1.
Truth, trust and technology:
How can journalism survive the information
crisis?
Professor Charlie Beckett
LSE
NU lecture
March 2019

2.
Has the world gone mad?

3.
Has the post-Enlightenment dream of an
informed society turned into digital dystopia?

4.
Getting worse before it gets
better
1. Governments, corporations, lobby groups now
investing in information manipulation
2. New channels, platforms and networks will provide
fresh distribution outlets for misinformation
3. Failure to address systematic problems means we
treat symptoms not structural challenges

5.
Fake news is good news for (good) journalism

6.
Truth, trust and technology:
rethinking the agenda

7.
Truth
Abundance
Misinformation
Disinformation
Bias
Subjectivity
Anti-media strategy

8.
Living in a multi-truth world?
• Lots of different sources –
golden age of ‘choice’
• Stream of social means news is
blended
• News gap – people’s agenda is
different to newsrooms
• Increasing role of emotions and
identity in consumption of news

9.
Improving news media credibility
• Increased resources for public
service news
• Fact checking
• Credibility signalling
• Better story-telling
• Transparency
• Better emotional literacy from
journalists

10.
Trust: re-thinking the relationship

11.
Living in a low-trust world?
• Loss of trust applies to most authority, not just media or politics
• Is it a bad thing? Scepticism and lack of deference are good
• Cynicism and apathy and general distrust not so good
• Trust is a relationship – being more truthful will help

12.
Improving Trust
• Transparency will help: open, honest, expert
• Humility: listening, seeking expertise
• Accountability: interactive, open, responsive, codes
• Relevance – widen the agenda
• Diversity – change the newsroom, understand audiences and the
wider public(s)
• Change the news organisation - collaboration, crowd-sourcing,
membership

13.
Technology: the problem with algorithms
driven by the attention economy
• Harm (children)
• Offence
• Extremism
• Polarisation
• Misinformation
• Emotional drivers

14.
Technology
• Tech is not neutral – it can be subject to public policy like anything
else
• The News Zealand attack showed you can’t just keep treating the
symptoms
• Have to decide what the problem is, is tech causing it, what
responsibility do we want them to have, who will be charged with
overseeing that?
• First of all we need an observatory, then an iterative process of
evolving regulation that recognises their unique nature and role

15.
Independent Platform Agency (IPA) model
• ■ Report on trends in news and information sharing according to a methodological
framework subject to public consultation.
• ■ Report on the effectiveness of self-regulation of the largest news-carrying social and
search platforms. This should include reports on trust marks, credibility signalling,
filtering and takedown.
• ■ Mobilise and coordinate all relevant actors to ensure an inclusive and sustained
programme in media literacy for both children and adults, and conduct evaluations of
initiatives.
• ■ Report annually to Parliament on the performance of platforms’ self-regulation and
the long-term needs for possible regulatory action.
• ■ Provide reports on request to other agencies such as the Electoral Commission, Ofcom
and the Information Commissioner’s Office, to support the performance of their duties,
according to agreed criteria.
• ■ Work closely with Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority to monitor the
level of market dominance and the impact of platforms on media plurality and quality.

16.
Tech for good? Funding of local PSM in UK
• Danger of dependency
• Questions over independence,
sustainability, selection of
grantees
• But it is a shift of resources
• Tech co’s have an interest in
making this work
• In the face of market failure
that’s a useful coincedence

17.
No-one said it would be easy. Journalism must recognize
that the media world has changed; news has changed;
the public has changed; the world has changed – has it
changed?

18.
Subjectivity is the new
objectivity
1. ‘Traditional’ journalism values now at a premium
2. Gatekeeper role over, traditional objectivity
inadequate
3. Understand the ’audience’ and their emotional,
personal media lives
4. Go with the human grain of social media

19.
“The challenge for the networked
journalist is clear: how best to sustain the
ethical, social, and economic value of
journalism in this new emotionally
networked environment.”
Beckett, C and Deuze, M (2016) On the Role of
Emotion in the Future of Journalism (Social Media +
Society)

20.
Keep in touch:
@CharlieBeckett
c.h.beckett@lse.ac.uk
Director’s commentary blog:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/