the billionaires, we might have an argument. But the press is (mostly) owned by the billionaires. 

Is there a larger vision for local news to become the operating system of a community? What might that mean?

The community is the operating system of the community. The press is its I/O layer.

Has there been a market failure for news, or is it simply that the controlled-distribution models of yesterday were supplanted by the internet's open, friction-less distribution of today? 

This question seems to be a response to the recent straw man argument I cited against the idea that the problems of the press have been created by a market failure.

There are two types of market failure: scarcity, which drives prices toward infinity; and abundance, which drives prices toward zero. Presumably, the market failure in the current case is the latter (though news media often act as though it's the former, and that only they have the keys to the (democratic) kingdom).

If there is a market failure: there is an overabundance of what the news media mostly produces: speculation, opinions, and advertising. That value of these has declined to near zero. 

If there is a market failure of actual news, it is an overabundance of news we don't need: stock markets, press releases and advertorial, marketing and promotions, political statements, and the latest stories design to generate outrage.

But these aren't real market failures. 

If we claim market failure, might we harm our own interests and discourage the investment of others?

I mean, who cares?

I guess it wouldn't be the first time news media manipulated the story to serve its own interests. I find it interesting that this is being proposed as a real possibility here. 

Can we protect copyright interests without narrowing exposure to marginalized voices?

Um, what?

Is the question here asking whether putting paywalls on content prevents poor people from reading the news? 

Or, maybe another way of putting it: does democracy die behind a paywall?

Or, perhaps most accurately: what's the point of propaganda if people are no longer willing to pay for it? 

Thomas Jefferson, the great creator of his day, believed copyright was an insult to an advanced civilization. What’s the correct balance between the interests of authors and the collective knowledge of a society?

Why would we assume there is a balance here? 

Do we recognize the contradiction in crafting public policy to address misinformation? 

Why would we assume there is a contradiction here? 

Where does one draw the line between awful and lawful in a world teeming with divisiveness and outrage? 

We draw lines like this where we - as a society - want them.

What the news media presents as 'divisiveness and outrage' is in fact the normal disagreements that people have in a society. What is 'awful' is the way the media manipulates our popular perception of these disagreements as the sort of train wreck that draws people's eyes to their advertisers.

There is no contradiction in crafting public policy to address this. But there needs to be a way people can talk about it with each other - and the news media are not interested in providing this.

Who decides that? How do we avoid policies that deteriorate free expression and our own press freedoms?

In a democratic society, the people decide that. There's no 'information czar', except maybe in a society as envisioned by the media's billionaire corporate owners.

The very question "who decides" reveals a fundamentally undemocratic line of argumentation, one in which it is automatically assumed that the people cannot decide. This is one of the 'ground truths' media believes it possesses. 

While exploring how AI can enhance the proficiency of newsrooms, might we also consider how we apply the principles of journalism to an AI-enabled world?

Is journalism only narrative expression? 

Never has been.

Illustration, for example, has always been a part of journalism. So are non-narrative techniques such as story placement, font selection, and headlines. 

Can our journalistic principles be expressed as tools?

Shouldn't the question be, can tools express (embody?) our journalistic principles? 

That would depend a lot on what the principles are. If the principle is, 'be honest', we can express ourselves honestly using tools, but it is very difficult for a tool to enforce honesty. I think a similar logic exists with most tools.

There are some that believe tools constrain to the point that they define the law (see Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace) but this sort of naturalistic understanding of law misunderstands the nature of agreement and protocol within the space allowed by tools. 

In considering AI, is technology the problem, or are humans applying the technology the problem? 

It can be both (the false dilemma is another standard practice of traditional media).

Is the evil in the machine, or is it in us? 

The representation of the world as 'good' or 'evil' is a very Zoroastrian perspective and is another one of these 'ground truths' media often supposes it posses.

For someone with a more nuanced perspective, it is more likely that neither option presented here is the case. Tools aren't inherently evil. People aren't inherently evil. What we call 'evil' represents a frame or perspective we impose on the world.

Can we rely on regulation, as best it might be crafted, recognizing a world of dark players do not care about our laws? 

If we are not willing to embrace regulation, then we turn the world over to the anarchists. 

Imagine we said the same thing about 'horrific murder' (see above). Can we rely on the law against murder, recognizing that dark (dark?) players do not care about the law?

It's not an on-off switch. We recognize that a world with laws against murder is in many ways a better world than a world with no law against murder. The same is true of most crimes, and indeed, of most things that pose a danger to society generally.

In the case of AI, the 'dark players' are also the people who control much of our news media. And uyes, they should be regulated. 

In addressing the risks of AI, we often anthropomorphize without factual context. We present the evil machine as the problem. Fear is enflamed. Are not humans the problem versus the machine?

Humans anthropomorphize everything. That's how we created the Gods in the first place, that's how we think of our machines, and I have said things like "my computer hates me" long before AI.

What's more significant here is how once again we're being presented with two opposing alternatives. Both humans and the machine can be the problem. 

Might we not need AI to save us from ourselves?

It's not clear who the 'we' in question is here. It might be journalists. It might be society. I don't know.

But I don't think we need saving from ourselves. We - as society - can grow beyond those who are telling us what we need to think and how we must all be the same. We - as journalists - can accept this, and more forward toward some sort of model that seeks out and supports the many voices of society.

Like I try to. 

Yes, our society has been disrupted. We are left with an exponential array of existential questions. For every question we answer, we’ll find many more.

Discuss.

Done.