A project from the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, EconoFact seeks to lay out complex domestic policy issues in an easy-to-read memo-style format. Since its launch, the site has published more than 100 pieces of policy analysis that are designed to be evergreen.

The topics that are covered most often include hot button issues like immigration and trade. But the site covers a variety of issues, including college funding and endowments, explained Edward Schumacher-Matos, the site’s publisher and co-executive editor and a visiting professor at the Fletcher School.

We spoke to Schumacher-Matos to learn more about the site and the difficulties of advocating for facts in an anti-truth era.

Q&A

Tell us about EconoFact and how the project got started.

Edward Schumacher-Matos: I was working on a project called Iceberg, a global online publication that features pieces of analysis by experts in different parts of the world. Michael [Klein, professor at the Fletcher School] came in to see me. He was quite disturbed about the election and the tone that had transpired. In talking with colleagues, they were upset that so many basic facts that they know about economic and social policies were not being discussed or used by either candidate. It was a frustrating experience. Trump in particular had little command or even respect for policy. The Hillary campaign misused facts, but Trump was the bigger violator. So we tried to figure out what to do.

With social media you can have your own voice – it’s just a matter of how you organize it and go about trying to promote it. We thought, great, we can do something by launching a site that explains domestic policy. But is this just another site for opinion of which there’s so much? How can we distinguish this and make it different?

I teach opinion writing. When you are trying to argue a point of view, you should be explanatory and put the facts first. There’s this idea of structured journalism that we’ve been playing around with. Could you build a common body of stories that includes all the facts, and each new fact is just a short update? And then you’d link it back to the base. You can break the story into facts and do that as long as we all agree on that common base of knowledge. None of us has been able to make that work. The New York Times, the BBC and Reuters have played around with this. Academic institutions have also tried to do it, but it hasn’t worked. But this is what inspired us, because it forces the facts to be first and the information is delivered in a memo style.

How do you choose the topics you cover?

Schumacher-Matos: We have a weekly editorial meeting. We have an editor, Miriam Wasserman, who works out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She’s a Fletcher grad. She worked at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank as an editor of their magazine and has held other jobs in journalism. Michael is the executive editor. He’s the real inspiration and editorial leader. I’m more like the publisher. Michael put together the network of economists. On Monday mornings we talk and look at what’s in the news and what we think is going to be in the news.

Edward Schumacher-Matos

Do you go back and update older memos?

Schumacher-Matos: We haven’t had to. But yes, we will, if f it requires updating. In the future we’ll probably have to do more of that.

Who is your target audience?

Schumacher-Matos: Influencers, journalists and policymakers. If we had the money, we would try to break out and try to have a social media engagement strategy. But in the meantime we keep growing organically.

We want to get to what we describe as “an NPR audience” – an informed public audience. NPR’s audience is half Democrats and half Republicans. We do not want to be pigeonholed with just one political tribe – we really want to appeal to all sides and bring down the tone of the debate and talk about the facts. When you’re looking at a problem, what are some of the logical, rational ways of solving it? There may be more than one way, but let’s at least agree on the facts first.

What are some of the challenges in running the project?

Schumacher-Matos: Our biggest challenge is to keep trying to grow the audience. We’re convinced the editorial formula is excellent, and we see the response we get from people when they come into contact with us. Everybody gets it. Everybody’s tired of all the extreme opinions and the shouting. We don’t really have to explain what we’re trying to do.

How do you vet the economists that you work with?

Schumacher-Matos: Michael’s the guy who does that. We want the economists to feel some attachment, some loyalty to the project. I think we’ve done that. Clearly, we can’t pay them. I wish we could. If we had the money we could. We’re trying to raise money.

A graphic from a recent EconoFact story about high school students having trouble attending colleges that are further away.

What kind of impact do you hope to have, and how do you measure that?

Schumacher-Matos: We’re getting picked up more and more by the news media. We’re getting quoted more. That’s growing. You begin seeing who’s seeing it. We’re quoted on the radio a lot too. It’s hard to measure how you are affecting policy. That’s a longer-term measure. We just have to keep at it. We think we are having an impact. We see people in Congress reaching out to us and following up if they want more information. They talk to the economists. We want to reach out more to state governments and regionalmedia as a way to provide information at that level. There’s a lot of information available in New York and Washington, but what about the rest of the country? We also try to make the memos as accessible and readable as possible, so you don’t have to be an expert to understand them.

How do you deal with the issue of trust in a time when so many people are so anti-fact? There are people who think that if something is coming from a news organization or a university, it can’t be trusted. How do you address that?

Schumacher-Matos: We deal with it through our tone and how we write. We allow zero demonizing or criticising of other groups and other points of view. We try to have a very sober, clear and open tone that we hope strikes an empathetic chord that reaches everyone, no matter what your point of view might be. And we do not telegraph that we’re part of one tribe trying to do battle with another tribe. We try to stay away from that. That’s part of the structured memo format and the “facts first” thing. You’ll see no critical adjectives about somebody else or about political leaders. We focus on the facts, not on political fighting or trying to score points.

What are your future plans?

Schumacher-Matos: In addition to looking at publishing and distribution partnerships, finding ways to grow our audience. We need funding to allow us to do that. So far we’ve done very well organically. And we’re looking again at the original Iceberg project. EconoFact focuses on domestic issues, but maybe we can take some of those pieces and repurpose them internationally. Some of them won’t be appropriate but some of them well.

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

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Why is it so unlikely that the next big innovation in journalism will come from Europe? What are the barriers that curb innovative capacity? In this article, I document specific challenges and common pitfalls that I gleaned from researching news startups in Germany.*

1. Founders underestimate tasks and workload.

Starting a company in journalism means far greater and more diverse work than being a freelance journalist. Founders who assume that owning a business opens up new freedom for journalistic work clearly underestimate the effort involved. Administration, marketing, audience development, technology management, revenue model development – activities formerly undertaken by publishing houses – are now the responsibility of the founders. One entrepreneur interviewed in the study – a former journalist – complained: “Please give us…publishing staff! Now we learned what publishers do and how they give us journalists the support we need.” Many of these non-journalistic activities are necessary even if rapid growth, high profits or a profitable “exit” from the company are not the main objectives of their founders.

2. Founders get caught up in role conflicts.

As soon as the editor-in-chief of a startup – as in one of my cases – sells advertising space at the same time, those in charge find themselves in a paradoxical dual role in which journalistic and economic activities are sometimes conducted in parallel. The problem becomes even more acute in those startups where there is no spatial division between departments in physically separated offices because cooperation is mostly organized virtually. Founders set out with good intentions and consider possible role conflicts. The greater the financial pressure, however, the more difficult it is for them to remain true to their own standards: for example, when they are forced to choose between “accepting a large corporate publishing project or running into personal bankruptcy,” as one entrepreneur I talked to accurately puts it.

Founders often don’t raise enough money for news startups. Photo by the_burtons / Getty Images

3. Founders withdraw from journalism.

Journalistic and economic perspectives come into conflict, especially when new streams of revenue are generated in startups. Because some newcomers in Germany seem to be guided by the “glory days” of journalism, they try to transfer the existing business model of print publishers into digital environments. In what follows, they face the same challenges as established media. To uncover new sources of revenue, startups in Germany are testing community models, licensing and commissioning, e-commerce, consulting services, and training. These are not disruptive business model innovations that might have been expected for ventures in other online sectors.

In addition, some of the new revenue streams are only loosely related to journalism. Why, however, should journalism be produced in a company at all, if profits are achieved in new business areas? Such a mindset carries the risk that founders – in a segment pivot – gradually eliminate the labor-intensive and costly production of journalism.

4. Founders do not think from a user’s perspective.

New journalistic startups in Germany are primarily started from a “creator’s perspective” that aims to transfer certain professional standards into digital media. Founders largely conceptualize their businesses from the viewpoint of a journalist. The interests, problems, and needs of potential users, on the other hand, often play only a minor role. However, if users are systematically taken as a starting point, products and revenue models can be developed to suit individual niches and sub-markets. A problem-centered and user-oriented approach at the same time enables founders to permanently question their products and if necessary, to react to a changing market environment.

This approach has become even more relevant in digital and much more volatile environments: Media management is necessarily becoming a practice of experimentation. One of the entrepreneurs interviewed stated: “You can’t ignore the reader these days…This will rarely work immediately or if it does, then only for a short period. Therefore, always try to stay in touch [with your users].”

5. Startups are under-financed.

Even if there is a lack of viable business models in journalism, starting up is very cheap to begin with. “You don’t need much. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a WordPress system,” says one founder. However, the much lower barriers to initiating a media product in the digital world can lead to false incentives. Founders in journalism underestimate the cost drivers in day-to-day business: the difficult acquisition of users and paying customers, continuous observation and communication via an increasing number of new channels such as Facebook, Snapchat, etc. and, above all, the production of high-quality content. This is why startups in German journalism are heavily underfunded.

Subsequently, atypical working relationships arise in some places: Key activities that were previously carried out in the editorial department are now performed by employees who are engaged on a temporary, sometimes voluntary, case-by-case basis. This fundamental dependency on unpaid assistance can contribute to a paradoxical phenomenon: While startups try to counteract the decline of traditional journalism, they actually continue the familiar cost-saving tendencies of established publishing houses and – as an unintended effect – thus even perpetuate this decline.

Entrepreneurs sometimes go down the same path as legacy media in cutting journalism jobs. Photo by jayk7 / Getty Images

6. Teams are too homogeneous.

The teams behind journalism startups are currently too homogeneous. However, innovative teams should be formed to bring together personalities with different backgrounds and complementary expertise. They can tackle the emerging challenges more skillfully and flexibly. Business people could help to raise awareness of the commercial tasks involved in setting up media companies. Programmers and developers could help keep pace with the latest technological solutions, which are now becoming outdated at breakneck speed.

One founder interviewed in the study said: “I don’t really need any journalists. I don’t want to do [the business] with journalists.” Having outsiders in a team can also help to carry over mindsets and practices from other domains that initiate new ways of thinking and novel solutions in journalism.

7. Founders lack relevant contacts and relationships.

Even if complementary skills come together in a startup, founders cannot solve all challenges on their own. From day one, they need support from employees to carry them through the startup phase as well as through later development stages. However, due to the underfunding outlined above, these supporters can rarely be employed on a permanent basis.

The founders in daily journalistic business – as shown above – depend on freelance authors and journalists who work for them, in some cases free of charge. Support from the outside is also needed in design, technology, marketing, sales, legal and tax matters. News startups differ from traditional publishing houses in that they have a network-like, post-industrial form of organization in which numerous activities are disintegrated, i.e. detached from the company and outsourced to a network of partners. The social capital of the founders, their relationships and connections form the basis of this disintegration. If social capital is missing, a journalistic startup is hard to maintain and establish in Germany – no matter how sound the original approach may be.

Conclusion

The objective of my research was to raise awareness of the causes of failure for news startups, help entrepreneurs avoid common mistakes, and help industry experts and investors to realistically estimate the potentials and possibilities of journalistic startups. If the typical flaws gathered here are avoided in the future, we might see news innovation more frequently in Europe.

*Method of the study: I examined 15 ventures from Germany using empirical case study research. I included companies that started independently of established media organizations – i.e. no spin-offs or new business units of traditional publishers or broadcasters – and focused primarily on the production of journalistic content, not its dissemination or distribution.

Christopher Buschow is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK), Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (Germany). His research and teaching are focused on Entrepreneurship in Media Industries. You can follow him on Twitter @chrias.

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Digital realities

Streaming video services were ubiquitous. Hulu is aggressively competing with the biggest players, Amazon and Netflix, for new work. Filmmakers are looking for alternatives to the take-it-or-leave-it Netflix-style contract, and especially looking to hold on to some back-end rights. They would also like some data on performance, which may be even harder to get.

Even with all the new streaming money flowing into the environment, it’s not easier to make a living as a documentary filmmaker. The conclusions of a 2016 Center for Media & Social Impact report are still valid today. As filmmakers Doug Blush, Tom Hardy, Alexandria Bombach, and Bradley Beesley testified, it’s still about renting your equipment out, taking odd jobs, working for hire and maybe teaching in order to fund your passion.

But others are working on changing the ecosystem. Jax Deluca from the National Endowment for the Arts highlighted takeaways from an ongoing, field-wide strategic planning process. Along with film-specific opportunities (think state and local tax incentives) and building representative institutions (the International Documentary Association now has an advocacy staff person), panelists reminded filmmakers to pay attention to larger policy issues, such as net neutrality. Meanwhile, at Google’s diversity summit, Full Color Future, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn pointedly criticized the FCC’s lack of concern for consumers, and asked creators as well as small businesses and activists to make their voices heard on net neutrality.

Still from “People’s Republic of Desire” by Eric Jordan

Sophisticated visual design is becoming essential to documentary filmmaking, whether for transitions, infographics, animations that whisk through exposition, or emphasis. If you had any doubt about its central importance, look at Hao Wu’s “People’s Republic of Desire,” which describes the intense world of internet-famous celebrities’ streaming showrooms in China (on public TV next year). Another important one for visual design is “Take Your Pills,” a Netflix doc by Alison Klayman on the many faces of Adderall culture in a society addicted to speed, efficiency and individualism. One side effect: Filmmakers have never expected to need much quantitative savvy, but with the rise of data visualization, it’s becoming clearer how important that skillset has become.

Virtual reality

VR got its own large display room, with a few spectacular items, including a music video on steroids, “Beethoven’s 5th,” and a magnificent, alarming visit to Greenland’s rapidly melting glaciers, “Greenland Melting.” But many of the documentary VR exhibits were passive-viewing 360 video, VR’s low-hanging fruit. My fave of that kind was a short “VR for Good” project (funded by Oculus, which matches non-profits with filmmakers) from the U.K. on testicular cancer awareness, Ryan Hartsell’s “The Evolution of Testicles.” It deftly used the form to surprise you, make you laugh, and hammer home the message with humor. You get to go up high in an air balloon shaped like a giant pair of testicles. Very, um, ballsy.

Generally, though, it was often hard to parse why the subject matter and narrative wouldn’t work as well if made as a 2D documentary. “Sun Ladies,” for instance, was an absorbing visit to a military unit of Yazidi women fighting ISIS, and could have been a recruiting video; but the VR wasn’t necessary to the telling.

The Dining Room by Rone

Lester Francois’ “Rone,” about an Australian street artist who paints highly crafted female portraits one- and two-stories high on decaying, about-to-be-demolished buildings, did build an environment (with the gaming software Unity) appropriate to the subject matter. His subject not only makes environmental art, but makes it in places that often are then torn down. Viewers could browse in a virtual art gallery in VR, watch a 360 film about the artist, take VR tours of Melbourne street art, and conduct at-will explorations of Rone’s environmental installations. Motherboard used the same format (and also the Unity platform) for a “museum-like” experience of endangered wildlife in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland region, “Living with Jaguars.”

But no matter what, the limitations are still stark. The equipment is clumsy, access is minimal (perhaps 300 people at a festival), and smart-phone/Cardboard viewing lowers the quality. Makers of course are endlessly hopeful that technological wizardry is around the corner that will be more accessible.

Perils of AI

I think the oddest moment I had in the festival was while watching “More Human than Human,” by Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting. It’s about the way AI (artificial intelligence) is all around us and getting big enough to be downright creepy. (Or worse than that: at SXSW Elon Musk went out of his way to warn people to be very afraid.) In the doc, an engineer is demonstrating the speech capacities of the robot he programmed, “Sophie.” To do so, he hits on her…and she winks. Really. I’m still waiting for the robots’ #MeToo moment.

Despite the challenges, SXSW showcased how the documentary form has become an important element of media ecology. Far beyond the “pivot to video” in journalism, documentary is a thriving line for streaming media services, a way of pushing brands, a genre to attract investment to cutting edge media – and of course, as always, a way of calling public attention to important public issues.

This article draws upon research and writing for an article on the SXSW festival in Documentary magazine.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University and the founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact there. She is the author of, among other books, “Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction.” (Oxford).

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Michael Edison Hayden was one of the first foreign journalists on the ground after the Nepalese earthquake in 2015. The “ground was still shaking” when he arrived, he said. He’s reported from the disputed territory between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and gone door-to-door in Phoenix, searching for a mass killer. But, Hayden said, reporting on the far-right white identity movement in the U.S. has been his most traumatic professional experience.

The Newsweek reporter said he has become accustomed to anonymous threats – both veiled and explicit – and has weathered a deluge of menacing messages about his family, including an incident in which his parents’ home address was circulated on far-right chat rooms. Late last year, he saw an anonymous post in an online forum urging someone to throw a molotov cocktail through his parents’ window.

Conversations CPJ had with over a dozen editors, reporters and journalism security experts show that Hayden’s experience is not an outlier. The work takes a concerted emotional toll, and is replete with digital and at times, physical, threats – threats that are especially challenging for freelancers and newsrooms with young or green staff, and without dedicated security and digital experts.

An Expanded Beat

White supremacist movements have always been a force in American political life. But when a number of media-savvy, well-organized leaders of these groups explicitly embraced Donald Trump during the 2016 election, newsrooms began assigning more reporters to the story. The beat took on an added urgency last year, after a man taking part in a protest over the removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters, killing a young woman.

“It’s become more necessary to have reporters trained to be able to cover this movement,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who has written extensively about online harassment, told CPJ. Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor at Teen Vogue, said she is wary of the impact the beat has on reporters. “I’m always asking, who would be the best person to do something like that with the least amount of hard damage? Who has the experience to do something like that and come out unscathed?” she said. “It’s shocking the rate at which people covering this beat aren’t protecting themselves.”

Mukhopadhyay said she sees parallels between the treatment of reporters covering white nationalism and the broader experience of harassment that female writers face. Covering these activists brings a further risk, since reporters often must make direct contact with members of those movements.

A journalist at a major publication, who requested that their name be withheld, told CPJ that the leader of a white supremacist group they were profiling said he had obtained the address of the journalist’s parents. The journalist told CPJ they believe the leader was suggesting that he could turn “the scrutiny of him into scrutiny of me.” The journalist did not receive any reprisal for the reporting but said the threat remains a source of fear.

Coping with Threats, Fear and Guilt

Hayden had a similar experience when reporting on a prominent neo-Nazi figure, Andrew Auernheimer. After Newsweek published the article, followers of Auernheimer encouraged one another on social media to contact Hayden’s elderly parents, the reporter said. He then began to receive online threats that referred to his parents by name.

The journalist said he reported the threats to law enforcement, which took some measures to protect his family, but the incident affected him. “There’s a tremendous amount of guilt,” Hayden said. “By reporting on this, am I going to get someone in my family killed?”

Many legacy and large digital newsrooms have security staff to help prepare reporters but the pressures of digital journalism – compulsively sharing online and directly engaging with critics and readers – and a proliferation of freelancers can be at odds with what some security experts say are best practices.

Jason Reich

“A lot of young reporters haven’t thought about this until we sat them down,” Jason Reich, the global head of security at BuzzFeed, told CPJ. He said he advises reporters to draw a clear line between their personal and professional online presence. Personal information – Instagram posts from a favorite brunch place, family photos, or pictures of partners – should be kept private.

Amid a deluge of intimidating emails, direct messages and calls, a security team can also help a reporter distinguish between threats that are disturbing but unlikely to cross into physical harm, and those that appear to be more worrying.

Newsrooms should expect to be in touch with law enforcement and prepare accordingly, Reich said, adding, “How many editors know which precinct their offices sit in? I would suggest that newsrooms maintain a relationship with federal and local law enforcement – prepare before your reporters get threatened.”

‘A Unique Kind of Trauma’

A reporter covering the far-right beat can receive dozens – often hundreds – of emails, messages, and at times phone calls after publishing a story that rankles activists online. This can be especially brutal for women and minority writers. Hayden, who is of Arab descent, said he is often called the N-word.

Talia Lavin, who is Jewish, told CPJ that after she wrote a piece for The New Yorker about a neo-Nazi website struggling to find a domain to host it, her address was posted online and she began to receive messages from people fantasizing about hurting her. “They don’t see me as an equal, besides calling me a kike whore, they don’t need to be addressing me as a person,” said Lavin.

Accustomed to such harassment online, Lavin said she didn’t alert her editors, and instead tried to move on. But, she says, newsroom leaders should be aware of what the beat could entail. “They should be sensitive to the psychological impact of these stories,” she told CPJ. “It’s a unique kind of trauma.”

Several of the reporters with whom CPJ spoke said it is difficult to navigate the overlapping digital and physical worlds of these movements and the associated risks. Part of this includes being able to determine when threatening language is deployed with a degree of irony, and when it could be serious.

Some reporters feel as if the threats could leap off the internet at any moment. Jared Holt, a reporter for the progressive website Right Wing Watch, told CPJ that after writing a piece about the how white supremacists, or members of the so-called alt-right, infiltrated YouTube, he got the impression he was being followed outside his workplace. The address was previously circulated among anonymous accounts on Twitter in response to his other articles. But, after his YouTube piece, the online threats ratcheted up. Holt said he started to vary his route home after getting the impression that a man was following him. “Fortunately, these people are a lot nastier on the internet, than they are in real life,” he said.

Inciting Mobs on Twitter and Gab

Part of the problem, reporters told CPJ, is that while many in the far right see the media as a necessary megaphone, a story or reporter’s style can incite a mob on Twitter or the right-wing site Gab, a chat network similar to Twitter. “They are very attuned to how much hurt they can cause,” Jack Smith IV, who primarily covers white nationalism for Mic, told CPJ, adding, “There is nothing like the most sophisticated online hate operation the world has ever seen deciding like you are public enemy number one.”

This was the case with Andy Downing from the Columbus Alive, a local paper with a circulation of 35,000. When he and his colleague Joel Oliphint wrote a profile last year of Andrew Anglin, the owner of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer who grew up in a Columbus suburb, Anglin posted photos of the reporters and their families, including children, on his site, alongside images of their homes and vehicles. The two received more than a hundred emailed threats, in addition to physical mail, Downing said. Downing added that he told the local police, who started to keep a closer eye on the journalists’ homes.

“I didn’t sleep well, every sound you hear at night, you’re up like a shot,” Downing said.

Before publishing, Downing said he took steps to protect his privacy: he added two-step verification to his devices and set his social media to private. But, Downing said, he didn’t think to tell his family to do the same, and images from those accounts were eventually circulated, alongside property records that can be obtained via public records searches or by paying one of the many online data-brokers that sell such information.

Downing said he would still approach the published Anglin piece the same way but added that he’d think twice before writing a follow-up. “It is an effective deterrent,” he told CPJ. Reich, the security expert at BuzzFeed, said such reactions are understandable, adding, “I’ve seen reporters paralyzed with self-censorship.”

The Risk at Rallies

Journalists covering the movement’s rallies, which sometimes lead to clashes between white nationalists and anti-fascist (antifa) activists, face further risks. The Press Freedom Tracker (a project of which CPJ is a partner) has documented an assault by an antifa activist on a reporter attempting to take photos at a rally in Berkeley in August year. And reporters who have covered the rallies say the white nationalists sometimes use threatening or intimidating behavior. Luke O’Brien, who covers white nationalism for HuffPost, told CPJ, “Editors in Washington, D.C. and New York, they struggle I think to apprehend the degree of instability there is in these situations.”

Counterprotest at White Lives Matter march in Tennessee. Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

At a “White Lives Matter” event in Tennessee in the fall of 2017, O’Brien says a mostly uneventful rally quickly became dangerous. After he left the protest in a rental car with some antifa activists, a black GMC began following his car aggressively, swerving across double-yellow lines to stay on his tail, O’Brien said. At one point, one of O’Brien’s passengers pulled out a gun. The reporter, who published an account of the incident, said he was eventually able to lose the tail, but the moment helped him clarify the very real risks of his job.

Despite the dangers, editors and reporters told CPJ that there is increased pressure from newsroom leaders to cover white nationalism, in part, because readers find stories about extremists tantalizing, reporting can be done quickly online, and the coverage generates a lot of clicks. But Mukhopadhyay, the editor at Teen Vogue, says that outlets should resist the impulse to view far-right movements as a revenue strategy. “It downplays the importance of this historic moment, to say, that’s a really good click rate for us,” she told CPJ. “And I would like to think most newsrooms feel that way too.”

Avi Asher-Schapiro is CPJ’s U.S. correspondent. Avi is a former staffer at Vice News, International Business Times, and Tribune Media, and an independent investigative reporter who has published in outlets including The Atlantic, The Intercept, and the New York Times.

A version of this post originally appeared on CPJ’s website. The Committee to Protect Journalists is a New York-based, independent, non-profit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. You can learn more at CPJ.org or follow the CPJ on Twitter @pressfreedom or on Facebook here.

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(Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

The 2018 National Day of Unplugging is on March 9-10 from sundown to sundown.

Back in 2009, Baroness Susan Greenfield, a trained neurochemist and member of the House of Lords, was laser-focused on studying changes to the brain and how this knowledge could combat Alzheimer’s. Meanwhile she couldn’t help noticing that another big factor was altering the brains of subjects more broadly: technology.

At that point, she said, she realized that as people began using social and mobile phones more and for far greater periods of time, their attention spans were taking a hit and their dependence on devices was starting to become noticeable.

 So the baroness began speaking out, warning of the dangers of excessive tech usage. Her message, though, was hardly met with agreement and praise.

“At the time I got a lot of flack and criticism,” she said. “Some of it was very personal and heated.”

What makes her feel vindication and satisfaction now, almost a decade later, is that so many others have joined her camp, from academics to policy leaders. There’s a growing movement to examine the negative impacts of tech and to stave off addiction. Experts see a dramatic shift happening: tech reliance has never been higher and, consequently, there’s building evidence that excessive device usage is causing harm and altering our attitudes, brains and behaviors. At the same time, there’s more acknowledgement than ever before, and more attempts to combat it than ever before.

This growing movement includes the creation of dedicated organizations like the Center for Humane Technology — led by former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris and and Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab, as well as a flurry of public discourse and the advent of digital detox therapies and hubs.

Helping Kids Detox 

Baroness Susan Greenfield (Photo by James Elsby / Newspix)

Baroness Greenfield has published books on the subject of tech addiction and spends a good deal of her time giving talks to companies. At the end of each talk, inevitably, she said, someone will come up to her concerned about their child or teenagers over-reliance on tech. 

She said her greatest worry is that, because of tech addiction, kids won’t reach their full potential.

“I can’t see how that [potential] can be realized when people are anxious and worried about their Facebook profiles, where their attention span is short, where they’re spending most of their time in front of a screen instead of talking to other people,” she said. “The person we might end up with is not a creative individual but closer to an emotionally volatile 3-year-old, who’s slightly adversarial and aggressive and hasn’t adapted to live in the real world, but in a virtual world.” 

What Baroness Greenfield suggests to tackle this is not a detox center visit or an extreme stoppage of device usage, but a return to three simple things: eating together as a family without technology around, taking part in physical exercise and reading stories. All will promote neurogenesis of the brain and counteract the negative impact of tech very quickly.

“The brain will adapt and it will reverse,” she said. “I got a lovely email from a father in Australia. With his kids he was able to get them on a bike ride. They started giggling spontaneously. It was music to his ears.”

From Phobia to Addiction

Dr. Larry Rosen of California State University Dominguez Hills (Image courtesy Larry Rosen)

Another expert who studies and shares his learnings about the psychology of tech is Dr. Larry Rosen, professor Emeritus and Past Chair of the Psychology Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

His line of work and area of expertise has exploded over the past decade, Dr. Rosen said, as social media platforms take on more importance — and shares of time — in people’s lives. His work actually began focusing on technophobia, in which someone has a fear or aversion to technology, but that condition is nearly obsolete now, he said.

“We’re no longer scared, just stressed,” he said. Lives are lived online and social media posting means an examined and judged life.

Dr. Rosen said it’s not just the kids either; he sees subjects of all ages becoming slaves to their phones. In his most recent study, he found that his students unlock their phone a whopping 56 times a day for more than 220 minutes. The next time he tests this it could very well creep up to 260 minutes, Dr. Rosen said.

What worries him most is the toll device usage is taking on relationships, and the resulting surge in anxiety. 

“I hesitate to call it an addiction because with an addiction you get pleasure out of the activity,” he said.

Possible Fixes

His recommendation is not to just detox in one fell swoop and then to go back to old habits of excessive phone checking. A better tactic is to take tech breaks constantly during the day.

At first someone may just be able to avoid looking at their phone for a minute. But they can build up a tolerance over time. While taking tech breaks it’s important to also turn off notifications and to let others know that you’ll be offline for a span.

On a bigger scale, Dr. Rosen said he believes it will take drastic action from big tech companies. He likens the problem to tobacco companies and cigarettes.

“It’s their business model but this very business model is causing problems,” he said, noting that more people are paying attention to the problem of tech addiction now. “But we’ve got a ways to go.”

Dena Levitz is the manager of digital strategies for the Newspaper Association of America while also pursuing a master’s in Media Entrepreneurship at American University.

The post Experts Warn Against the Perils of ‘Tech Addiction’ appeared first on MediaShift.

Click the image to read the whole series.

The 2018 National Day of Unplugging is on March 9-10 from sundown to sundown.

Those little networked devices we hold so dear have improved our lives. We have better access to our colleagues and bosses, information and the medical community. Technology has revolutionized the education industry. Plus, our kids benefit from the resources that apps and websites offer both in and out of the classroom.

Digital devices simply make life easier.

But do they make us holistically better as people? Do our relationships with our devices demonstrate health of body, mind and spirit? Most importantly, are our kids truly better off because they grow up with gadgets?

This is a question worth exploring as the National Day of Unplugging nears. A challenge to completely ignore our devices for 24 whole hours, this annual event has become a family affair for many.

Getting well

New research and efforts from Common Sense Media suggest that our kids’ current media habits may not be prudent. Since media is constantly evolving and newly ubiquitous, it’s tough to keep abreast of best practices. Common Sense wants to change that.

A nonprofit seeking to “[help] kids thrive in a world of media and technology,” Common Sense lives by a set of guiding beliefs such as “We believe in media sanity, not censorship,”and “We believe in teaching our kids to be savvy, respectful and responsible media users.”

According to a joint study by Common Sense Media and the Center for Humane Technology, 98 percent of American children under eight have access to a mobile device at their home. Knowing the average amount of time kids spend engaged with screens per week – 50 hours – it’s imperative that we understand the intense hold devices have in the lives of our families.

Currently, American children aren’t enjoying digital well-being, with statistics showing that even two-year-old use of technology can have a negative impact on BMI (body mass index), and many teens are suffering from digital addiction, cyberbullying and even slower brain development. Additionally, YouTube in the hands of a child without supervision can be dangerous, with a huge volume of content being created by bots.

Still, it’s too early to tell exactly how much this constant media exposure affects its youngest users. In the meantime, parents should be aware that overall wellness for their children probably doesn’t include access to technology platforms that “grab their digital identities and keep them clicking,” the joint study says.

(Belisario Roldan/Getty Images)

A solution in the making?

Just a few weeks ago, Facebook asked many of its 2 billion monthly users whether the social media giant is good for the world, and to what extent. Five years ago, that question would not have been a priority for Facebook. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, arguably one of the most impactful companies that has ever existed, is worried about what the tech barrage and access to social media networks might be doing to our kids.

Clearly, there is doubt from media creators about whether all this connectivity is doing us more harm than good. Some tech-exes from Google and Facebook even suggest that those behind our apps and devices have sinister motives.

In light of this budding movement toward digital wellness, The American Academy of Pediatrics offers resources like family media plans and supports an initiative called “#DeviceFreeDinner” to get kids and parents on track.

Setting the pace

As adults, we teach our children how to behave. There are many reasons why our devices demand so much of our attention, but the more aware we are of their addictive qualities, the more power we have to fight our instincts not to put the phone down. My father used to tell me, “You can’t do two things at once” if I tried to listen to music or watch TV while reading or doing homework. That sentiment sounds almost archaic now; we’re a multi-screen generation that regularly checks Instagram on our phone while we respond to emails on the laptop and have Netflix playing in the background. But maybe there’s something to that notion: A step toward digital wellness may very well be that we unplug one device at a time.

The truth is that we don’t need three devices at once. It demonstrates to kids that we get bored easily, we work too hard and we can’t concentrate on a single form of entertainment.

When we decide we’re willing to choose our devices purposefully, we will be healthier because of it. When we commit to limiting our children’s exposure to constant digital stimulation, they’ll be closer to achieving digital wellness.

The National Day of Unplugging is a great place to start easing your family into the transition. Keep the cute photo of your kid to yourself. Set an away message on your email. Prepare a family meal together. See what happens.

Click here for a list of tips for parents on controlling your phone addiction. For more information about Common Sense Media’s “Truth About Tech” campaign, click here.

Unplugging series photo of a beach by George Rose/Getty Images.

Angela Roe calls Rowlett, Texas home. She works in school PR and writes for Deeply Rooted Magazine on the side. She holds a bachelor’s from Texas A&M and a Master of Journalism from UNT. Her favorite things are her husband, dog, listening to music and reading.

The post Why Your Kids Need You To Unplug (At Least a Little Bit) appeared first on MediaShift.

For most of us, it might be hard to remember that far back. That’s why the folks behind the National Day of Unplugging encourage you to take part in “a 24 hour global respite from technology” from sundown-to-sundown on March 9-10.

In the spirit of engaging with the world IRL, MediaShift’s “Unplugging From Technology 2018” series will explore some of the challenges and possibilities available to us when we disconnect, however briefly.

2018 Series Posts

Why Your Kids Need You To Unplug (At Least a Little Bit) by Angela Roe

How J-School Professors, Students Can (and Should) Unplug by Leslie-Jean Thornton

Previous Coverage

2015 Series Posts

> Tips for Unplugging from Tech to Reconnect with Family, by Tanya Schevitz

> Life-Changing Family Ritual: Weekly Unplugging, by Tiffany Shlain

> How to Unplug Your Kids Despite Schools Pushing Tech with Common Core, by Jenny Shank

> How a Plugged-In College Student Spent 24 Hours Without Tech, by Emily Skorin

> Why It Takes More than Unplugging to Solve Modern Stress, by Amanda Enayati

> An Experiment in International Travel and Disconnecting from Tech, by Dena Levitz

2014 Posts

> Celebrate Day of Unplugging with Nap-In, Typewriters, Live Music, by Angela Washeck

> Tips for Unplugging and What to Do Once You Do, by Tanya Schevitz

> How Do You Unplug When You Live and Work Online? by Dena Levitz

> A Special Mediatwits Podcast on Unplugging, by the Mediatwits

More Reading

Check out these previous MediaShift articles about unplugging and taking Technology Sabbaths:

> Tips for Unplugging from Tech to Reconnect with Family, by Tanya Schevitz

> Life-Changing Family Ritual: Weekly Unplugging, by Tiffany Shlain

> How to Unplug Your Kids Despite Schools Pushing Tech with Common Core, by Jenny Shank

> How a Plugged-In College Student Spent 24 Hours Without Tech, by Emily Skorin

> Why It Takes More than Unplugging to Solve Modern Stress, by Amanda Enayati

> An Experiment in International Travel and Disconnecting from Tech, by Dena Levitz

2014 Posts

> Celebrate Day of Unplugging with Nap-In, Typewriters, Live Music, by Angela Washeck

> Tips for Unplugging and What to Do Once You Do, by Tanya Schevitz

> How Do You Unplug When You Live and Work Online? by Dena Levitz

> A Special Mediatwits Podcast on Unplugging, by the Mediatwits

More Reading

Check out these previous MediaShift articles about unplugging and taking Technology Sabbaths:

The post Special Series: Unplugging From Technology 2018 appeared first on MediaShift.

Questions of ethics and transparency are growing among journalists and scholars, as media companies increasingly experiment with the power of VR and augmented reality (AR.) Both technological advances allow users to interact personally with news reports via the creation of virtual scenes viewed through headsets.

Now that misinformation is increasingly a problem for the media industry, the challenge for VR journalism is to prevent dishonest organizations and individuals from producing fake VR work and passing it off as real. Meanwhile, the high cost of creating immersive journalism is cause for concern among some media ethicists.

Is VR a Fad or the Future?

“Immersive journalism,” which brings AR or VR to journalism, was symbolically born on a chilly day in January 2012 at the Sundance Film Festival when documentary journalist Nonny de la Peña presented Hunger in Los Angeles, about the lack of food in some Los Angeles neighborhoods. Reporters described audiences there as “visibly affected.” Simply by putting on a headset, viewers could leave behind a snowy day in Park City and be transported to a warm day at a food bank in downtown L.A.

At that point, the term “VR journalism” was only used by technologists and a small circle of tech journalists pioneering efforts in the field. That August, the small startup Oculus Rift launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $2.5 million to develop its second prototype VR headset. Two years later, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. By early 2016, immersive reporting was showing up in newsrooms across the United States, including The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, The Guardian, AP.

And some projections suggest that VR could have staying power. According to UK-based consulting company CCS Insight, the global VR market will be worth over $9 billion by 2021. Goldman Sachs projects that  the combined global economic impact of VR and augmented reality (AR) will grow to $80 billion by 2025 (up from $2.5 billion in 2016).

The Ethics of VR

James Pallot, VR storytelling pioneer and co-founder of the Emblematic Group with de la Peña, faced an ethical dilemma.

In 2017, Emblematic had worked with PBS’ Frontline to create a climate change story called Greenland Melting, about the Greenland Ice Cap. The report used a hologram of the scientist Eric Rignot (professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a scientist at NASA) to narrate the story.

“To make the hologram, we had to bring [Rignot] to our lab in L.A.,” Pallot said in an email interview. “But we had to debate: should we wear normal clothes for the interview, since he was in L.A.? Or should he dress up in his cold-weather gear, so it would look more ‘realistic’ when you see him standing on the ice?” They ended up dressing Rignot in a light jacket.

“It may sound like a trivial question but it goes to the heart of the matter. VR has an incredible power to make you feel like you are actually ‘present’ in a different place, and you must be careful not to exploit that illusion, to let the viewer know what is real and what isn’t, and what was the process to create this illusion,” Pallot added.

In 2016, philosophy professors Michael Madary and Thomas Metzinger published a paper titled Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct. This paper pointed out that VR is a “powerful form of both mental and behavioral manipulation” that could be tricky, “especially when commercial, political, religious, or governmental interests are behind the creation and maintenance of the virtual worlds.”

“We need more research into the psychological effects of immersive experiences, especially for children,” Madary told me. “We should inform consumers that we do not yet understand the effects of long-term immersion,” such as “whether VR can have an influence on their behavior after leaving the virtual world.”

VR can be a journalistic tool that allows consumers to transcend time and space. The Displaced, for example, is a VR documentary from 2015 produced by The New York Times Magazine. It depicts the lives of three young children refugee in Syria, Ukraine and South Sudan and allows viewers to feel like they’re present with the children. Or On the Brink of Famine, a 2016 documentary from PBS Frontline and The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, about a village in South Sudan dealing with a hunger crisis.

Douglas Rushkoff, shown here the 2013 SXSW Festival, believes VR and journalism are incompatible. (Photo by Waytao Shing/Getty Images for SXSW)

But Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist and an outspoken critic of Silicon Valley, argues that those types of VR documentaries do not qualify as journalism at all. “I think immersive media has a really limited purpose, certainly in terms of journalism and informing people. I guess you can make people feel certain ways by immersing them in certain kinds of worlds. But in most of these experiences you are just watching people who can’t see you, so in some ways it exacerbates the sense of power that privileged people can feel over less privileged people.”

VR and Fake News

One of the most troubling threats from the incursion of VR into journalism is the possibility that  fake news organizations and trolls might start producing VR fake news.

Increasingly, media theorists such as the interdisciplinary scientist Jaron Lanier and the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, Ethan Zuckerman, are calling for VR journalists to create a code of ethics.

Tom Kent — president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. government-funded broadcasting organization — was one of the first journalists who talked about the ethical challenges of VR reporting. In a 2015 Medium post, he opened the debate on ethics in VR and journalism, with a focus on fake news, long before the 2016 presidential election.

“In a few years, it may well be that virtual reality will begin to simulate news events using images of newsmakers that will be indistinguishable from the actual people,” Kent told me recently. For example, “a VR recreation of a scene involving Putin or Obama, maybe so accurate you can’t tell whether that’s the real Putin, or the real Obama, or whether they were virtually recreated.”

“People who do VR journalism need to have an ethical code, and they need to publish that code, and they need to explain their ethics,” added Kent. For example, viewers need to know if the action on the VR piece is scripted or not and whether the dialogue was captured from a real setting or scripted.

VR Can’t Support Itself Financially

A 2017 report by the Reuters Institute, VR for News: The New Reality?, delves into the cost of VR journalism. Productions are still expensive, resulting in a lack of quality content, which in turn negatively affects the potential for ad revenue, the report said.

Another study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that “The cost of highly produced VR work would seem to have implications for viable business models in the short term. If the best cost comparison is with high-end TV or console game production, it is likely that currently producers and commissioners will need to produce high-end journalistic VR without an expectation of direct cost recovery from audiences or advertisers.”

Rushkoff considers VR to be nothing more than advertising, and says it cannot be part of quality journalism. “Once journalism changed from something that people purchase in order to be informed to something that advertisers pay for in order to get people’s attention,” Rushkoff said, “then all the technologies that have been deployed for journalism have way more to do with helping advertisers to spread their message than informing people.”

The real hope for VR journalism is that newsrooms could create experiences based on reality and with the same ethics of photojournalism: photos aren’t manipulated, and photographers only show what they see. In order to do so, VR journalism has to become financially independent. If it must rely solely on sponsorship from big companies to survive, Rushkoff might be proven correct.

Angelo Paura is an Italian journalist based in New York, working with Il Sole 24 Ore Usa. He writes for major Italian magazines. He studied immersive journalism for a Masters in social journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is focused mostly on digital cultures, new media, technology and politics. He loves empty spaces, walks on the slackline, mezcal and drawing monsters. Reach him at angelo.paura@ilsole24ore.us or @angelopaura.

The post The Ethical Challenges of Immersive Journalism appeared first on MediaShift.

The International Women’s Media Foundation in partnership with TrollBusters and Dr. Michelle Ferrier, and supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, is conducting a poll that will measure for the first time the scope and impact of online attacks in the United States on individual journalists and news they produce. The data collected in the study will be used to provide recommendations to both media organizations and journalists working in this environment to mitigate the impact of online harassment.

We are asking journalists for their help by participating in the survey. Only journalists can provide valuable feedback on key issues they face in today’s media landscape, be it on the ground or online. We are aiming for at least 1,000 responses, which will be completely anonymous. The survey takes about ten minutes to complete and will provide data that will inform future organizational policies and programs to support journalists to work more safely online. U.S.-based journalists can complete the survey by clicking here.

Misogyny Can Deter Expression

Recent Gallup Poll findings show a downward trend in Americans’ trust in the media over the past few decades, due mostly because of increasing perceptions of bias in news reporting. This distrust and animosity is playing out in the physical and digital world. There is ample anecdotal evidence suggesting that, like sexual harassment in the workplace, female journalists also bear the brunt of online attacks. The survey is intended to provide the first set of empirical data. In the case of women writers, misogynistic attacks can create a chilling effect that silences their voices online and create a deterrent to freedom of expression that ultimately erodes the freedom of the press. The effect is accentuated for minorities and those from the LGBTQI communities.

In the nearly 30 years of its existence, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) has repeatedly heard of aggressions perpetrated against remarkably brave journalists in all corners of the world. These are often the first women in their newsrooms, the first to push into the ranks of leadership, and the first to be attacked just because of their gender. In the IWMF’s 2015 report “Violence and Harassment against Women in the News Media: A Global Picture,” two-thirds of those surveyed experienced acts of intimidation, threats and abuse, and one-fifth had experienced digital hacking or electronic monitoring.

We Need More Data

We are now seeing an increased demand for attention to digital security to reduce risks; the IWMF regularly hears anecdotes and testimonials of female journalists experiencing online harassment. However, at this point, there are few tools available to help journalists protect themselves online.

The data collected through this study will enable us to truly understand the size and scope of the problem, which is essential to mounting an effective response and supporting female journalists who live with this threat. The study will update the data on the scale and scope of online abuse against journalists. It will enable deeper insights into how online trolling – which is almost always violent or sexualized in nature when directed at women – is aimed at silencing and censoring female journalists.

While some news organizations have policies on digital security, many organizations do not yet have digital security training or policies in place to support the targets of such attacks. In addition, there is little legislation that adequately address digital harassment; in many cases, law enforcement agencies simply issue a report and take no further action. Digital harassment against women journalists in particular has kept some journalists from pursuing a story.

At the 2017 Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain, the IWMF, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and TrollBusters facilitated an active discussion on the threats and dangers faced online by women journalists. From this, and as a result of interviews with a range of media professionals around the world, the IWMF developed a list of next steps and guidelines for those interested in the issue of journalist’s online safety. We will be continuing the discussion at the upcoming 2018 Internet Freedom Festival, again next week in Valencia.

The impact of online harassment is the same as the impact of physical harassment, namely intimidation inhibits women journalists from doing their jobs. As one attendee stated at the 2017 conference, ending the impunity for crimes against journalists “should be a top priority of civil society, professional organizations, governments and multilateral institutions worldwide.”

What Needs to Happen

The industry can promote as many good practices and sanctions as possible, but journalist safety will not improve without focused attention on the issue from governments demonstrating a real commitment to journalist safety. Specifically, attendees recommended improving monitoring and tracking mechanisms for states’ reporting on journalist safety; pushing for greater transparency in the treatment of and value of the press; and focusing on diplomatic and political attention to the issue.

We need to create a holistic culture of safety, embedded within all levels of news organizations. As one attendee stated, “It’s not enough that a freelancer is aware, it’s not enough that an editor is aware, they both need to be aware. It’s a culture of safety. Every actor, every stakeholder, needs to be in line in making that a priority.”

For the last five years the IWMF has focused extensively on increased training and access to resources for journalists, including digital security training, mental health and trauma training and access to emergency assistance. We encourage news organizations to subsidize or cover hostile environments and first aid training (HEFAT) for all journalists.

There is a need for increased security protocols for journalists working in hostile environments or covering dangerous topics. Most journalists who are killed or injured while reporting are local journalists and may be covering crime, corruption or business practices; media professionals therefore recommend an increase in both physical and digital security training at the local level.

The IWMF encourages all professionals related to the media industry to be actively working to make journalists safer. For example, media organizations should conduct risk assessments (many of which have no cost) before dispatching journalists, whether staffed, freelancers or local; and should have standard processes, training and toolkits. Journalism schools should include safety training, especially digital safety; educate their students to expect and demand safe environments from their employers; and include courses on international laws and human rights standards, as well as national laws and the cultural, ethnic, religious, historical and political relations of the states or regions in which they may be reporting.

The media industry must take more responsibility for those who are involved but not directly related to them, including fixers and drivers. It is these individuals who are the front line in ensuring journalist safety when operating away from their home countries.

To ensure the best implementation of journalist safety measures, we need to collaborate and share results and best industry practices. Journalists need to participate by providing the data that will be used to support them.

Portions of this story were originally published in “New Challenges to Freedom of Expression: Counting Online Abuse of Female Journalists, OSCE.”

Elisa Lees Munoz is Executive Director of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

The post How Digital Harassment of Female Journalists Threatens Freedom of Expression appeared first on MediaShift.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday charged 13 Russians with meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The Russians’ primary tool for meddling was social media, which they used to promote Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and denigrate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The indictment charges that the Russians violated U.S. laws that forbid foreigners from spending money to influence U.S. elections.

The charges, and the confirmation that the Russians had used social media in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, is likely to fuel the call for government regulation of Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets. When tweets and posts can hurt democracy, America should do something, right?

Wrong.

Late last year, Congress grilled Twitter, Facebook and Google about their role in allowing foreign interests to place ads and articles intended to divide the electorate and spread false information during the 2016 election.

People in and out of government are calling for federal regulation of social media.

Lay down some rules, the thinking goes, and we would be able to prevent the infestation – now alleged in Friday’s indictment – of bots and fake news from our news feeds and ads. Democracy would be saved – or, at least, foreign interference in our elections kept in check.

However, as someone who has studied and taught the First Amendment for decades, I would argue that if such regulations were enacted, the main victims would be not the purveyors of fake news, but our freedom of expression. In my view, the result would do far more damage to our democracy than any foreign misinformation campaign ever could.

Free speech being attacked from all sides

The First Amendment is under a lot of duress.

Arguably, it’s been that way since the Supreme Court’s “clear and present danger” decision in 1919, which spelled out when limits on free speech could be lawful. It not only held that the government had an obligation to stop someone from “falsely shouting fire in a theater,” but also opened the gates to all manner of government violations of the First Amendment injunction that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

These range from the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine,” which was upheld by the Supreme Court, that required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced way (in the FCC’s view), to the FCC’s warning to radio broadcasters in 1971 not to play songs that glorified drug use, which actually had the effect of limiting the airplay of songs that critiqued drug culture.

Indeed, with the exception of Supreme Court decisions in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971 and the Communications Decency Act in 1997, the American government has systematically increased its control of media.

The situation has gotten much worse over the past year. President Trump has tweeted about withholding the licenses of NBC affiliates and lashed out at other media not to his liking.

Although Trump’s bluster about limiting and punishing media may be easy enough to deride, the fact that he is in the White House – and has the ability to appoint FCC commissioners – means his threats must be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, a theory of philosopher Karl Popper – the “paradox of tolerance” – is being widely cited as a justification for outlawing hate speech, notwithstanding the First Amendment. From his 1945 book “The Open Society and its Enemies,” it says that tolerance defeats itself when it permits intolerant speech.

I studied Popper extensively while researching my first book, an anthology of essays about Popper’s work. There are many aspects of Popper’s philosophy to admire, but I don’t believe the “paradox of tolerance” is among them.

To ban hate speech could turn our tolerant, democratic society into precisely the kind of state that hate speech is calling for: It could open up an opportunity for all sorts of speech to be dubbed “hate speech.”

A slippery slope

When regulating fake news on social media sites, there’s the danger of the same sort of phenomenon taking place. And it’s exactly why the well-meaning hue-and-cry that the government needs to intervene and forbid social media sites from disseminating fake news or allowing accounts that are actually bots is so dangerous.

Fake news is nothing new. Centuries ago, anti-Semitic publications spread rumors that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood on holidays.

Over the past two years, social media have increased the amplitude and reach of fake news. But there’s also been the ascension of a political figure – Trump – who has turned the tables by labeling any unwelcome news as “fake.”

Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process are displayed as representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 1.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

The latter should be more than enough reason to reject calls for government censorship of fake news. After all, who’s to say a government that determines what’s “fake” won’t simply follow Trump’s lead, and suppress critical and truthful content under the guise that it’s fake?

Instead, social media networks could develop and implement algorithms for identifying and removing fake news by marshaling the same engines that spread fake news in the first place. These algorithms would not be administered by the government; rather, Facebook and other social media would be responsible.

Twitter has already made considerable progress flagging and removing accounts that spread Islamic State propaganda. There’s no reason to think that the same process can’t be applied to Russian bots seeking to inflame political discord and therein damage America’s political system.

Such self-regulation is in the best interest of these media companies. It would increase the confidence of their users in what they encounter online. It would also have the added benefit of keeping government regulators at bay.

In the end, the ultimate antidote to fake news and bots is the rationality of the human mind.

As John Milton famously urged in his “Areopagitica,” if you let truth and falsity fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, human rationality will most likely choose the truth. Regulating what can enter that marketplace could impair or destroy this process, by inadvertently keeping truth from public awareness.

Rational thinking’s ability to identify fake news is more than a Miltonian ideal: It’s been demonstrated in a carefully conducted 2015 experiment. When given a small financial incentive, the subjects were able to identify fake news as fake, even if the fake news supported the political views of the subjects.

Indeed, rationality is deeply implicit in democracy itself. You can’t have the latter without the former.

The key in combating fake news and kindred attacks on our body politic is to give our rationality maximum access to all information, including the truth. And in my view, this means resisting any attempts by government to limit the information that reaches us.

Paul Levinson is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 28, 2017. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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