Annual Report 2018–2019 Contents

Letter from the Director 2 2018–2019 Highlights 4 Areas of Focus Technology and Social Change Research Project 6 Misinformation Research 8 Digital Platforms and Democracy 10 News Quality Journalist’s Resource 12 The Goldsmith Awards 15 News Sustainability 18 Race & Equity 20 Events Annual Lectures 22 Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics 23 Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press 33 Speaker Series 41 The Student Experience 43 Fellows 45 Staff, Faculty, Board, and Supporters 47 From the Director

Like the air we breathe and the water we drink, the information we consume sustains the health of the body politic. Good information nourishes democracy; bad information poisons it. The mission of the Shorenstein Center is to support and protect the information ecosystem. This means promoting access to reliable information through our work with journalists, policymakers, civil society, and scholars, while also slowing the spread of bad information, from hate speech to “fake news” to all kinds of distortion and media manipulation.

The public square has always had to contend with liars, propagandists, dividers, and demagogues. But the tools for creating toxic information are more powerful and widely available than ever before, and the effects more dangerous. How our generation responds to threats we did not foresee, fueled by technologies we have not contained, is the central challenge of our age. How do journalists cover the impact of misinformation without spreading it further? How do technology companies, with no experience in exercising editorial judgment and a commercial interest against trying, manage their vast responsibilities? How do policymakers map the boundaries in media territory that is foreign to them? As news deserts grow across the country, how do we ensure that people have access to information they can trust? What does a “free press” do if its business model collapses?

This year, our faculty, fellows, researchers, students, and staff have explored these questions and more, at a time when newsrooms are under daily assault and one institution after another sees public faith dissolving. A new finding from a Pew Research Center study leapt out at me: “Indeed, more Americans view made-up news as a very big problem for the country than identify terrorism, illegal immigration, racism, and sexism that way. Additionally, nearly seven in ten U.S. adults (68%) say made-up news and information greatly impacts Americans’ confidence in government institutions, and roughly half (54%) say it is having a major impact on our confidence in each other.”

In the report that follows, we share the work we’ve done to help restore that confidence. It is not enough to analyze the problem; this is a moment for action and accountability, for a commitment to solving problems that in many cases didn’t exist five years ago. Our faculty and fellows are briefing members of Congress and their staffs on how to regulate technology companies; researching media manipulation and training journalists and scholars in how to fight it;

2 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 3 analyzing institutional anti-racism initiatives to assess their effectiveness; tracking how extremism and disinformation spread online; developing tools to help newsrooms engage audiences; and providing journalists and policymakers access to top academic research in comprehensible form to buttress the bridge between theory and practice.

Through our regular convenings and major events such as the T.H. White and Salant Lectures and the Goldsmith awards, we highlight the work of both journalists and top academics who are operating on the front lines of this new information battlefield. At a time when the core values of a free press are under threat, the Center collects and shares the best ideas for protecting essential democratic principles.

“The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy,” Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.” She was talking about our physical environment, but much the same could be said for our information environment at this moment of constant disruption. Protecting that environment requires commitment, creativity, and collaboration. As a research center, we welcome the best thinkers and practitioners in media, law, technology, politics, policy, and social enterprise. I am grateful for the vision and energy that Nicco Mele brought to this task in his years as director, with the encouragement of a superb Advisory Board. The Center was also extremely fortunate last summer to welcome Setti Warren as Executive Director; every day I am impressed by how the skills he honed in law school, the navy, the White House, the campaign trail, and the Newton mayor’s office serve the mission of this center and the success of its talented staff. This work would not be possible without the faith and support of the Shorenstein family, our advisors and donors, and our partners and collaborators across Harvard and beyond as we work to make sure the best ideas, the most promising solutions, and the most valuable insights are shared by all those working for democracy’s renewal.

Nancy Gibbs

2 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 3 2018–2019 Highlights

Over 30 on-campus speakers and other events

23 Fellows and Post-Docs joined the Center community for part or all of the year

Nearly Center experts featured in 2.5 major TV, radio, million reads print, and digital of Shorenstein media outlets Center content across all of the Center’s websites

4 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 5 Setti Warren 17 becomes the white papers Center’s new and working Executive Director papers published

Nancy Gibbs is named 50,000 the new Center Director email subscribers and Twitter followers of Journalist’s Resource

150Record submissions for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism

4 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 5 Areas of Focus

Technology and Social Change Research Project

The Internet has opened vast new territory for global information warfare. Savvy media manipulators, from hackers to marketers, lone actors, activists, and government spies, manipulate media usually during breaking news events in order to polarize public conversation or further hoaxes.

The Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center is a new initiative to research media manipulation and disinformation campaigns by conducting 100 case studies and training 100 new researchers,

6 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 7 including academics, journalists, and members of civil Events society, in the emerging field of Critical Internet Studies. Media Appearances Led by Dr. Joan Donovan, a sociologist studying Dr. Joan Donovan appears widely in print, television, and communication technology, social movements, and media radio journalism as an expert covering topics such as history, The Technology and Social Change Research white supremacy, adversarial media movements, and Project has been building a research staff and base at the media manipulation. She is a sought-after voice in the Shorenstein Center since early 2019. Their first major aftermath of white supremacist violence globally, and convening, in June 2019, brought together journalists, civil advocates for journalists to practice “strategic silence,” society members, and academic experts to discuss how bad including not publishing manifestos and other extremist actors are using the Internet to further hate content from violent actors. She also provides expertise movements. Brian Friedberg, the senior researcher on the on identifying and combating “deep fake,” “cheap fake,” project, has been examining visual culture, social media, and other instances of manipulated video, audio, and and movements for over a decade. photographic media online.

The Technology and Social Change Research Project team, June 2019 Publications Media Manipulation Casebook The Technology and Social Change Research Project will be producing a large set of case studies on media manipulation events, with the aim of becoming the go-to resource for academics, journalists, and policymakers who want to learn more about this issue. They are just getting started on the case studies, and we anticipate this will be a major piece of scholarship from the Center in the coming years.

6 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 7 Areas of Focus

Misinformation Research

Both broad and focused study of online mis- and disinformation remains a core focus of the Shorenstein Center’s research. In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections the Information Disorder Project monitored and reported on instances of mis- and disinformation in the news. Their reports can all be found online at shorensteincenter.org/ category/id-lab-reports/.

Irene Pasquetto, a post-doctoral researcher who recently completed her PhD in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, joined the Center this year to study misinformation and start a new peer-reviewed journal on the subject. The Harvard Kennedy Misinformation Review, with guidance from Kalb Professor of Global Communications Matthew Baum, will publish short, accessible articles by leading academics working in the field of misinformation research. The journal will be published online in open- access format, and will be both peer-reviewed and edited with an eye toward making the research understandable for journalists, policymakers, and other non-academic interested parties.

8 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 9 Professor Matthew Baum continues his work researching Publications misinformation. Along with Irene Pasquetto and Researcher Nic Dias, he has been studying the spread of The Fight against Disinformation in the U.S.: A Landscape Analysis mis- and disinformation over mobile instant messenger apps including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This October 24, 2018 study is taking a multi-national, multi-disciplinary By Heidi Legg, Director of Special Projects at the approach to understanding how misinformation spreads Shorenstein Center, and Joe Kerwin, Harvard College on these platforms, and what can be done to stop it. student Digital Deceit II: A Policy Agenda to Fight In late 2018 Shorenstein Center’s Special Projects Director Misinformation on the Internet Heidi Legg, along with two Harvard College students, published a landscape review of misinformation efforts in October 2, 2018 the U.S., including research projects, funders, and labs. By Dipayan Gosh, Research Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and Ben Scott, Director of Policy & Advocacy, Omidyar Network

Matthew Baum, Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and resident Shorenstein Center faculty member specializing in misinfor- mation, teaches a course with Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard Zeckhauser.

8 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 9 Areas of Focus

Members of the Digital Platforms and Democracy team and other experts brief congressional staffers in Washington, D.C. Digital Platforms and Democracy

The Center’s Digital Platforms and Democracy Project was prolific this year in producing white papers and convening leading government and civil society figures to discuss potential pathways to regulating big technology platforms like Facebook and Google.

The team includes former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Dipayan Ghosh, Philip Verveer, and Gene Kimmelman—all top experts in the fields of digital privacy and regulating the consumer communications industry and big technology companies.

10 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 11 Events Big Tech and Democracy: The Critical Role of Congress April 23, 2019 Media Appearances By Staff and Fellows of the Shorenstein Center’s Digital Dr. Dipayan Ghosh writes and speaks often on the Platforms and Democracy Project and the Belfer Center’s impacts of big tech on society and the need for regulation. Technology and Public Purpose Project He has appeared on CNBC and MSNBC; he has been quoted in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Platform Accountability: An Interim Measure and the Associated Press; and his writing has been April 15, 2019 published this year in the New York Times and Harvard By Philip Verveer, Visiting Fellow, Shorenstein Center on Business Review, among other prominent publications. Media, Politics and Public Policy

Congressional Briefing Platform Accountability and Contemporary In collaboration with the Belfer Center’s Technology Competition Law: Practical Considerations and Public Purpose Project, the Digital Platforms and November 20, 2018 Democracy team hosted a workshop for key By Philip Verveer, Visiting Fellow, Shorenstein Center on Congressional office staffers to discuss and identify Media, Politics and Public Policy policy approaches to the problems presented by big tech The Root of the Matter: Data and Duty platforms. The workshop was well attended and staff November 1, 2018 members from both House and Senate offices expressed By Tom Wheeler, Senior Research Fellow, Shorenstein deep interest in issues of platform accountability and Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and regulation. The workshop helped position the Center’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government Digital Platforms and Democracy Project as a leading at Harvard Kennedy School. 31st Chairman of the voice on these topics, and was followed by significant Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 2013–2017 steps forward in Congress’s approach to big tech. Digital Deceit II: A Policy Agenda to Fight Misinformation on the Internet Publications October 2, 2018 The Ethical Machine By Dipayan Gosh, Research Fellow at the Shorenstein Dipayan Ghosh edited an online anthology of essays Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and Ben on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence Scott, Director of Policy & Advocacy, Omidyar Network (AI) and algorithms, called The Ethical Machine Time to Fix It: Developing Rules for Internet Capitalism (ai.shorensteincenter.org). It includes essays on the ethics August 16, 2018 of algorithms in the criminal justice system, public By Tom Wheeler, Senior Research Fellow, Shorenstein assistance programs, marketing, and government Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and administration, among many other topics. It is a Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government fascinating and sobering snapshot of current thinking on at Harvard Kennedy School the deep systematic impacts of technology in our world.

10 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 11 Areas of Focus: News Quality

Journalist’s Resource

Journalist’s Resource (journalistsresource.org) is a long-running project of the Shorenstein Center aimed at bridging the gap between journalistic practice and academic research. Its primary goal is helping journalists improve their work by relying more often on scientific evidence and high-quality peer- reviewed studies. The team publishes multiple posts each week, in several content categories including curated roundups and accessible summaries of academic studies, tip sheets on how to understand and report on research and government data, and advice for improving coverage of communities that are commonly misunderstood by the media.

This year JR grew in audience, staff, and coverage. They expanded their team by hiring a new economic research reporter and actively collaborated with other teams within the Shorenstein Center. For example, JR teamed up with the Goldsmith Awards to produce a series of interviews with the finalists, in the interest of giving a behind-the-scenes explanation of the process, tools, data, and legwork it takes to create an important piece of investigative journalism. The popular and informative series can be found at journalistsresource.org/tag/goldsmith-finalists-2019/.

12 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 13 Journalistsresource.org was read by about two million The team also started to participate in two encouraging visitors this year, and its email list and Twitter account journalism trends: solutions journalism and newsroom reached more than 50,000 subscribers each. Journalists collaborations. JR curated research and co-authored and others frequently cite JR pieces on Twitter as a way to pieces with the Burlington Free Press through a substantiate or refute broad claims in the noisy collaboration with the Solutions Journalism Network, for Twittersphere. Traffic to the site from social media grew instance, and served as the research arm for multiple by 50% over the previous year, indicating that JR’s collaborative journalism projects. fact-based content can increasingly be seen as an antidote to online misinformation.

Sample Articles The Four-Day School Week: Research behind Covering Poverty: What to Avoid and How to Get It the Trend This tip sheet, authored by two journalists who grew up To save money and help with teacher recruitment, poor, was created to help newsrooms do a better job numerous school districts in the United States have covering poverty and people with limited resources. The allowed at least some of their schools to adopt a four-day piece received attention and follow-up press from several week. We curated and summarized several studies and journalism news sites, including Nieman Lab, Poynter, government reports to help journalists understand the and the American Press Institute. research behind the trend. Our research roundup was 7 Big Things You Should Know about the Monthly cited and linked in articles on multiple news sites Jobs Report including NPR’s On Point and Yahoo! Finance. Each month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases The Role Jobs Play in Opioid Addiction Recovery its employment situation report, which is widely covered In the interest of acting as the research arm of a solutions in the media—but often without much context. With journalism project, Journalist’s Resource produced this BLS methodology explanations, infographics, and research roundup in collaboration with the Burlington research summaries, we provided a deep dive into seven Free Press, where this piece first appeared as part of the facts journalists should know before covering the jobs newspaper’s series of stories about opioid recovery. report. Fact #1: the data are based on surveys, not actual job counts.

12 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 13 2019 Goldsmith Prize Winner The Dallas Morning News J. David McSwane and Andrew Chavez Pain and Profit 2018–2019 Annual Report // 15 News Quality The Goldsmith Awards

The annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative U.S. immigration detention centers. Since then, child Reporting honors investigative reporting that best detention did continue, and ProPublica continues to promotes more effective and ethical conduct of shine a light on the U.S. Government’s immigration government, the making of public policy, or the practice practices and policies. of politics. The winner receives $25,000, and the finalists • Consequences for Alabama’s corrupt sheriff. The receive $10,000. While the subject can address issues of “beach house” sheriff who was the focus of Connor foreign policy, a submission qualifies only if it has an Sheets’ reporting lost his next election. He faces steep impact on public policy in the United States at the consequences for embezzling county funds, national, regional, or local level. inadequate care of people imprisoned in his jurisdiction, and abusive behavior toward journalists We thank the Goldsmith Fund of the Greenfield and others. Foundation for the annual grant to the Center that • Accountability and transparency for campaign 2019 Goldsmith Prize Winner makes the Goldsmith Awards Program possible. officials who broke the law. Investigations into the This year’s winners and finalists are listed on the facing Trump campaign’s operations continue, and the Wall and following pages. The impacts of their reporting are Street Journal’s reporting on cover-ups and pay-offs significant, and in many cases ongoing. by associates of the campaign landed several former advisors in court, or in jail. • Vulnerable children in Texas are getting better care. • The criminal justice system in Elkhart, Indiana, The Texas legislature is working on a number of bills is held to a higher standard. Officers faced to overhaul the state’s medicare system. investigations and removal from their jobs as a • Children in Philadelphia are safer, and healthier, at result of the South Bend Tribune and ProPublica’s school. The state and city governments are enacting investigations into widespread abuse by members new laws and have pledged funding to clean up of the force. Philadelphia’s toxic schools. • Young victims of human trafficking no longer • Detention of children at the U.S. border receives ignored. The Department of Justice’s Anti-Human widespread condemnation. The U.S. Government Trafficking division is using “Trafficked in announced an end to the Zero Tolerance policy in America” to teach agents about how to identify and the aftermath of ProPublica releasing the tape that track people trafficked into legal jobs in the U.S. the Goldsmith-finalist team received of children in agriculture industry.

2018–2019 Annual Report // 15 2019 Goldsmith Prize Finalists

Alabama Media Group The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at The Philadelphia Inquirer Connor Sheets UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman, Dylan Purcell, Alabama’s “Beach House Sheriff” and FRONTLINE, PBS Jessica Griffin, Garland Potts Daffodil Altan, Andrés Cediel, Abbie VanSickle Toxic City: Sick Schools Trafficked in America

ProPublica South Bend Tribune and ProPublica The Wall Street Journal Ginger Thompson, Michael Grabell, Topher Sanders, Christian Sheckler, Ken Armstrong Michael Rothfeld, Joe Palazzolo, Nicole Hong, Melissa Sanchez, Duaa Eldeib, Jodi S. Cohen, Alex Criminal Justice in Elkhart, Indiana Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Rebecca Ballhaus, Mierjeski, Claire Perlman, Ken Schwencke, Adriana Alexandra Berzon, Lukas I. Alpert, Michael Gallardo, and ProPublica staff Siconolfi, Carmel Lobello, Shelby Holliday, Jarrard Zero Tolerance Cole, Anthony Galloway, Joel Eastwood Trump’s Hush Money

2019 Book Awards

Academic Trade

Matthew Hindman Margaret E. Roberts Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Censored: Distraction and Diversion inside China’s How Democracies Die Monopolies and Undermines Democracy Great Firewall Crown Publishing Princeton University Press Princeton University Press

16 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 17 Goldsmith Career Award Marty Baron Executive Editor The Washington Post 16 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 17 Areas of Focus

Elizabeth Hansen leads a workshop at a gathering of the Single Subject News cohort. News Sustainability

Projects Single Subject News Project The Center’s Single Subject News Project was a nearly two-year long endeavor to research best practices on how to find, build, and engage online audiences and provide trainings to a cohort of newsrooms. The project worked with a cohort of digital-first, single-subject, nonprofit newsrooms including the War Horse, the Marshall Project, the Trace, Chalkbeat, and the Hechinger Report. They conducted a series of trainings and experiments to better understand successful digital business models and audience development strategies. Reports on their work can be found on their Medium blog (medium.com/ single-subject-news-project), and will be published this summer in a comprehensive report summarizing the entire project’s findings.

Newsletter Guide Findings from the Single Subject News Project were incorporated into the online Newsletter Guide produced by the Shorenstein Center’s News Sustainability project team and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The Newsletter Guide is a comprehensive resource for journalists, editors, audience development staff, and anyone at a news outlet who produces email newsletters (or is considering adding them to their audience development efforts). It covers work flows,

18 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 19 editorial concepts, and technical considerations for Reinventing Local TV News: Innovative Storytelling starting and maintaining a successful journalistic email Practices to Engage New Audiences newsletter. Visit the guide at newsletterguide.org. February 12, 2019 By Mike Beaudet, Professor of the Practice at Email Benchmarking Tool Northeastern University School of Journalism and an Working with the Center’s Director of Technology, Hong Investigative Reporter at WCVB-Boston, and John Qu, the News Sustainability project team developed an Wihbey, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media email benchmarking tool that is analyzing data from a Innovation at Northeastern University and a Research cohort of nonprofit news sites who use email for audience Associate at the Shorenstein Center development and engagement. They provide regular benchmarking for the newsrooms who are using the tool, Facebook Friends? The Impact of Facebook’s News showing how their metrics compare to averages from the Feed Algorithm Changes on Nonprofit Publishers rest of the cohort. The newsrooms have agreed to have October 25, 2018 their anonymized data used for research, which will give By Andrew Gruen, Research Fellow at the Shorenstein the Center an excellent window into how nonprofit Center and Principal Consultant, Working Paper, and journalism outlets are using email, and what’s working Aisha Townes, Data Science Consultant to the and what’s not. Shorenstein Center

Business Models for Local News: A Field Scan Publications September 6, 2018 By Elizabeth Hansen, Emily Roseman, and Matthew Small Is Beautiful: New Business Models for Digital Media, a Case Study Spector of the Shorenstein Center, and Joseph Lichterman of the Lenfest Institute June 3, 2019 By Markus Somm, former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Playbook for Launching a Local, Nonprofit News Outlet Basler Zeitung newspaper, Basel, Switzerland, and Spring June 12, 2018 2019 Shorenstein Fellow By Adam Fisher, MPP Student, Harvard Kennedy School, Streaming War Won: Or How I Learned to Stop and Adam B. Giorgi, MPP Student, Harvard Kennedy Worrying and Love the News School April 29, 2019 By Edward F. O’Keefe, former Senior Vice President for Content Development at CNN and Spring 2019 Shorenstein Fellow

18 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 19 Areas of Focus

L to R: Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, IARA Program Director and HKS Professor of History, Race and Public Policy; Dr. Suraj Yengde, IARA Post-Doctoral Fellow; Dr. Cornell West, Harvard Divinity School Professor of Practice of Public Philosophy; Miriam Aschkenasy MD, MPH, MPA, IARA Program Manager; Ericka Licht, IARA Research Assistant and HKS MPA Student; and Dr. Magda Matache, Director of the Roma Program at Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Race & Equity

Institutionalized racism and sexism have had a major impact on U.S. public policy, to the detriment of more than half of our country’s citizens. The Shorenstein Center works to address this through awareness-raising programs, direct trainings, and substantive research into anti-racism work. Projects Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Working at the intersection of community, academia, and policy, the Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability (IARA) at the Shorenstein Center addresses intellectual and practical questions as they relate to anti- racism policy, practice, and institutional change.

Our vision is to be a leader in institutional anti-racism research, policy, and advocacy, and propose structural change within institutions and media in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and digital space. This work will focus on researching existing organizations that conduct anti-racism training and development while analyzing their effectiveness and promoting best practices

20 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 21 in the field. Additionally, we will study the implementa- the impact of the citizenship question be on the census’s tion of this work within institutions that are working to accuracy? The latter study, conducted by Professors achieve institutional equity and promote accountability Matthew Baum and Maya Sen, Postdoctoral Researcher structures in order for them to achieve their goals. Bryce Dietrich, and PhD Student Rebecca Goldstein, found that including the citizenship question could lead Lead by Professor Khalil Muhammad, IARA joined the to undercounting Hispanics in the U.S. by up to 6 million Shorenstein Center in late 2018 and is in the initial stages people. It was widely reported in the media, and the of a long-term research agenda, while also building up its Washington Post collaborated with Bryce Dietrich to team and planning a number of exciting convenings on create maps that illustrate the project undercount impact the topic of anti-racism and accountability. by state (see “Where a citizenship question could cause Ida B. Wells Society the census to miss millions of Hispanics—and why that’s The Shorenstein Center supports the Ida B. Wells Society a big deal,” Washington Post, June 6, 2019). for Investigative Reporting with logistics and communi- cations for their series of investigative reporting trainings Publications for journalists of color. The Ida B. Wells Society’s mission Can Cities Save the Census? A Local Framework for is to “raise the awareness of, and opportunities for, Our Nation’s First Digital Count investigative reporting among journalists of color and to foster the desire for social justice journalism and ac- April 1, 2019 countability reporting about racial injustice.” The Shoren- By Kyla Fullenwider, Shorenstein Center 2018/19 stein Center is proud to help support their work. Entrepreneurship Fellow, and Greg Fischer, Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky Census 2020 Research Estimating the Effect of Asking about Citizenship on The upcoming census will be the first time the United the U.S. Census States has conducted its decennial count digitally. It may March 21, 2019 also be the first time that the Census has included a By Dr. Mathew A. Baum, Marvin Kalb Professor of question about residents’ citizenship status since 1950. Global Communications; Dr. Bryce Dietrich, Shorenstein The Center has been looking at the Census from two Center Post-Doctoral Fellow; Rebecca Goldstein, PhD perspectives: how can local governments and local media Candidate in the Harvard University Department of help ensure that everyone is counted (Kyla Fullenwider’s Government; and Dr. Maya Sen, Associate Professor of playbook for the digital census, co-authored with Greg Public Policy Fischer, Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky), and what would

20 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 21 Events

Annual Lectures

Every year the Center hosts two major public lectures on the press, politics and public policy. This year we are publishing both lectures in full in our Annual Report for the first time.

T.H. White Lecture Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, and Jill Abramson, former Executive Editor of the New York Times, were the keynote speakers at this year’s T.H. White Lecture. They wrote an impassioned defense of the free press and the importance of empowering investigative journalism. Watch the video of their fascinating conversation with then-Shorenstein Center Director Nicco Mele at shorensteincenter.org/abramson-mayer.

The David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism was also awarded at the T.H. White Lecture. This year’s recipient was David Von Drehle of the Washington Post.

Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press The Salant Lecture on the Freedom of the Press is delivered annually by a prominent journalist, scholar, or practitioner. In 2007 the estate of Dr. Frank Stanton, former president of CBS, provided funding for an annual lecture in honor of his longtime friend and colleague, Mr. Richard S. Salant, a lawyer, broadcast media executive, ardent defender of the First Amendment, and passionate leader of broadcast ethics and news standards. This year’s lecturer was Nabiha Syed, Vice President and Associate General Counsel at BuzzFeed. Ms. Syed, a well-respected lawyer who has spent her career specializing in free speech law, laid out her position on the role of the media in our current moment in history. Full video of her lecture can be seen at shorensteincenter.org/nabiha-syed-2018-salant-lecture-freedom-press.

22 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 23 Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics, October 16, 2018*

“The Press Has Never Been More Vital to the Survival of Democracy” By Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer

In one brief afternoon of Senate hear- impartiality both for himself and the more than an inconvenient obstacle ings this fall, Brett Kavanaugh tossed U.S. Supreme Court. He argued that for partisans to overcome. The lesson yet another revered American insti- Ford had not come forward to tell the was made more pointedly still when tution into the inferno of partisan truth, but instead to take “revenge on a limited F.B.I. investigation—which politics. Faced during his Supreme behalf of the Clintons,” in some kind had been touted as the tie-breaking, Court confirmation hearings with of vague but monstrous political plot. fact-finding answer to the stale- multiple credible accusations of mate—instead turned out to be so sexual misconduct, Kavanaugh clung “Essentially what he did is he took his tightly controlled by the White House to the axiom that the best defense is mask off and he revealed himself as a that dozens of would-be witnesses a good offense. As he reframed it, the politician who wears a robe,” Loyola and corroborators who resorted to issue was not his own conduct, but Law School professor Jessica Levin- sending statements to the federal rather that of his accuser. Providing son explained. investigators never even received a no evidence, he went on to accuse reply. For news reporters dedicated her of having concocted her allega- The shock waves from Kavanaugh’s to facts, evidence, and accuracy, it tions against him in “a calculated and brutally partisan confirmation fight was another disturbing indication orchestrated political hit, fueled with have yet to be measured. Whether that at this moment in American apparent pent-up anger about Presi- they will galvanize the Right or the history, the rules and assumptions dent Trump and the 2016 election.” Left, or anyone in between during the that govern the press have almost 2018 midterm elections and beyond, no sway over those in power. In a previous round of hearings, has yet to be seen. Kavanaugh had paid homage to tradi- tional judicial norms, promising that But for the press, one lesson from the Kavanaugh he would act as an impartial umpire, confirmation fight is already clear. It was yet another who would “call balls and strikes and not . . . pitch or bat.” But after a political clash in which the truth was little more than morning of wrenching testimony in an inconvenient obstacle for partisans to overcome. which a California research psycholo- gist, Christine Blasey Ford, accused But for the press, one lesson from In an era of almost unprecedented him of having attempted to rape her the Kavanaugh confirmation fight is partisan political polarization, the when they were both teenagers, he already clear. It was yet another polit- news media may be the last nonpar- destroyed all pretense of political ical clash in which the truth was little tisan voice in our national discourse.

* The T.H. White lecture evening was a discussion on the topics presented in the original essay published by the Shorenstein Center in advance of this event. The video and transcript of this discussion can be found at https://shorensteincenter.org/abramson-mayer/.

22 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 23 white lecture, continued

This, of course, is far from the way As it turned out, we spent three her in the workplace, while in 2018 that the Trump administration and years investigating the facts, which Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexu- other politically motivated critics resulted in our book Strange Justice. ally assaulting her at a high school have tried to portray it. It is to their Unexpectedly, Strange Justice was a social gathering. But both ended advantage to try to denigrate and primer on just about everything that exactly the same way. A credible and undermine the press in hopes of usurping its role and twisting facts to serve their own purposes. But as For us, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process truth is increasingly subjugated to was literally history repeating itself. A generation political expediency, the news media’s before, we served, to our own surprise, as the role as the voice of objective fact, and proverbial canaries in the coal mine. As political as an impartial check on power, has never been more threatened, or more reporters for the Wall Street Journal, we were needed. At such a time, it is essen- fascinated by the explosive but unverified charges tial that—competitive and varied and counter-charges that emerged during Clarence though the different voices within Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation fight. the profession are—we must come together to define and defend our constitutional right and distinct role. happened once Christine Blasey Ford preternaturally composed accuser charged Judge Kavanaugh with sexual was met with a furious, categori- This moment of inflection has misconduct. A credible accuser, cal denial in which the accused been long coming. For us, the Brett reluctant at first to go public, ended claimed to be the victim of some Kavanaugh confirmation process up responding to the call of citizen- larger political plot—in Thomas’ case, was literally history repeating itself. ship because she felt a duty to report a “high-tech lynching” ostensibly A generation before, we served, to information that called into question motivated by racism, despite the fact our own surprise, as the proverbial the nominee’s fitness for the job. An that Hill, like him, was also African- canaries in the coal mine. As political angry, defiant Supreme Court nomi- American. A stalemate resulted, in reporters for the Wall Street Journal, nee categorically denied the charges. which the Senate gave the judge the we were fascinated by the explosive A rushed and jury-rigged Senate benefit of the doubt and a lifetime but unverified charges and counter- hearing gave short-shrift to additional seat on the Court. As in 2018, the charges that emerged during Clar- corroborators, resulting inevitably Judiciary Committee in 1991 was ence Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court in a “he said/she said” stalemate. certain that, as was said at the time, confirmation fight. So, we got a book Emotion, not reason, dominated the “we will never know the truth.” contract, and took a leave together faux trial. From the start, the process in hopes of figuring out where the aimed, it seemed, to arrive at the As reporters dedicated to ferreting truth lay. At the outset any outcome conclusion that as one Republican out facts without fear or favor, we seemed possible, and we were eager said of Blasey Ford’s allegations a rejected the convenient political fib to write it, regardless of politics, generation later, “the truth of these that the truth could never be known, as we had other stories for years. long ago events can never be known.” and set off to find it. But when three years’ worth of painstaking reporting Like Kavanaugh, Thomas was a This was all eerily familiar to the two led overwhelmingly to the conclusion conservative nominee charged with of us. There were substantial differ- that Thomas had almost certainly lied sexual misconduct by a woman, in ences of course. In 1991, Hill had under oath in order to get confirmed, his case, law professor Anita Hill. accused Thomas of sexually harassing an odd thing happened. Although

24 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 25 barraged by purveyors of what Kelly- anne Conway, counselor to President Trump, called “Alternative Facts.”

The New York Times has tried to keep a running tally of these “alternative facts,” that lengthens almost daily. Fact-checking has become a cottage industry—one of the few growth areas, perhaps, in the journalism field. It’s not just our own media at home who are waging this battle— similar attacks have been launched on the truth, and those who tell it, by regimes around the world. At home, of course, these attacks have included neither of us had previously been to Hill, for his falsehoods. As he an effort to undermine the credibility accused of being political combatants, explained in his subsequent confes- of the independent news media as and despite both of us having worked sional book, Blinded By the Right, he “fake news,” and those who write it as for a newspaper rarely associated and his political allies on the Right “Enemies of the American People.” with liberalism, we were targeted by had regarded their ideological ends Thomas’ conservative defenders as as justifying almost any means, The targets range beyond mere politically motivated purveyors of including attacking the truth, and journalists, to the sources of fact that what later became known as “fake those in the media who told it. the mainstream media relies on. All news.” The American Spectator, an manner of independent, fact-based arch-conservative publication, ran Brock may have recanted, but the research has come under attack, a lengthy cover story claiming we political playbook he used in 1994, ranging from the economic analyses were the most heinous liars in print when Strange Justice was pub- by the non-partisan Congressional since Janet Cooke, the Washington lished, is more commonplace than Budget Office to research done by the Post reporter who infamously faked a ever a quarter century later. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Pulitzer Prize–winning story. Before intervening years have seen the Administration. Among the most long, even a few respectable news growth of sprawling networks of worrisome of these attacks have been outlets, including CBS’s top-rated politically partisan think tanks and those on the scientific community in news show, 60 Minutes, threatened to media outlets, in which the basic general, and on the science of climate do their own exposés on us, although research model of the Enlighten- change in particular, which Presi- thank goodness, they backed off once ment is inverted so that ideologi- dent Trump memorably denounced we had walked them through the cal conclusions shape research and during the 2016 campaign as a details and solidity of our reporting. reporting, rather than the other “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese. way around. The Internet has A decade later, the author of the exponentially expanded the reach of As a result, large swaths of the American Spectator’s screed, David these previously siloed partisans. population are being purpose- Brock, backed off too, admitting fully and constantly misled. Our that it had been he, not we, who Those engaged in the old-fashioned political system is reeling from the had lied, and apologizing to us, and pursuit of fact-based truth have been blow. Charlie Sykes, the former

24 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 25 white lecture, continued

right-wing radio talk show host, be more scrupulous than ever to One would have to look back to the has described the fallout well. avoid seeming partisan, or so much original Gilded Age, at the turn of the “The cumulative effect of the as giving the appearance of being at 20th Century, to find as strong a jour- attacks” on fact-based media, war with the Trump administration, nalistic outpouring. It’s an era that the he has said, has been “to dele- as the belief that we are all biased, two of us studied as teenagers while gitimize those outlets, and essen- out-of-touch liberals is already one attending Fieldston, a private school tially destroy much of the Right’s of the reasons that public trust in in New York City that inculcated in immunity to false information.” the news media is at a low point. In both of us a strong sense of ethics He added, “All administrations the midst of this confusion, there and a desire to serve the public. Far lie, but what we are seeing here is isn’t even agreement on whether from their hard-bitten images, many an attack on credibility itself.” to call the President’s lies, lies. investigative reporters are actually idealists who believe that by expos- Clearly, this has been an unhappy One clear approach, it seems to us, ing wrongs, they can help right them. season for truth. is to just double down, and do what Such was the tradition of the original we do best: keep on getting the most muckrakers, the reform-minded jour- What then, is the proper response of journalists to a President who, We are actually living in a golden age of investigative in brutal language, brands almost reporting, the kind of work to which both of us all types of accurate reporting, including most recently, the sworn have devoted decades of our careers. From our testimony against a Supreme vantage point, truth is very much alive and the Court nominee, as “a campaign press is one of the only institutions right now of political and personal destruc- that is actually functioning as it should. tion based on lies and deception”?

How should professional report- important stories of the day, without nalists at the turn of the 20th Century ers, trained to keep a distanced, fear or favor. As Margaret Sullivan, who investigated and exposed analytic eye on what they cover, the Washington Post’s media colum- the political and economic corruption accurately reflect the dysfunction nist put it recently, those in power and social hardships caused by the that surrounds them? How does the may try to misconstrue it when we untrammeled power of big business press fulfill its constitutional mis- hold them to account, but this “isn’t in a rapidly industrializing United sion to provide accurate informa- resistance, it’s reporting.” And in States. Their stories, exposing tion to the public and hold power fact, despite the challenging climate shocking labor conditions, disgusting accountable in this environment? created by President Trump’s dis- public health threats, and corrupt dain, journalists have rarely worked corporate practices, led to the There’s a spirited debate about all harder or done better or more vital nation’s first antitrust and child labor of this within our profession right work. We are actually living in a laws. The muckrakers brought into now. Some of our colleagues have golden age of investigative reporting, existence many of the regulatory and called for journalists to be much the kind of work to which both of us consumer protections that the Trump tougher in covering President Trump, have devoted decades of our careers. Administration and the Republican and for news organizations to band From our vantage point, truth is very Congress are today trying to abolish. together to more deeply investigate much alive and the press is one of And interestingly, a number of corruption in the administration. the only institutions right now that the muckrakers, including the Others argue that journalists must is actually functioning as it should. formidable Ida Tarbell, were women.

26 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 27 Her legacy, at least for us, has illegal schemes to buy up all the land Ida Tarbell’s legacy. They collected become almost an in-joke. When where oil could be drilled. Tarbell more than 100,000 documents in the either us hits a wall while work- organized the voluminous material most thorough investigation yet of ing on a story, we’ve been known into a cogent history. Her investiga- the businessman president who has to call each other and, in trying to tion, published in 18 installments, tried to canonize and mythologize think through how to get around resulted in the eventual breakup his self-made success. Just as Tarbell whatever roadblock we’ve hit, we’ll of Standard Oil and passage of found an obscure company at the ask, “What Would Ida Do?” the nation’s first antitrust laws. root of Standard Oil’s corruption, the Times unlocked the fraud and rapac- Tarbell, one of the most famous Today, Tarbell’s writing on Rock- ity behind the Trump fortune with muckrakers, was nothing if not efeller seems eerily prescient. “Very the discovery of an unknown entity dogged. She spent two years inves- often people who admit the facts, who called All County Building Supply. tigating John D. Rockefeller and the are willing to see that Mr. Rock- Despite all the attention focused on Standard Oil Company, then the efeller has employed force and fraud the President’s various business deals, largest company in the world. She to secure his ends, justify him by there had never been a mention of travelled all over the country, collect- declaring, ‘it’s business.’” Tarbell then the company in any other stories. ing obscure land records in local title issued a timeless warning: “Canon- offices to document the strong-arm ize ‘business success’ and men who David Barstow, an investigative tactics used by Rockefeller against make a success like that of Standard reporter who has won numer- rivals, railroad companies, ranchers, Oil Trust become national heroes!” ous Pulitzer Prizes for investiga- farmers, and anyone else who stood tive reporting, was one of the in his way. The key that unlocked On October 3, when the New York three reporters who collaborated the story for her was the discovery Times published its exhaustive inves- on the investigation. “It’s unusual of an obscure company, the South tigation into Donald Trump’s wealth, to dive into what you think is an Improvement Company, which the three reporters who worked for extremely well-covered subject and was at the root of Standard Oil’s more than a year on it were upholding to find so much completely new stuff, stuff that just is astonish- ing,” Mr. Barstow said. “It’s a great reminder that even [for] things that you think are well described, there are these other deeper layers.”

Exploring the deeper layers is exactly how reporters must cover the Trump administration.

This is the essence of what used to be called muckraking and today is called great investigative journal- ism. Barstow and Suzanne Craig, one of the other reporters on the team, had already collaborated on a story during the 2016 campaign that revealed that Donald Trump

26 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 27 white lecture, continued

had paid virtually no taxes for many their sentiments from public view, years, pursuing legally dubious relegating their contempt to private loopholes and other tax avoidance papers such as Nixon’s enemies strategies. That story by itself was a list, or open mic gaffes, such as the blockbuster, but they kept going. moment during the George W. Bush Administration when Vice President Their more recent exploration of the Dick Cheney was caught seconding deeper layers showed that the presi- the president’s less than flattering dent participated in numerous dubi- epithet for New York Times’ Wash- ous tax schemes during the 1990s, ington correspondent, Adam Clymer, including outright fraud, and that he adding his own phrase, “big time.” wasn’t the self-made billionaire he has claimed to be. That arcane building Yet despite such disparagement, supply company was used as a vehicle the major news outlets have been to transfer his father’s wealth—more thriving. It is scary to think what than $400 million—to Trump and his these last years would have been like siblings, who fraudulently minimized without the New York Times, the the enormous gift taxes they would Washington Post, the New Yorker, the have otherwise owed. The New York Wall Street Journal, and other news authorities immediately vowed to organizations that do superlative about Trump’s sexual liaisons with review these old transactions. The investigative reporting. We would women. The New Yorker has done President, predictably, discounted know little about the dimensions of deep reporting on secretive donors the story in a tweet that boiled the Mueller probe. Reporters from behind Trump’s rise to power, such down to, basically, “It’s business.” the Times and the Post have engaged as hedge fund magnate Robert in a back-and-forth battle for scoops Mercer. It has also chronicled the “The Failing New York Times did in what Vanity Fair has rightly called full story of British spy Christopher something I have never seen done “the last great newspaper war.” In Steele’s effort to blow the whistle before,” Trump wrote on Twitter. May 2017, the two newspapers each on the Russian machinations dur- “They used the concept of ‘time maintained a breathless pace of ing the 2016 campaign. The Times, value of money’ in doing a very old, daily revelations, including disclos- meanwhile, has provided a public boring and often told hit piece on ing the memos James Comey had service by publishing a special sec- me.” His response echoed the one made before his firing, and that the tion on Russian election meddling, Tarbell encountered: “It’s business.” President passed classified intelli- “Unravelling the Russia Story So gence to the Russian ambassador. The Far,” which brought all the threads The advent of an American president Columbia Journalism Review called together into a single narrative that publicly castigating news stories, it “the ten best days of journalism.” made the investigation comprehen- organizations, and even specific sible to readers. This section took reporters by name, was unthink- The Wall Street Journal too has done tremendous expertise, the involve- able until the Trump Administra- pivotal work on the strands of the ment of national security reporters tion. Certainly, earlier presidents Mueller investigation involving and foreign correspondents, and have often resented the press and payoffs by Trump to pornographic command of an immense amount of disliked certain reporters. But out film star, and his self-proclaimed material. Synthesizing and contextu- of respect for the institution of the paramour, Stormy Daniels, as well alizing in the way that only careful, Fourth Estate, they largely kept as on the suppression of news stories professional journalists can do.

28 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 29 Thankfully, these news organiza- we published in our best-selling Yorker profile of the Koch broth- tions have the money and muscle book, Strange Justice. And even ers on which the book drew, Jane to do long, costly investigations. then, there were other sources who got an early taste of the animosity In the Internet age, where break- we knew of, who still declined to that would come to characterize the ing news never stops, they also give come forward. Even this past year, Trump Administration’s attitude their reporters the luxury of time we “door stopped” a woman who we toward the press. In an effort to to peel back the layers and find the believed had additional knowledge of undermine her reputation, the Kochs most significant revelations. Asked Thomas’ behavior. She invited us into went so far as to hire private inves- once what it takes to be able to write her front foyer, but then declined to tigators to try to dig up dirt on her. books as revelatory as Robert Caro’s comment, even all these years later. When they found none, the investiga- biographic volumes on Lyndon It is hard to convey the amount of tors concocted a case claiming she Johnson, Caro replied in one word, “time.” To tackle, unravel, and But at a time when readers feel deluged by the explain global corruption on the onslaught of news alerts, and bombarded by scale afflicting many governments today, including our own, there fragments of Twitter-length items lacking context, is simply no substitute for giving characters, and comprehensive analysis, there is reporters the time necessary to find more need than ever for the kind of journalism that and tell the story behind the story. can connect the dots into meaningful coverage. From experience, we are both believ- ers in slow journalism. We spent fear that such potential sources feel had plagiarized from several peers, three years of our lives re-reporting when speaking out against some- which fell apart when the ostensible every aspect of the Clarence Thomas- one as powerful as a Supreme Court victims took her side against the Anita Hill story. We found hundreds Justice, but with determination, and Kochs, calling the charges absurd. of people who knew them both and the passage of time, we have faith that inspected every phase of their lives, almost all facts eventually surface. We are not here to celebrate our- assembling evidence piece by piece. selves, but to call for a broad revival We did not go in with preconcep- Slow though Strange Justice was, it of slow journalism and of fearless, tions, but rather with a determina- took even longer—approximately fact-based, nonpartisan muckrak- tion to collect as much evidence as five years—for Jane to write her 2016 ing. We realize what we are urging possible and then render a judgment book, Dark Money, which the New runs counter to the rhythms of the solely on where the weight of that York Times named as one of the ten Internet and the impatient atten- evidence led. As was true in the best books of the year. It entailed tion spans of readers who demand Kavanaugh hearing, we found wit- hundreds of interviews, dozens of to know the news the instant it nesses who the public never heard boxes of documents, and a three- happens. But at a time when read- from, and who had critical informa- hundred-page chronology, in order ers feel deluged by the onslaught tion. We found new corroborators for to untangle the money trail of the of news alerts, and bombarded by Hill, and people who had knowledge billionaire patrons of conserva- fragments of Twitter-length items about Clarence Thomas’ enthusiasm tive libertarianism, Kansas oilmen lacking context, characters, and for exactly the kind of pornography Charles and David Koch, and a hand- comprehensive analysis, there is Hill had described in her testimony. ful of other outsized but secretive more need than ever for the kind But it took three years of digging donors to American politics. In the of journalism that can connect the to write the definitive story, which course of researching the 2010 New dots into meaningful coverage.

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We also believe there is a dire need entertained, stories that were shar- continued to sign up. Their digital for a revival of local news. In an era able on Facebook and other social subscription plans are successful when the media has lost much of the media platforms. They were easily because the news they provide is of public’s trust, and the president can consumed and rarely remembered. singular quality and can’t be found brand serious, factual coverage “fake anywhere else. These news organiza- news,” nothing stands a better chance Jill’s book, Merchants of Truth, to be tions are citadels of slow journal- of restoring faith in the press than published in January, focuses on how ism and enterprise reporting. the reappearance of local reporters four news companies, two traditional in small communities where they are known, watched, and cover- Quality regional papers that published important, ing stories that the local populace Pulitzer-Prize-winning-caliber investigations have knows are anything but fake. either cut completely or downsized their investigative reporting units. We believe this is not only a grave We know this too runs counter to current economic trends that journalistic mistake, but bad business, too. are gutting newsrooms and clos- ing state house and local bureaus. newspapers and two digital natives, As digital advertising has proven Print advertising has all but disap- navigated the decade of disruption to be an unstable source of revenue peared, and Facebook and Google and invented new business models, for original news-gathering, reader have gobbled up the lion’s share of only to encounter new challenges revenue has become the best and digital ad revenue. Quality regional from the social media tech giants. most secure route to stability. But in papers that published important, There is certainly no business model order to get readers to pay for news, Pulitzer-Prize-winning-caliber that will save all news organiza- the news has to be worth paying for. investigations have either cut com- tions. But recent trends give us hope. That’s why the most challenged part pletely or downsized their investi- With the fake news scandals that of the news media, local newspa- gative reporting units. We believe have beset Facebook, people are pers, must reclaim their watchdog this is not only a grave journalistic once again looking for trusted news roles. It may sound unrealistic, but mistake, but bad business, too. sources. And they are showing a new hiring a few investigative reporters willingness to pay for quality news. may be the surest way to establish It is true that the digital disrup- a reader revenue stream of paid tion of the past decade broke the The Times has more than 3 million digital circulation. By abandon- business model for newspapers, paying subscribers, many with online ing investigative reporting, local which have done, until recent access only. The Post has a million. newspapers have betrayed their years, the most significant inves- The Journal, with its business-focused readers, leaving local city councils tigative work. In their place have readers, was one of the first publi- and even state legislatures virtu- come digital news operations that, cations to require payment for its ally uncovered. Local readers once with a few exceptions, break few website and it has nearly 1.4 million.1 looked to their newspapers to be original investigative stories. With These numbers swelled following the their watchdogs against corruption the rise of the Internet came the 2016 election and although some ana- and need that protection now more mantra, “news wants to be free.” lysts predicted the so-called Trump than ever. Will they pay to see this bump wouldn’t last, subscribers have function restored? It’s impossible to Websites depended on clickable, viral headlines to build their audiences, 1. http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/after-years-of-testing-the-wall-street-journal-has-built-a prioritizing stories that pleased and -paywall-that-bends-to-the-individual-reader/

30 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 31 reality 24 hours a day. There are still a few legitimate, fact-driven reporters at Fox, some of whom are excellent. But they are far out-shouted by par- tisan entertainers, pumping up audi- ences by trafficking in fear, division, and sometimes downright falsehoods.

As the public increasingly regards all news media as equally irresponsible, and President Trump singles out the politically independent media for special attack, it’s no longer enough for responsible members of the press to ignore the corrosive reality. Unbiased reporters who do honest research-driven investiga- tive journalism have to start draw- know until it is tried. The vulture Fox, which traffics in false conspira- ing distinctions, and calling Fox funds like Alden Capital that have cies on a nightly basis, has effectively and other irresponsible outlets out, taken over from local ownership become the Trump White House’s by showing when their stories are are unlikely to invest, but others official news agency. The transition of shoddy, ideologically driven, and may recapture lost audiences by Fox’s former co-president, Bill Shine, false. According to the trusted, delivering real enterprise reporting. to Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for non-partisan organization Politifact, Communications, and of the Trump more than 68% of the news on Fox is But none of this, on its own, may be White House’s former head of com- either false, mostly false or half-true. enough. munications, Hope Hicks, to the top Its stars, like Trump favorites Sean public relations post at Fox, cements Hannity and Laura Ingraham are There are very real obstacles, besides financial ones, that pollute the news environment. Over the last two Many of us believed that the best strategy for decades, the most harmful had been countering Fox was to ignore it and carry on with the sustained attack on the traditional our work. We assumed the public would see nonpartisan news media by Fox News, and appreciate the difference, as would those since its launch by Roger Ailes in 1996. The right wing’s false claims of liberal in power. But that strategy hasn’t worked. media bias have gone unanswered for too long. Many of us believed that the the impression that the network and not journalists; they are right-wing best strategy for countering Fox was to the administration are so interwoven, demagogues who earn multi-million- ignore it and carry on with our work. Fox is virtually Trump’s Pravda. Fox dollar celebrity salaries for pumping We assumed the public would see and is more than just that, though. It is lies into the public’s bloodstream. appreciate the difference, as would also the cornerstone of a right-wing those in power. But that strategy propaganda machine, a political fac- As we learned from the false fusillade hasn’t worked. tory spewing a pernicious alternative aimed at us by David Brock after the

30 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 31 white lecture, continued

publication of Strange Justice, we and Burnett, Trump made that decision We are not marketing gurus, but the partisan political outlets are not in half an hour without consulting we are certain that rigorous, fact- in the same business. Our north star anyone. That one piece still reveals based investigative reporting is the is the truth. Theirs is political victory. much about how Trump governs. best branding strategy for news There may be room for both, but there organizations. It is nonpartisan is no room at this dangerous point We need to go back to knocking on journalism that is most special, and in American history for confusion voter’s doors and really listening. that differentiates the true quality about our very different professions. We need to turn away from covering politics The midterm elections are looming and could bring about change in the like sports. It’s not a game. The saucy, inside leadership of Congress. Jockeying baseball intrigue designed for political junkies for the next presidential election is entertaining, but not nourishing. has already begun. Political jour- nalism, which was flawed in 2016, could also return to its golden age. Not doing flyovers, but stationing publications. Deep reporting has political reporters full-time in the been a defining feature of the New But this, too, will require a renaissance middle of the country. We need to Yorker almost since its founding in in slow journalism. All of the candi- revive the old tradition of having 1925. When asked on Morning Joe dates should be thoroughly vetted. domestic bureaus that really report about the secret to his success as the Every aspect of their lives must be on the pulse of the country with New Yorker editor for two decades, examined. Their donor networks and bureaus like the ones the Times David Remnick had one simple dark money sources must be exposed. opened in Kansas City and Phoenix reply: “We are devoted to those first In 2008, the Times did a series of great during Jill’s stint as managing editor. principles: of telling the truth, of enterprise stories that were tethered By focusing so much on polls and reporting deeply, [and] sometimes together under the rubric “The Long the horse race in 2016, many of us taking our time.” That reporting Run.” The series deeply explored missed the tidal wave of anger and is what has kept New Yorker sub- particular turning points in the racial resentment among older, white scribers so loyal over the years. candidates’ lives. They included Janny voters who turned the election. Scott’s revealing portrait of Obama’s In his influential 2011 book, The relationship with his mother, Jodi We need to turn away from covering Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser asked a Kantor’s investigation of the Obamas’ politics like sports. It’s not a game. question that has only become a relationship with their controversial The saucy, inside baseball intrigue more urgent since: “Is the truth loud pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Mitt designed for political junkies is enter- enough?” It is up to us to make sure Romney’s missionary years in France. taining, but not nourishing. We’re not it is—not only by reporting and In 2016, the Washington Post did a knocking Politico. In fact, Politico writing it—but also by differentiat- series of enterprise pieces on how each has become a great convert to slow ing it loudly and clearly from the rest of the candidates made an important journalism and investigative report- of today’s growing partisan brawl. decision. The one on Donald Trump, ing. Our constitutional responsibility by Marc Fisher, was especially reveal- is to provide the public with cred- ing. It delved into his decision to star ible information that helps voters in The Apprentice. Unsurprisingly, in making their most important after hearing the pitch from Mark choice as citizens: who to vote for.

32 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 33 Events

The Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press, November 14, 2018

Guides, Not Gatekeepers, in the Changing Marketplace of Ideas Nabiha Syed

NOTE: The following is Ms. Syed’s actually went to Harvard (sorry inequalities of wealth. But Iola prepared text for the 2019 Salant Lecture. Daddy), but after this lecture, I think and her friends were not poor, It may differ very slightly from the we can get my dad a new shirt. and perhaps that was the biggest delivered speech transcript. offense of all to her neighbors in What a time to be talking about media Tennessee. Iola made some money Good evening, everyone. What . . . Ten years ago, when I was just a by teaching, though she had been an honor to be here tonight! I’m baby lawyer, an esteemed, seasoned fired for criticizing conditions in so thrilled to be here, and so is media lawyer pulled me aside, “Oh colored schools, and she made a bit my husband, who is an alum. But Nabiha. What a shame you missed out more by writing, as the editor of a not as thrilled as my dad, who has on all the great media law fights a few local anti-segregation newspaper. been wearing a Harvard polo shirt decades ago—It’s bound to be dull for since 1982. Now, none of his kids you.” Who could’ve predicted these Iola knew she had to write about what dramatic twists and turns. happened to her friend, but it would take money to research. She quickly Let’s time-travel just a little bit so we fundraised $500 and with it uncov- can understand how we got here. ered a common narrative as the reason behind the lynchings: white It’s 1889, the height of the Gilded Age. women were at risk of attacks by black men, which was an offense Iola’s dear friend had just been punishable by murder. The strength lynched. Her godson’s father, to be of this narrative accounted for the exact. And it appeared to be for the collective shrug from both polite grave sin of having a grocery store whites and from well-to-do Blacks that competed mightily with a who felt they could avoid the risk. white-owned grocery store across the street. “Economic anxiety,” we would But Iola knew this narrative was not call it these days. right. In 1892, three years after the murder of her friend, she abandoned Now, the Gilded Age was an era of her penname and Ida B. Wells, as she industrial capitalism pockmarked was more commonly known, self- by political corruption and vast published a pamphlet arguing that

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Black people were lynched for protecting that free press—under the especially under Salant, they used competing economically with their First Amendment—had truly that trust to reveal difficult truths. white neighbors; for being joyful and developed. Ida’s story reminds us that loud in public; or for not being as the free press doesn’t just happen. You In February 1971, in “The Selling of deferential as demanded of them. make it. Truth-telling requires the Pentagon,” CBS Reports struggle, a making-do with what exposed the Pentagon’s enormous Many in Memphis were, unsurpris- you have to stand up for your values. expenditure of taxpayer dollars to ingly, unhappy. A local newspaper carried this complaint: “The fact that Ida’s story reminds us that the free press a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome calumnies doesn’t just happen. You make it. Truth-telling is a volume of evidence as to the requires struggle, a making-do with what wonderful patience of southern you have to stand up for your values. whites. But we have had enough of it.” No dedication to free speech for Ida. We’ll return to that, and to Ida, in a promote the Vietnam War through These were not empty words. Ida went bit. domestic propaganda campaigns, away for a business trip to Philadel- including costly military parades phia. While she was gone, a mob But it’s always been interesting to me and films of staged battles. The burnt her office to the ground. that our hallowed vision of the free Pentagon was not happy. press isn’t really defined by Ida’s time. Now. For two years, we have lived We dream instead of Walter Cronkite, What this truth-telling required under a steady Presidential drumbeat of CBS under Richard Salant, in the from Salant’s boss Frank Stanton labeling the press “the enemy of the 1960s and 1970s. By this time, the was to answer the questions of people.” We watch as the White eye-popping tabloid headlines Congressional investigators, House retaliates by revoking the peddled by fellows like Pulitzer and risking jail when he refused to credentials of a reporter and spread- Hearst gave way to journalistic norms hand over the program’s outtakes. ing doctored footage to justify it, as of neutrality and objectivity. And at Salant himself almost resigned the President dodges questions about CBS, lawyer-turned-head-of-news from CBS. But because of their bombs sent to the media and cheers Salant was deeply committed to this courage, and their resources, they when another reporter is body- professionalized news approach. were able to stand firm. The slammed by a congressman. We bear Salant would scribble memos to Pentagon appeared to have witness to this full-throated attack on Cronkite, criticizing his famous stopped their endeavors. And as the institution of the press. sign-off, “That’s the way it is.” As for that neutrality? Well, Spiro Salant would write, “You can’t say Agnew offered Salant a Christmas So we might ask ourselves: What that when the news is only fifteen present of a desk with two legs does truth-telling require from us? minutes long! There are many facts sawed off, because Salant’s work In Ida’s time, she risked homespun we couldn’t include!” To him, was so tilted. But the general militias just because she dared to take truth-telling required neutrality public didn’t seem to mind, and on conventional wisdom. She set out and full honesty. CBS did okay for itself in the years to do so without much money or to come. mighty institutions to carry her. And At its best, norms of neutrality and she took up the mantle of the free objectivity helped the media gain This is the gold standard of a media press before the jurisprudence widespread institutional trust—and, gatekeeper: The media gets

34 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 35 information that others cannot, and What we see, through cases in this because the media’s profitability broadcasts it to an audience who era (and there are more), is the depends on mass appeal, meant would otherwise never know. At its Court experiencing two epiphanies: keeping your audience and your best, the gatekeeper wields its power advertisers happy. That tension for the public interest. First, the Court recognizes that means that sincere neutrality gives mass media can uniquely shape way to a cynical neutrality—one Around the same time as “The Selling the public, at scale, unlike any that sidesteps controversy to keep of the Pentagon,” the Supreme Court other entity before. They are strong everyone smiling and shopping. You starts to accept the media-as-gate- enough to call lies lies, and know what this looks like: keeper reality, too. spotlight scandal where they see it. They have great power. • It’s showcasing only two sides of a First, it recognizes the power of story, with the implicit assumption broadcasting technology, and so in Second, because there is now too that the truth is somewhere in 1969, in Red Lion v. FCC, the much information and “limited between. Court says that broadcast media time and resources,” someone has • It’s journalism as stenography— has to showcase contrasting to organize the marketplace of just presenting the facts with little viewpoints of a political contro- ideas, out of which truth will context. versy because without that somehow arise—and that respon- • It’s having many talking heads but (now-defunct) “Fairness Doc- sibility falls to the press. The press no real point. trine,” “the medium would be of will decide who participates, who little use because of the cacophony should be amplified at scale. They This is a new and decidedly worse of competing voices, none of have a great responsibility. flavor of gatekeeping, inflected with which could be clearly and predictably heard.” For much of our Republic’s existence—including in Ida’s time!—the First Amendment wasn’t much help In Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974), for the press. the Court gave newspapers a bit more freedom: “A newspaper is All of this seems obvious now. But it business considerations to get people more than a passive conduit ... The was radical then: For much of our to watch, listen, click. But it has choice of material to go into a Republic’s existence—including in consequences. Because media has newspaper . . . constitute[s] the Ida’s time!—the First Amendment more than blunt-force power to exercise of editorial control and wasn’t much help for the press. That jumpstart national conversations. It judgment.” Why should the Court jurisprudence really got going around also has the subtle day-to-day power go out of its way to protect this time, as the press professional- to shape reality, as Rebecca Solnit editorial control, you might ask? ized as an institution. One might explains, because the media: argue it took a powerful media to tip In Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn the scales toward a new approach. can ignore whole regions of impact, (1975), the Court explained why: omit crucial information, or “[I]n a society in which each We see this gatekeeper mindset weave unhitch cause and effect; falsify individual has but limited time into the institutions of the free press information by distortion and and resources. . . . he relies at that time—including its business disproportion; or use names that necessarily upon the press to bring model. You see, having broad reach are euphemisms for violence or to him in convenient form the gave the media great power. But slander for legitimate activities, so facts of [government] operations.” wanting to maintain that broad reach, that the white kids are “hanging

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out” but the Black kids are “loiter- someone will say “No, no it really same dynamic because of informa- ing” or “lurking.” Language can isn’t,” and they’ll do so on a platform tion capitalism. And as technology erase, distort, point in the wrong owned by a technology company. This companies gobble up advertising direction, throw out decoys and can be good, if we’re talking about revenue and spit out news for free, distractions. It can bury the bodies why a player might take a knee at a information capitalism benefits them or uncover them. football game, and this can be bad, if far more than it does the media. we are talking about vaccines. That power was given to the media, Today what we have is: to wield as it organized the market- And just as advertisers courted place of ideas. If gatekeeper media television networks for their capti- • A decentralized media with were to miss or misunderstand vated audiences, they now court fractured reach stories—like, say, the reasons behind technology platforms for the scraps of • The ability for people to connect race riots in the 1960s—there wasn’t data thrown off by people like you. directly without media as much a regular citizen could do All interactions on these platforms middleman about it. And because the media did not exactly reflect the demographics Where the First Gilded Age of Ida’s time created of society, there were inevitably some stories that didn’t make it into the dramatic economic inequality because of industrial marketplace of ideas. Despite that, capitalism, the Second Gilded Age has created the the marketplace remained an same dynamic because of information capitalism. And attractive model for those drawn to as technology companies gobble up advertising neutrality, especially for profit- driven reasons: You just feed facts revenue and spit out news for free, information capi- into the marketplace and a faceless talism benefits them far more than it does the media. public makes its choices. But there’s no need to think this marketplace model is natural—it was a product of cast off tidbits of data, stitched • An environment where the power a certain time and certain values. together to become a deeply valuable of corporations can exceed the commodity for advertisers who want power of most governments What happens when competitors to target audiences. So much so that • An openly adversarial relation- enter that marketplace? Everything Silicon Valley calls this data the “new ship with the Executive branch, you might expect. oil,” but I prefer Jack Balkin’s moni- which has the ability to investi- ker for it—“Soylent Green”—because gate, subpoena, and imprison Google, Facebook, and Twitter it is made of humans and used to • And, because of crumbling media dethroned media companies as control them. business models, no money. bearers of the public sphere. And what these platforms designed is a This is “information capitalism,” as Truth-telling just got a lot more networked marketplace of ideas Balkin further describes, and it is an complicated. Think about that. where individuals can create, com- underpinning of the Second Gilded Our current predicament has all ment, and share content independent Age that we are now in. Where the of the responsibility of mass media of any higher-order authority setting First Gilded Age of Ida’s time created in Salant’s time with the inhospi- norms around facts. Now, even if a dramatic economic inequality table terrain of Ida’s time. Worse modern Walter Cronkite said “That’s because of industrial capitalism, the yet, keeping the Cronkite era gate- the way it is,” it is now just as likely Second Gilded Age has created the keeper mindset is now a glaring

36 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 37 vulnerability in the networked newsworthy. Others might say that demonstrably nonsense as “Soros is marketplace of ideas. Here’s how: the volume of discussion on social funding the caravan,” the false media might be a separate barometer headline so often repeated will be Let’s take the coverage of the so-called of its newsworthiness. Still others rated as more accurate than unfa- “migrant caravan” a group of asylum might have mundane reasons: They’re miliar but truthful news. The lie seekers, largely women and children, on deadline, they don’t have the becomes your truth. Or at least, it from Central America who have been money for further reporting, or they sounds plausible. And so now, in thrust from their homes by violence. aggregate the story to get traffic, this networked marketplace, During a week of white supremacist, because eyeballs are dollars in the truth-telling requires navigating anti-Semitic, and right-wing extremist advertising regime. the noise and doing so with speed. violence, and just before the midterms, senior members of the administration thought they would divert attention to In this networked marketplace, truth-telling requires the entirely imaginary threat of this navigating the noise and doing so with speed. No caravan. They did this when the caravan was more than a thousand matter what gatekeepers might believe, the old miles away from the border, and gates are down. And now the public is vulnerable traveling by foot. to anyone who has mastered the new platforms.

On message boards like 4chan and Reddit, a conspiracy theory emerged: But imagine all of this from the No matter what gatekeepers might That the caravan was secretly funded perspective of the audience. How believe, the old gates are down. And by George Soros. This is a bankrupt many times has a casual listener now the public is vulnerable to and anti-Semitic theory, and yet, all absorbed tidbits of the Soros caravan anyone who has mastered the new of a sudden, it was amplified by conspiracy? Checking the news on platforms, whether that master is the well-networked users on Twitter. And your phone, snippets of soundbites on President or online trolls. We are just then on a variety of blogs. And then it talk radio, a water cooler exchange now beginning to understand the appeared on Fox. And then, other with an obsessed co-worker, glancing extent of those vulnerabilities in the media outlets started to confront the through Facebook at lunchtime, a late marketplace. What we can see is that conspiracy theory—debunking it, for the most part, but still giving it When speech battles occur on private company attention. Other media—fully terrain—that is, without the government as an illustrating the gatekeeper mental- adversary—the First Amendment is not really helpful. ity—decided to invite commentary about the not-so-looming caravan, and conduct interviews with the afternoon peek at the headlines, a the value of neutrality is ill-adapted director of ICE, as if this was actually group text, watching pundits discuss to the direct assault on truth. a matter of concern. on television. The conspiracy envel- ops you. Think about how this shapes Worse, the First Amendment—our Why give the caravan phenomenon your reality. theoretical touchstone for press or the related Soros conspiracy any rights, at least for the last 60 years—is oxygen at all? One theory is that Psychology research tells us famil- no comfort in this stressful time. because of who is saying it—that is, iarity operates as a proxy for truth. When speech battles occur on private government officials—it is inherently So even when something is as company terrain—that is, without the

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government as an adversary—the On Facebook, Megha—teamed up middle of a room. One approach to First Amendment is not really with data journalist Lam Vo—uncov- this would be to merely describe what helpful. Beyond that, if you care ered the sheer volume of anti-Rohinja it looks like, where it’s located, when it about actual newsgathering, not just propaganda circulated by politicians. arrived, and what two opposing sides rumor aggregation, you might be They documented Facebook pages that have to say about it. The other surprised to learn that the Supreme compared these human beings to dogs, approach—the guide’s approach— Court’s big talk about the importance dogs who will “invade” Myanmar by would explain why the sewer system of the press is just that—talk. Because having too many children, and worse. had gone so horribly awry that we are the Court has stopped short of giving They documented the legions of confronted with the situation in the journalists special protections for followers these pages had, all associ- first place. seeking out the news. So journalists ated with nationalist groups. And they are vulnerable to legal consequence documented how politicians chose to This is what we need. This must be the when they want to protect the identity manipulate this new tool. All of this media’s truth-telling role now—deci- of their confidential sources, or go was possible because Facebook had phering the hidden systems that result undercover at a prison or a meatpack- uprooted local community, political, in observable facts. Four aspects of the ing plant, or reveal classified informa- and media networks, leaving in its guide mindset are critical. tion in the public interest. wake an easily exploited and friction- less propaganda-spewing machine. First, guides understand their The media’s Goliath-to-David terrain. Guides understand the way transition comes just as the need for What Megha and Lam did goes the networked marketplace of ideas protecting our democracy is greater beyond reporting on the terrible facts works. They know it is their job to than ever. What does truth telling of violence, or reporting on “both guide us through the thicket, to require when the media is in a position of weakness, not strength? This must be the media’s truth-telling role now— At the very least, from this position— deciphering the hidden systems that result in thinking back to Ida—we might observable facts. employ a more nuanced understand- ing of how power works. One example: sides” of the conflict. They went make sense of the overabundance deeper: They unpacked the geneal- of speech that, as Zeynep Tufekci A year ago, BuzzFeed reporter Megha ogy of a narrative that influenced— explains, makes our attention the Rajagopalan investigated military- perhaps caused—very real harm. In truly scarce resource. Importantly, sponsored violence against Rohinja doing so, they are acting as guides, guides understand how exactly Muslims in Myanmar. She did not not gatekeepers. technology warps reality—whether focus on gory violent details; she did it be through propaganda or bias in not republish voyeuristic photos. To put a fine point on the difference algorithms responsible for sentenc- Instead, she dug into propaganda. between gatekeeper and guide, let us ing. Understanding their terrain Myanmar is a nation untangling turn to activist and writer Arundhati means that guides also see the decades of censorship, and fresh to Roy. She provides the following nexus between public and private the digital age. Because of that, analogy about the American political power, and might also have specific Facebook is synonymous with the system, which I will repurpose and expertise—like computer science or Internet there. make appropriate for Harvard: Let’s environmental science—to cut say you saw a pile of trash in the through spin.

38 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 39 Second, guides have a direction. lived experience with voter and subtle incentives, in favor of just New York Times journalist Nikole suppression—and they are not giving us “the facts.” Instead, they Hannah-Jones put this succinctly: passive recipients of wisdom. excavate factors that the earlier “Journalists exist to hold power They’re participants. But what marketplace might not have surfaced. accountable. That is not a neutral guides can offer is larger context, Their North Star is not neutrality, but stance. If a journalist is working to history and depth for their audi- a different set of robust values. And expose wrongdoing, [you] clearly ence to build on. And reporting in they travel on our new, intercon- want something to change.” And that symbiotic way can situate nected terrain. instead of championing neutrality, stories within larger movements— guides are comfortable advocating think of #MeToo, Black Lives Truth-telling in this way will also for substantive democratic norms. Matter, or the Parkland students— require something from all of us. many of which mobilize on the Third, guides do not assume same platforms where the news is To take on networked power, the trust. Guides consider newswor- being consumed. guides need a networked infrastruc- thiness very carefully—not ture of their own. Many journalists reactively. When they do this—say, Guides show us how truth-telling, in cannot rely on the resources that were by exposing conventional wisdom this strange and evolving time, available to say, CBS, because in this as Ida did—they do not presume requires a particular mindset. tumultuous time, many journalists that trust is automatically owed to them, as institutions might. They To take on networked power, the guides need a earn trust by saying, “Look, here’s networked infrastructure of their own. Many what we know. We’re linking to the documents, the photos, the journalists cannot rely on the resources that were data, the footnotes, the sources— available to say, CBS, because in this tumultuous tell us if we are missing some- time, many journalists who operate as guides will be thing.” The Internet, unlike a print on their own. newspaper, uniquely allows us to do this, and guides embrace it. This is particularly valuable for Flashlights in hand, guides lead us who operate as guides will be on their freelancers or independent down into the dark twisting paths own. They are independent, freelance, journalists—both of which are and tunnels illuminating where we’ve students, or part of new upstarts both growing in number given trouble been and what dangers lie before us. private and nonprofit. We can build in the media business, and can Their vision is clear: They disentangle the decentralized infrastructure— develop trust through transpar- power structures so we can move legal resources, insurance, distribu- ency in their reporting methods. forward. And they reveal this tion—to support this type of through cultural work, like Ava journalist-as-guide. Ida may have had Fourth, guides know they are DuVernay’s documentary about mass to go it alone, but there’s no reason leading, but do not walk alone. incarceration 13th, or through for that to be the case today. Guides are audience-oriented and investigative work by reporters like rooted in their communities. Julia Angwin, Jane Mayer, and Jill I’ll highlight a few parts of this Specifically, they understand that Abramson, or through essays that proposed infrastructure. their audience has its own ability to decipher the world, by columnists like gather information—say, a police Zeynep Tufekci and Adam Serwer. First, the law. It’s true that the First murder caught on cell phone or They do not gloss over bigger systems Amendment sadly tends to favor

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Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are ready-made infrastructure to reach audiences where they already are, and with the potential for scale—a lot easier than self-printed pamphlets. On the other hand, the cost of distributing via online platforms is subjecting yourself, and your users, to potential surveillance and censorship. Is that a trade we are willing to make? Is there an alternative distribution option? Can anything be done about increasing personalization? We’ll need the the powerful, these days, and is records. A month ago, I argued in brightest minds on this problem. less the People’s First Amendment the New York Supreme Court that than we wish it to be. All the more the First Amendment right of access We have a lot of work to do. We reason to exercise the press rights to court records should apply to the know that freedom does not come for we already have, lest they atrophy. transcripts of NYPD disciplinary free, and that is certainly true of the proceedings. We’ll see how that goes, free press. We have to provide direct services to but these are the fights worth try- underserved journalists. Almost ten ing—maybe even trying again with What truth-telling will require from years ago, a few friends and I founded spaces like prisons and jails. Given us is that we struggle to build—or one of the country’s first media law the changing nature of the federal rebuild—the media we need for today clinics with this mission in mind, and courts, let’s start experimenting more and for tomorrow. It’s not 1968 or while there are now a handful of in state courts—call it “access fed- 1889. It’s now, with our own unique similar ones, we need more. Can we eralism”—and push the law forward constraints and cards to play. And build out a full service legal aid for there. One avenue I’ve been exploring now we need a free press that can help journalists in every state? Given that is theories that let us access informa- us navigate an opaque and shifting the press is no longer seen as invin- tion about, say, private companies constellation of forces: inequality, cible, there will be an increased need. carrying out critical public functions. racism, unchecked corporate power, And we will need to help reporters Perhaps now it will take a tena- accelerating technological capability, navigate hired-gun lawyers, PR flaks, cious media to tip the scales toward and a global rise of authoritarian and crisis managers who lob empty better newsgathering protections. regimes. We need to be prepared to libel threats to silence critical stories. fiercely defend, as Jamal Khashoggi Second, insurance is an invisible said, “the ability to speak especially We should also breathe life into the puppeteer of behavior. Without it, when so many cannot.” And a areas of the First Amendment that when threatened, reporters can and mindset rooted in well-heeled, can help us. The First Amendment do censor themselves, and we all lose centralized institutions will not get us right of access is part of a theory out on the truth. We need to develop to the future we want, I believe. But a that says that the public needs access a media insurance model that is guide mindset, an approach humbly to quality official information in affordable and accessible. and fully indigenous to this particu- order to understand their world—it’s lar moment—that just might. why journalists can get access to Third, distribution. Great reporting is things like juror names and judicial worthless if not read. On one hand,

40 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 41 Events

Speaker Series

The Shorenstein Center speaker series attracts world-class journalists and policymakers to speak about particular areas of expertise within the intersection of media, politics, and public policy. This year the Center hosted over 30 speakers on topics ranging from guns in America to social activism through pop culture to the Mueller Report.

“Antisocial Media: How Facebook “Experiencing and Reporting on Rural “Guns in America” Disconnects Us and Undermines America” German Lopez, Vox Democracy” Sarah Smarsh, Journalist, Author of “Trumping Hate on Twitter? Online Hate Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard Speech in the 2016 U.S. Election Professor of Media Studies and Director and Being Broke in the Richest Country Campaign and Its Aftermath” of the Center for Media and Citizenship on Earth, Spring 2018 Shorenstein Joshua A. Tucker, Professor of Politics, at the University of Virginia Fellow affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic “Government, Campaigns, and the “Reporting on the Borderlands” Studies, and affiliated Professor of Data Media” Jazmine Ulloa, The Los Angeles Times Science at New York University Setti Warren, Executive Director of the Part of the Speaker Series on “Dark Money: Film Screening and Q&A” Shorenstein Center, former Mayor of Misinformation, co-sponsored by the Kimberly Reed, Producer/Director; John Newton, Massachusetts, and candidate NULab at Northeastern University S. Adams, Investigative Reporter for Governor of Massachusetts “How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped “Moving the Conversation Beyond Trump “The Role of Identity Politics in the Elect a President” and Facebook: Characteristics of Midterm Elections and Beyond” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, former Information Disorder in a Global Eugene Scott, The Washington Post Shorenstein Fellow, the Elizabeth Ware Context” Packard Professor of Communication at “Media in the Age of Contagions” Claire Wardle, First Draft the University of Pennsylvania’s Symposium on the role of the media in Part of the Speaker Series on Annenberg School for Communication, public health crises and disease Misinformation, co-sponsored by the and the Walter and Leonore Director of outbreaks. Co-sponsored by the Harvard NULab at Northeastern University UPenn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center Global Health Institute and the “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, “A Post-Midterms America and the Disinformation, and Radicalization in Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Future of Immigration and Immigrants American Politics” Law School. OR Did Fear Win Out?” Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Maria Hinojosa, 2018–2019 Walter Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Shorenstein Fellow, Anchor and Law School, and Faculty Co-director of Executive Producer of Latino USA, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet founder of Futuro Media Group and Society at Harvard University

40 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 41 “Online Manipulation of the U.S. “A Private War: Film Screening and Q&A” “Striving to Build an Antiracist Education Elections: The First Dozen Years” Matthew Heineman, Director and Community” Takis Metaxas, Professor of Computer Producer Jeff Ginsburg, Executive Director of the Science at Wellesley College East Harlem Tutorial Program, and Khalil “Fake News, Hate Speech, and the Part of the Speaker Series on Muhammad, Professor of History, Race Future of Censorship” Misinformation, co-sponsored by the and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy Katherine Mangu-Ward, Editor-in-Chief, NULab at Northeastern University School and Director of the Initiative for Reason Institutional Anti-Racism and “Big Tech and Democracy” “Wrong Again: Correction of Health Accountability at the Shorenstein Center Panel event in the Institute of Politics’ Misinformation in Social Media” John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, with Tom “Racecraft. Castecraft. A Transnational Dr. Leticia Bode, Associate Professor in Wheeler, Dipayan Ghosh, Susan Weapon to Criminalize and Dehumanize the Communication, Culture, and Crawford, Laura Manley, and Nicco Mele African American, Dalit, and Romani Technology Program at Georgetown People” “Visual Media and Storytelling on University Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice Reform” “Decoding the Mueller Investigation” Public Philosophy at Harvard University; Brian Frank, Photo Journalist; Rebecca Garrett Graff, Author and Executive Suraj Yengde, Post-Doctoral Fellow at Richman Cohen, Documentary Director of the Aspen Institute’s the Initiative for Institutional Anti- Filmmaker; and Carroll Bogert, President Cybersecurity and Technology Program Racism and Accountability, Shorenstein of the Marshall Project Center; Magda Matache, Instructor at “Merchants of Truth” “Social Activism through Pop Culture” the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Jill Abramson, former Executive Editor of Justin Tinsley, The Undefeated Human Rights and the Director of the the New York Times, Senior Lecturer at Roma Program at Harvard; and Khalil “Covering Catastrophe: The Dire Science Harvard University Muhammad, Professor of History, Race and Heated Politics of Climate Change in “The British Royal Family in the 21st and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy the Trump Era” Century” School Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, and Miguel Head, Spring 2019 Shorenstein Emily Holden, The Guardian Fellow and former Chief of Staff to Co-sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Princes William and Harry Environment and Natural Resources Program “The White Woman Voter” Koa Beck, Spring 2019 Shorenstein “Rumors, Truths, and Reality: Political Fellow and former Editor-in-Chief of Misinformation in the Modern Day” Jezebel, and Adam Serwer, Spring 2019 Adam Berinsky, Mitsui Professor of Shorenstein Fellow and Staff Writer at Political Science at MIT and Director of the Atlantic the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL) “Black Trolls Matter: The Power of Part of the Speaker Series on Sockpuppet Identity in Social Media Misinformation, co-sponsored by the Propaganda” NULab at Northeastern University Deen Freelon, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the “What’s the Point of Publishing Opinion, University of North Carolina at Chapel Anyway?” Hill James Bennet, Editorial Page Editor of Part of the Speaker Series on the New York Times Misinformation, co-sponsored by the “How to Talk Conservatism” NULab at Northeastern University Jane Coaston, Vox

42 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 43 Students

The Student Experience

Students come to the Kennedy School because they Faculty and Classes want to make the world a better place. Whether their Nancy Gibbs, former Editor-in-Chief of TIME magazine future plans involve work in government, politics, civil and one of the country’s most respected op-ed writers, society, NGOs, the media, or some other public-serving joined the Shorenstein Center in the spring of 2018. She field, the evolving ecosystem of technology and taught courses in the fall and spring semesters this year on journalism will impact their careers. Whether it’s a op-ed writing and the politics of the press. Other faculty misinformation campaign against a political candidate or and lecturers affiliated with the Center taught a wide a collapsing journalism industry that leaves communities variety of courses, including “Media, Politics, and Power in without local papers, the work happening at the the Digital Age,” “Race, Inequality, and American Shorenstein Center is central to many of the public Democracy,” “Controversies in Climate, Energy, and the service challenges that Kennedy School students will face. Media: Improving Public Communications,” and “Applied With that in mind, we strive to help students understand Ethical and Governance Challenges in AI.” these shifting landscapes through their encounters with the Center’s faculty, fellows, staff, and events. Study Groups and Seminar Series Study groups and seminars allow students to participate in informal or flexible learning experiences focused on timely topics. This year Maria Hinojosa, the 2018–2019 Walter Shorenstein Fellow, hosted a number of study groups with students looking at immigration and the Latinx experience in America. Jim Cashel, a Shorenstein Center visiting fellow, hosted a spring study group co-sponsored by the Belfer Center and Digital HKS on what the expansion of broadband Internet to parts of the world that have never had it before could mean for governments, media companies, and citizens. Kyla Fullenwider led a series of public entrepreneurship seminars with guest speakers from several U.S. Government agencies. Finally, in the fall semester we hosted a series of student seminars featuring discussions and presentations with members of the Center’s research projects. Seminar topics included business models for news and platform accountability.

2018–2019 Annual Report // 43 Research Assistants Internships Students have opportunities to get directly involved with The Center sponsors the Lynette Lythgow Internship, research happening throughout the center by serving as which awards a stipend to a HKS student who has research assistants for fellows, faculty, and the Center’s secured a summer internship at a news organization. In major research projects. They help with research, content 2018 Daniel Alphonsus worked at Caixin Media in analysis, fact-checking, literature searches, and other Beijing. In summer 2018 the Center also sponsored two tasks. In the 2018–2019 academic year the Center additional student interns: Caleb Gayle, who worked at employed 27 student research assistants. Much of the the Guardian’s New York offices, and Mairi Robertson, growth in the number of research assistant positions we who worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. were able to offer came from growth in our research projects, giving students hands-on experience working within a team of researchers at the Center.

44 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 45 Fellows

Walter Shorenstein Fellow Maria Hinojosa Roderick P. Hart Edward F. O’Keefe Award-Winning Multi-Media (Fall 2019) (Spring 2019) Journalist and Producer Shivers Chair in Communication Former Senior Vice President As the 2018–2019 Walter and Professor of Government for Content Development at Shorenstein Fellow, Maria at the University of Texas at CNN Hinojosa led a student Austin O’Keefe’s paper “Streaming study group on the topic of immigration Hart’s paper “Assessing Campaign Quality: Was War Won: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and prepared a landscape study titled the 2016 Presidential Campaign a Travesty?” and Love the News” was published by the “What Foundations Need to Know about was published by the Shorenstein Center this Shorenstein Center in April 2019. Immigration Media Coverage,” which spring, and will be part of a special symposium will be published this summer by the on the campaign of 2016 to be published in fall Adam Serwer Shorenstein Center. 2019 by Presidential Studies Quarterly. (Spring 2019) Staff Writer for the Atlantic Miguel Head Serwer’s paper on the Joan Shorenstein Fellows (Spring 2019) historical role that black Former Chief of Staff voters have played in Koa Beck to Prince William and defending and advancing the foundational (Spring 2019) Prince Harry of the British American notion that all people are created Former Editor-in-Chief Royal Family equal will be published by the Shorenstein of Jezebel Head’s fellowship paper “The Howl of Rage: Center later this year and will be part of his Beck’s fellowship paper “Self- How Letting Bankers Get Away with It after the upcoming book project. Optimization in the Face of Financial Crash of 2007–2008 Contributed to Patriarchy: How Mainstream Women’s Media Brexit” will be published this summer by the Markus Somm Shorenstein Center. Facilitates White Feminism,” will be part of her (Spring 2019) upcoming book project due to be published in Former Publisher and summer 2020. Juan Carlos Iragorri Editor-in-Chief of the Basler (Spring 2019) Zeitung, Basel, Switzerland James Harkin Colombian Political Somm’s paper “Small Is (Fall 2019) Journalist and Author Beautiful: New Business Models for Digital Journalist and Director of Iragorri’s paper on the Latin Media, a Case Study” was published by the the Centre for Investigative American press’s struggles and Shorenstein Center in June 2019. Journalism in London lessons for democracy will be published by the Harkin’s paper Shorenstein Center. George Twumasi “Understanding Douma: The New Media (Fall 2019) Propaganda Wars and the Value of a Second Sarah J. Jackson CEO of African Broadcast Draft” was published in two parts in the (Fall 2019) Network (ABN) Holdings Ltd. Intercept and the Columbia Journalism Review, Associate Professor of Twumasi’s paper “The Brain and in full on the Shorenstein Center’s website Communication Studies at Trust Initiative: A Vision to this spring. Northeastern University Unleash the Power of Digital Media as a Force Jackson’s paper “Making for Change across Sub-Saharan Africa” was #BlackLivesMatter in the Shadow of Selma: published this spring by the Shorenstein Center. Collective Memory and Racial Justice Activism in U.S. News” is in process of being published in an academic journal.

2018–2019 Annual Report // 45 Visiting Fellows & Post-Docs

Jim Cashel, Visiting Fellow, studied the global expansion Gene Kimmelman, Visiting Fellow on the Digital of broadband access. Platforms and Democracy Project, is the president of Paper: “Broadband Everywhere: Media Implications of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to Internet Access for the Next Three Billion” freedom of expression and an open Internet.

Bryce Dietrich, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, studied the Gabe London, Filmmaker in Residence, researched the impacts of the proposed citizenship question on the 2020 power of narrative storytelling in news. His paper on Census, and pursued data-driven research on U.S. politics. what journalists can learn from narrative podcasts and Paper: “Estimating the Effect of Asking about Citizenship other media will be published by the Shorenstein Center. on the U.S. Census” Irene Pasquetto, Post-Doctoral Researcher on Nancy Farese, Visiting Fellow, studied visual Misinformation, is working with Professor Matthew journalism’s changing role in the media landscape. She Baum and colleagues to research the spread of organized a convening of prominent women in visual misinformation on mobile instant messenger apps, and journalism this spring, and published an essay based on starting a new peer-reviewed journal called the Harvard her research in Neiman Storyboard. Kennedy Misinformation Review.

Kyla Fullenwider, Entrepreneurship Fellow, studied the Philip Verveer, Visiting Fellow on the Digital Platforms expected challenges of implementing the United States’ and Democracy Project, published two papers on legal first digital census. and policy frameworks for tech regulation. Paper: “Can Cities Save the Census? A Local Framework for Our Nation’s First Digital Count” co-authored with Tom Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, co-leads the Digital Greg Fischer, Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. Platforms and Democracy Project. Wheeler is the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Dipayan Ghosh, Pozen Fellow, co-leads the Digital and writes about regulation policy for big tech companies. Platforms and Democracy Project and is a leading voice on regulation and privacy policy for big tech companies. Suraj Yengde, Post-Doctoral Fellow on Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability, is completing his first Elizabeth Hansen, Business Models Research Fellow, book, Caste Matters, to be published by Penguin Random studies new and successful business models for local, House India in 2019. nonprofit, digital-first, and single-subject news outlets. She just completed her PhD on the subject of business models for news at Harvard Business School.

46 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 47 Staff, Faculty, Board, and Supporters

Staff

Nancy Gibbs Brian Friedberg Carmen Nobel Director, Visiting Edward R. Murrow Professor Technology and Social Change Research Journalist’s Resource Program Director of Press, Politics and Public Policy Project Researcher Denise-Marie Ordway Setti Warren Anthonia Grant Journalist’s Resource Managing Editor Executive Director Sponsored Research Administrator Hong Qu Miriam Aschkenasy Allie Henske Technology Program Director Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Events Program Manager Accountability Program Manager Chloe Reichel Heidi Legg Journalist’s Resource Research Reporter Lucy Chase Director of Special Projects Faculty Assistant Liz Schwartz Susan Ocitti Mahoney Communications Director Chelsey Crabbe Fellows Program Manager Staff Assistant Kevin Wren Jane McIntyre Faculty Assistant Nic Dias Finance Manager Misinformation Researcher Clark Merrefield Joan Donovan Journalist’s Resource Research Reporter Technology and Social Change Research Project Director

Faculty Affiliates

Matthew Baum Khalil G. Muhammad Maya Sen Kalb Professor of Global Communication Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy Assistant Professor of Public Policy Susan Crawford Pippa Norris Jeff Seglin John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Director of Politics HKS Communications Program David Eaves Lecturer in Public Policy Richard Parker Nick Sinai Lecturer in Public Policy Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy Juliette Kayyem Belfer Lecturer in International Security Thomas E. Patterson Jonathan Zittrain Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press George Bemis Professor of International Law, Tarek Masoud Harvard Law School Sultan of Oman Professor of International Leah Wright Rigueur Relations Assistant Professor of Public Policy Nicco Mele Daniel P. Schrag Lecturer in Public Policy Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering

46 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2018–2019 Annual Report // 47 Board

John Alam Michael C. Hill Maralee Schwartz Drew Altman Maxine Isaacs Eugene Scott The Hon. Ambassador Hushang Ansary Alex S. Jones Brandon Shorenstein Philip S. Balboni Marion Just Lydia Shorenstein Jim Bildner Philip Kent Scott Siegler Helen Boaden Kevin Klose Saul Skoler Erik Brooks Matthias Chika Mordi Robin Sproul Alejandra Campoverdi Craig Newmark Richard Tofel Richard Cavanagh Jacqueline O’Neill Linda Wertheimer Geoffrey Cowan William J. Poorvu Honorary Members Rebecca Donatelli Shirley Lord Rosenthal Marvin Kalb Nancy Gibbs Cristine Russell The Hon. Alan K. Simpson Peter Hamby Alexandra Schuster

Thanks to the individuals and organizations that supported our work in the 2018–2019 fiscal year.

John Alam and Sylvie Gregoire Maxine Isaacs Craig Newmark Philanthropies Stephane and Brenda Bancel Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Omidyar Network Joseph Bower Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Jacqueline O’Neill Carnegie Corporation of New York Marvin Kalb Open Society Foundation Richard Cavanagh Phil Kent William Poorvu Democracy Fund Reva Kern Robert and Elizabeth Pozen Rebecca Donatelli The John S. and James L. Knight Cristine Russell Foundation Ford Foundation Maralee Schwartz Norman Liu Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Scott Siegler John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Greenfield Foundation Siezen Foundation Foundation Stephen and Linda Greyser Social Science Research Council Patrick J. McGovern Foundation The Boston Globe Foundation Robin Sproul Miami Foundation Google Richard Tofel Matthias Mordi Michael Hill and Sue Bear National Committee on United States- China Relations

48 // Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Photography Credits shorensteincenter.org @ShorensteinCtr Martha Stewart Benn Craig/Belfer Center Shorenstein Center Staff