Subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and everywhere you listen to podcasts (if you like the show, leave us a review!). Not much time? Watch short clips on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube. Greetings from the Media Jungle! Welcome to new subscribers from United Nations, Medill School of Journalism, CNN and more. Quick survey: do you find the transcripts of episodes below helpful? What types of interviewees do you like most? Simply respond to the email… thanks for your support! This week he have: * Martha Minow: A professor and former Dean of Harvard Law School, and author of “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech” among others. She is currently the co-chair of the Access to Justice Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-chair of the advisory board to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Schwartzman College of Computing. Check out more about Martha here. Podcasts grow from referrals, so if you like Media Jungle, please consider sharing with someone interested in learning about how the media industry works. Read the transcript of the full interview below, or watch the full episode on our Youtube channel here: Missed last week’s show? Here are two short clips from my chat with Jeffrey Dvorkin: Here’s a transcript of this week’s episode: Alex: Welcome to the Media Jungle video podcast. I'm your host, Alex Ragir, coming to you every week to break down the business behind the news industry, the future of media, and the creator economy. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter and YouTube channel, and don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, we appreciate your support. On this episode, I'm joined with Martha Minow, a professor and former Dean of Harvard Law School and author of “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech.” Martha, thanks for joining. Martha: It's such a pleasure. Thank you. Should governments save independent media? Alex: Should governments save independent media? The constitution only mentioned one private institution: the press. They wanted it independent from government as a check on power, but the threat to independent journalism right now is not the government, it’s technology. The forefathers probably didn’t think Craigslist and LinkedIn and Google and Facebook would disrupt the business model of advertising. But since the forefathers saw it as such a critical part of democracy, should the government not be part of the solution? Stay tuned. Alex: Martha, what do you think the forefathers would have said? Martha: Understanding what the forefathers would have thought in our current world is a science fantasy game, but I can't say this: The Founding Fathers of this nation believe that the press was critical to democracy and to daily life; And that's why it's the only private institution that's mentioned and given its own private [protection] in the constitution. It's also the case that within the first five years of the constitution, the post office, which is also created by the constitution, created subsidies for the news media of that time. So it would not have surprised the Founding Fathers who were around at that time to see the government giving subsidies and other kinds of support to the media. Alex: And it's a little bit interesting because they did designate it as a private entity for sort of a reason. I guess for independence. How does that play into the logic of how the government should play a role? Martha: Well, quite right, and of course the government was smaller in all kinds of ways at that time. Over 200 years ago then it is now. But the idea that independent viewpoints would be expressed and propelled by a private press was very much the concept of the media that the constitution embraces. [It's] supposed to be a critical vehicle to criticize anyone in power, certainly those in government, but also those in private power. [To] have diversity of viewpoint was another major point, which is enabled by having a private industry that has many different providers. Alex: So now you think that the government should take action to preserve and mostly local news, right? Or it's also national? Martha: The local news is the leading edge of the crisis in news in America. But, in many parts of the country, there are problems even getting access to multiple viewpoints about national news or international news. To say that the government should take a role, let's be clear: I don't want the government making choices about content or viewpoint, but the government actually plays critical roles in setting up the rules of contract law, property law, antitrust law, consumer protection law, to provide the rules for common carriers that lie behind the media, to fund the inventions of the internet. The government is behind all of that. Alex: As a law professor, nowadays you have influencers, podcasters, comedians giving you the news. You have outlets that call themselves news, but it's all opinion. How do you define journalists now, and how do you define news? Martha: That of course is a big problem, and it's a problem, even with one of the solutions that I like, [the] Local News Sustainability Act pending in Congress right now. You know, the early media in this country, and it's true in other countries too, blended [what classifies as news]. You think about Ben Franklin and what he produced in his printing business. It was a mix of entertainment and advice and gossip and fiction and fact, so that's not particularly surprising. I think that when we do talk about government subsidies, [those] choices do come into play and there can be, I think, pretty dangerous and certainly not desirable manipulation. If there were a subsidy available to local news and it could be obtained by multinational companies or foreigners or people, as you say, who are not in the news business at all, [but] in the fake news business. So there are some tricky questions there for sure. Alex: Do you think someone could go about sort of defining what an “objective journalist” or what a “journalist” is so that they could get some type of subsidies? Martha: I think if we start with the local news phenomenon, I think we could emphasize the “local” and requiring proof that the outlet is actually located locally. That would screen out an awful lot of the abuses. Alex: And is it independence? Because you have, I think it's 90% of U.S. news is controlled by like six companies. AT&T, Disney, Comcast, NewsCorp, CBS, and Viacom. It seems like it would be hard to make the case that we should bail or give them any type of money. Martha: Well, I couldn't agree more. Although right now we do give them a subsidy through Section 230. We can talk about that in a little while they are exempted from the liabilities that attach to ordinary journalists. And so the government is subsidizing them and that shouldn't happen anymore. But you know, this is in some ways a devastating time with the loss of local reporting and even the ideal of news or objectivity, but in other ways, it's a golden age because you can have a local blogger or you can have somebody write about the what's happening on their block that nobody ever covered before in the conventional media. So one of the questions is how do we make sure that those voices are not drowned out by the amplification of some of those big companies that you've mentioned. Alex: Are those types of changes, like trying to figure out what news is and [what opinion is]? Are those things that you're thinking about how to create new policies? Martha: Well, again, I'm cautious and certainly concerned about the government getting into any content restrictions or even requirements of identifying a distinction between fact and news. The government shouldn't be in that business, but the government can do something that helps other people be in that business. The government can require a far more disclosure and transparency. The government can require the social media companies to make available and also accountable their own practices for how they harvest and how they amplify news. And when it would comes to cable [or] to Fox or MSNBC for that matter, the government can similarly require more transparency and also make available their data and our metadata for private researchers. I think that we should have rankings that are developed by private entities. It could be by researchers in the academic world or nonprofit organizations, could be by local faith-based communities. Let's have a war about that; not a war about the truth, but a war about the ratings of what's reliable and what's not. Alex: Of the credibility of the actual publication, is that what you're referring to? Martha: That's what I'm saying. And you know, we're much better about this with entertainment. [We] have different groups that rate entertainment [like if] is it child-friendly or not? We could have different groups rate the so-called news. Is it actually covering information? Is it providing a fair, balanced, understanding? The ideal of objectivity you mentioned, that's actually relatively modern. It's really turn of the 20th century. Although the scientific method emerged in science much earlier than it did in journalism, but that aspiration is something that actually helped to create the profession of journalism. The idea that there should be more than one source for a story; the idea that there should be no one who has a financial interest, who is a source, or that should be disclosed. Those are just some basics that are now abandoned by the current structure of the media. The Only Thing AOC and Ted Cruz Agree On Alex: Everyone seems to agree to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the legislation regulating the tech industry. You know, the one that lets Twitter and Facebook off the hook for whatever they pub
