Our weekly roundup of news found at the intersection of media, politics, policy and technology, from the Shorenstein Center and from around the web. Sign up to receive Media and Politics Must Reads in your inbox each week. Also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.
This week at the Shorenstein Center
Tom Wheeler on the FCC, Net Neutrality, and Platform Regulation. Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama, and Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow, discussed technological change, President Trump’s FCC, regulation of social platforms, and more.
Nancy Gibbs Named Visiting Edward R. Murrow Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Nancy Gibbs, former Editor in Chief of Time, has been named a visiting member of the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School and to the Edward R. Murrow Chair of Press, Politics, and Public Policy. She will serve as a faculty affiliate at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
News from Faculty, Fellows, and Students
Propaganda, lies and social media: Harvard’s Nicco Mele on how the tech we love hurts us. “Algorithms feed our worst selves in their current design in terms of information. It’s debilitating,” says Nicco Mele, Shorenstein Center director.
Farai Chideya: 50 Years After Kerner Commission, Are Media Still Failing to Tell Minority Stories? Farai Chideya, spring 2017 fellow, says “The Kerner Commission Report was very prescient in the sense that it talked about equity, that people have a legitimate need for representation in the media as being part of a democracy.”
Remembering Doris Graber. The Shorenstein Center remembers former visiting professor and board member Doris Graber, who passed away in February.
HKS students write about gun control for the Kennedy School Review in two new articles: Liberals Have Failed on Gun Violence for Two Decades: To Win, We Need To Get Over Ourselves by Matt McDole, and Easy Access to Guns Hurts Beyond Mass Shootings by Jake Viola.
Misinformation
- Why Can Everyone Spot Fake News But YouTube, Facebook And Google? From BuzzFeed News.
- News in a disintegrating reality: Tow’s Jonathan Albright on what to do as things crash around us, from Nieman Lab.
News Business
- Yes, there’s a crisis of trust in journalism. But it’s inside newsrooms, too, from Columbia Journalism Review.
- ‘It’s going to end in tears’: Reality check is coming for subscription-thirsty publishers, from Digiday.
- Facebook’s support for local news subscriptions is one move in the larger dance between publishers and platforms, from Nieman Lab.
- Where have all the big, wow-inducing digital stories gone? From Poynter.
Media Diversity
- How Black Twitter and other social media communities interact with mainstream news, from Knight Foundation.
- She didn’t see herself or the young Black community in Chicago’s main media outlets, so she started her own, from Poynter.
Partisanship
Understanding the US political divide, one word cloud at a time, from The Conversation.
