Week 6 Synchronous Session

In our interview you talked about algorithmic bias in search and social, the eroding believability of video in an era of generative artificial intelligence, and the decline of existing news business models. All of these are colliding with what appears to be increasingly polarized and partisan politics, especially as we enter an election year. Disinformation is everywhere, and one person’s truth is another’s fake news. How can large legacy newsrooms such as The Wall Street Journal thrive in an era where the news itself is often fragmented and free? And what adjustments to existing journalistic behaviors can be made given these changes?

In your book The Father and The Son, you wrote about your own personal loss, grief, and relationship to faith, taking a journalist’s approach to a very intimate, personal subject, your father. In our lecture you talked about the journalistic mission of impartiality, the importance of truth and the faith which your readers place in your words. How has faith in news organizations changed in recent years, and how might digital journalism change in coming years?

Neither technological optimism nor unintended consequence are anything new when it comes to the increasing pace of our digital lives. We aspire to make the world ‘more open and connected’ while concurrently being horrified by the data harvesting which such connectivity brings. Yet we do it anyway. As you mention, all of this optimism and consequence happens with humans making assumptions and decisions. What do you see as the most consequential digital assumptions currently being made by media organizations ahead of the 2024 election that are different from 2020?

---