Media Bits and Bytes – Coal and Candy Edition

Facebook fakery; Media misery; Trump’s quid pro quo; Post election plenty; Science silenced; Stormy forecast

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The Real Problem Behind the Fake News

By Will Oremus
November 15, 2016
Slate

Without robust countervailing forces favoring credibility and accuracy, Facebook’s news feed algorithm is bound to spread lies, especially those that serve to bolster people’s preconceived biases. And these falsehoods are bound to influence people’s thinking.
And yet, in the days following the election, as criticisms of the company mounted, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg downplayed and denied the issue—a defensiveness that says even more about the company than the fake news scandal itself. Zuckerberg’s response points to a problem deeper than any bogus story, one that won’t be fixed by cutting some shady websites out of its advertising network. The problem is Facebook’s refusal to own up to its increasingly dominant role in the news media. It’s one that is unlikely to go away, even if the fake news does.
 

Why the Media is a Key Dimension of Global Inequality

By Nick Couldry and Clemencia Rodriguez
November 28, 2016
The Conversation

Just as economic models rooted in markets and consumption are expanding into ever more world regions and intruding into ever more domains of everyday life, so corporate logics are colonising media and digital platforms.
Take education as one example: concerns are developing regarding school learning materials increasingly provided not by the state but by commercial media companies such as Apple and Google.
More recently, Facebook faced civil society opposition in India when it sought to introduce its Free Basics platform as a default means of internet access for less affluent populations.
However, the same move has gone unopposed in African countries facing greater resource challenges.

Trump Promised To Help Tech Companies. What Does He Want in Return?

By Karen Gullo
December 16, 2016
Electronic Frontier Foundation

If Mr. Trump wants to help technology thrive, he should start by protecting users and innovation from policies and practices that threaten privacy, civil liberties, and a free Internet. Users are beset by overreaching digital collection and the tracking of personal information on all fronts. We exist in an era of unprecedented government invasions into our private lives, made easier by the digital devices we carry and the servers and cloud storage that hold information about every aspect of our lives—where we go, what we say, what we buy, and with whom who we associate.
Mr. Trump’s comments on surveillance and security and his national security picks seem to indicate that he intends to continue these practices, rather than stem them. If so, he should rethink that plan. These practices will further erode user confidence in technology and put the privacy of millions of Americans at risk. It’s the wrong way to help technology thrive.

Nonprofit Journalism Groups Are Gearing Up With Flood of Donations

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By Nicholas Fandos
December 7, 2016
New York Times

At one point, after the comedian John Oliver promoted the organization on his HBO show, ProPublica was receiving as many as four donations a minute.
With the influx of cash, ProPublica has already begun beat coverage of hate crimes and the growing influence of white supremacy, two issues that the election brought to the forefront. Mr. Tofel said the group hoped to increase its coverage of other issues, like trade and immigration.
For the 27-year-old Center for Public Integrity, the increase in donations could be critical in shrinking the deficits that have plagued it in recent years, especially if it extends to large donors. The group’s international arm, which coordinated the award-winning Panama Papers project this year, is expected to spin off soon, requiring additional resources.
John Dunbar, a veteran investigative journalist who was recently named the center’s chief executive, said he saw the donations as a recognition that watchdog journalism would be more important given Mr. Trump’s deregulatory agenda and lack of transparency.

Researchers Are Preparing for Trump to Delete Government Science From the Web

by Jason Koebler
December 13, 2016
Motherboard

Scientists and university professors all around the country and in Canada believe we’re about to see widespread whitewashing and redaction of already published, publicly available taxpayer-funded scientific research, databases, and interactive tools, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Level Rise viewer, NASA’s suite of climate change apps, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s maps of the country’s worst polluters. They also expect to see censorship, misrepresentation, and minimization of new government-funded research, specifically regarding climate change.
These fears are not based merely on a sense of dreading-the-worst from a man who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, nominated a climate change denier with close ties to the fossil fuel industry as head of the EPA, the CEO of ExxonMobil as Secretary of State, and will reportedly name the fossil fuel-friendly Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy. During the George W. Bush administration, which similarly denied that climate change is being caused by humans, there was widespread censorship and destruction of public-facing climate change information and research.


Michael Wolff on How Media Wars Will Replace the Culture Wars in Trump Era

by Michael Wolff
December 19, 2016
The Hollywood Reporter

If part of the Trump goal is to shift the narrative of modern American life from urban-global-multicultural to middle-American-nationalist-populist, then going after the media, the chief representative of the former, is bound to solidify his standing with the latter. The widely disdained media is the better, more inclusive enemy in the cultural wars — much better to rally around these days than gays and abortions.
It is, as well, easy — diabolically easy — to pit the media against itself. After Trump met in an off-the-record session with a group of media executives and prominent on-air personalities, The New York Post, in what was widely regarded as a Trump leak, reported that he had delivered a blistering tongue-lashing to these media heavies. But the heavies themselves reported, somewhat sheepishly, quite a charm offensive, with one figure of renowned earnestness saying to friends that if he had known this was what Trump was actually like, he might really have voted for him.
The likely method and strategy of the new administration will be to play the media this way: reveling in and courting its umbrage and attention.