On Thursday, the European Commission criticized Google, Facebook and Twitter for failing to meet their pledges to counter the spread of fake news in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May. This is just the latest episode in a long-running public conversation about the impact of technology on democracy. One personality who has been following these debates closely is Hadas Gold, CNN's Europe correspondent. At just 31 years old, Gold is one of the world’s most influential reporters covering the intersection of media and politics. In 2018, she filed around 150 stories for CNN Digital that saw more than 10 million views. Gold is now based in London, where she covers Europe’s changing relationship with the United States for CNN and CNN International. In a discussion about how the digital transformation shapes society, she shared fascinating insights about media reporting, digital journalism, and regulation.
Media is the story
Gold’s own journey to the very top echelons of international journalism bears testimony for the dramatic change in the role that media and technology play in our societies. When she started covering the media as a junior reporter for Politico in 2013, there was only a small group of correspondents working on these issues. Most of their work was inside-industry reporting, like “Reuters is shutting down this one department. Why is it? What's happening?”, Gold remembers. That changed with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, “when the media became the story”. How come?
It’s because of politics. All Presidents have used the media as a foil but this President has used the media as a foil to an extent we haven't seen before and I think that’s coupled along with the digital transformation that we're all going through.
Media reporters are now household names, who deal with bigger, broader themes. “It’s first amendment rights; it’s privacy; it’s now social media; it’s reporting bias in the media”, Gold mentions a few of the issues she covers regularly.
Digital journalism & trust
The digital revolution has not only expanded the scope and impact of Gold’s reporting, but transformed journalism in fundamental ways. “When I open my computer, I open my email, and I open Twitter … [in] the same way that 40 years ago, every morning a reporter would have grabbed all the newspapers to see what was going on”, she confesses. But Gold is aware that social networks are not representative of the population as a whole. “We, journalists, have to be careful not to write for Twitter”, but “make sure [we]'re reporting on things that matter and really do advance a story, and shed light on something important”.
Is journalism in the digital age less trustworthy? On the one hand, “social media has in a way democratized access to the audience”, Gold explains. “Now we have Twitter personalities, who are not necessarily associated with any mainstream brand, or even any journalistic organization.” Whereas “some of these are amazing independent reporters”, there are also others “who are just spouting off things but they have a good following”. “I think that has made it hard for people to know what to trust and whom to trust and why or why not”, she concludes.
On the other hand, in the online era the news cycle has sped up. Years ago, reporters would have a 24-hour period to write a story because the paper came out every morning. “Now, we work in minutes”, Gold emphasizes. So, mistakes are prone to happen. “The important thing is how you handle the mistakes”, she adds.
A news organization or a journalist who makes an error but then corrects it and acknowledges it should be trusted more than someone who claims they never make an error.
CNN
Tech regulation
The realization that social media has a profound impact on democracy has prompted regulatory efforts worldwide. According to Gold, the crux of the matter is: “how and whether you should regulate these companies, while balancing also freedom of speech”. Because of the First Amendment, American lawmakers have been less willing to regulate media and technology than their European counterparts. However, she explains, “US Congress is paying close attention to what regulators in Europe and in the UK are doing and are taking cues from that to see how regulation might work in the United States”. Because of the different approaches that governments take in enforcing rules for online activity, Gold expects to see a similar stratification of regulations as we see in other industries. So, even though the digital space was intended to be borderless, “different sort of internets will start popping up around the world”.
“The speed at which technology is changing, moving, developing is much faster than what governments can keep up with through regulation”, Hadas points out. The next big challenge? It’s artificial intelligence.
At some point, we're going to have artificial intelligence writing tweets and Facebook posts and letters to the editors and what not. So, I think it's going to be very important to determine what's real and what's not real. And what's computer generated and what's not computer generated. I think that will be the next big challenge for the media and for society at large. Because everything we do now is online.
Gold sees journalism as playing a crucial role in helping citizens adapt to and make sense of these rapid technological changes and their impact on society. “Most people can't sit all day and read and understand everything that's happening”, she acknowledges. “So, it's my job to digest it and explain to them what's happening, why it matters and how this will affect them”.
