Media Crisis in America: Lessons for Democracy & Journalism

[00:00:02]Hello.

[00:00:10]Jeff Jarvis plus Jeff.

[00:00:35]switching in English. Um for let's CEOs, Amazon, fun, Google, President Median collapse.

[00:01:46]Then Jeff Jav is blocks.

[00:02:17]What would Google do? Yeah.

[00:02:27]The web we weave.

[00:02:32]Gutenberg parenthesis.

[00:02:54]Absolut to professor of journalism for innovation under City University of New New York's GRE Greg Numo's Graduate School of Journalism.

[00:03:25]Sh >> feeling duck. Feeling duck.

[00:03:32]>> Quite a ride. The the thing is we're switching now into English now.

[00:03:36]Throughout my entire journalistic career, the past 20 25 years of my life, so to speak, I've always looked to you and I wondered to like what would Jeff Javis do and I'm really really proud that I can ask you today in person. So our topic today, it's not an easy chat. It's um basically like how doomed or let's just call it what it is. How [ __ ] is the media scene in the United States of America these days?

[00:04:16][ __ ] Um my message is not cheery, it's depressing.

[00:04:24]Democracy is dying in America and mass media are dead. They don't know it, but they're dead. And uh the total picture for media in the US is troubling from a business sense. We know that most American newspaper chains are now owned by hedge funds which do not invest.

[00:04:46]Radio is a dead medium. Uh television the audience is geriatric is is old and dying. Um, we now see that um the Ellisons, whom I call the the mini Murdochs, have taken over uh CBS and are bringing in far-right uh management there. They're likely to take over CNN as well. Uh our escape from that should be social media, but now of course they control Tik Tok.

[00:05:18]Meanwhile, the Murdochs spent $3.3 billion to keep their far right-wing publications far rightwing.

[00:05:26]Um, and the most depressing of all to me is that in my view, the New York Times is failing us. Uh, the Washington Post is being ruined. Uh, CNN and public radio are frightened.

[00:05:42]And so it's a very very uh depressing picture in American media. Wow. Okay.

[00:05:49]Wait. So there's a lot to a lot of to untangle here. Um when you say the the the media is that you mean the the traditional mass media because podcasts are flourishing.

[00:06:05]>> Yeah. Mass media are dying. So there's opportunity there because they can be replaced. they will be replaced by new entities, but between here and there will be chaos and we don't know, I think, how that's going to play out. Um, but mass media, I think it's important to see, are a fairly recent invention.

[00:06:27]>> Yeah.

[00:06:27]>> Um, so my next book that's not one of those is a cultural history of the liner type.

[00:06:36]How many here even know what a linotype was? Not many. uh type for 450 years since Gutenberg was set one letter at a time. The line of type made that a line at a time and it was the last machine needed for the mechanization and industrialization of media. And it's a big big thing for Steve Jobs also because he literally he went into like he he tortured his team in order to have the spaces between the letters in a different kind of a distance because of what not every letter is like the other.

[00:07:11]>> Right. Right. And so that was the the the multiplication of media. What came next was broadcast and the invention of the amplifier of the of the tube of the transistor. Um, and it's fascinating for me to see that radio, as we were discussing earlier with somebody here, didn't have to turn out the way it did in the US. Originally, it was it was mainly amateurs. Um, they thought that advertising was a horrible thing to have on radio. Um it was the US Navy that forced the creation of RCA to hold patents for radio because they were worried about their communication with ships. Uh the telephone company thought that they were the broadcaster. Radio thought they were there to do phone calls.

[00:07:58]>> So my point is that today we we face both the internet and now AI. And there are choices today. This is not a deterministic future. We can decide what these things should be. And I think that yes, podcasts and blogs, little bits of social media, >> newslet newsletters, >> uh, newsletters do provide some hope, but I think we still have a mass media mind where we think that everything has to be huge. The good news is I think we will return to media at a human scale.

[00:08:31]>> Okay, I see. Before we uh open the big box of Pandora's box of AI, let's uh let's discuss about today's state of media. You mentioned just before the New York Times is failing us. How the times is the best that we have in the US and I want it to be better. So I criticize it every day. If you look at the hashtag broken times or broken post or Murdoch media trolling them.

[00:09:03]>> Yes, I am. And they refuse. So, so the last piece of paper in Hana Iran's typewriter when she unfortunately died, the heading for the chapter, the last third of her last book was judging.

[00:09:18]>> What?

[00:09:18]>> Judging.

[00:09:19]>> Judging. Okay.

[00:09:20]>> As in judgment.

[00:09:21]>> Mhm.

[00:09:22]>> And and our the New York Times is deathly afraid of judging Trump or the people who put him in office.

[00:09:31]and uh they don't want to use words like fascism. And you can't explain fascism until you're willing to see fascism and label fascism. So I I I took down a few uh of their prime examples. Um when Trump was in the Oval Office demanding that his enemies be prosecuted and his legal people just stood by, the New York Times called this a diarama of power dynamics.

[00:10:00]No, it's fascism. Uh, at the Kirk Charlie Kirk funeral, they called it an extraordinary fusion of government and Christianity.

[00:10:11]No, it's white Christian nationalism.

[00:10:14]Um, they said uh let me see uh about Epstein. They said the latest revolution revelations so complicate uh Trump's sweeping denials about Epstein.

[00:10:28]Meanwhile, if you read Didite, they their headline on the same story was Luga.

[00:10:36]And I think we see a difference here.

[00:10:40]Deutsche Journalism is bessa journalism.

[00:10:48]>> Let me be thank you. But uh let me be the devil's advocate here. It is always and it's my I was a White House correspondent a couple of years ago.

[00:10:58]It's always easier to write and to really name what's going on in the country like when you're not actually living there when you're a guest. So the New York the the sites terrific correspondence there but it's much easier for them to call it by the name than a the newspaper that's actually there. I've emailed my friend Yoken Vegner at beatsite often begging him to get pieces translated um into English so that American journalists can read it. I if you don't mind I made a few notes.

[00:11:30]>> Go ahead. We have the time today.

[00:11:33]>> A uh an honor role here. U Schnidler in uh Despel uh had a cover story a few weeks ago. The the goger, right, the God's warriors. He had another one about uh Trump censoring media. uh Matthew Fonro uh said uh America is uner gagener that's honest speech that we don't hear in the US the sudsa has been I think fairly amazing uh if anyone here from the sudocha I salute you now many >> um uh Christian bent uh talked about drosa ferdong no one calls Trump stupid in the US you don't even have to call him fascist call him stupid and the Sudsa does and the New York Times won't. Claudia Cidle uh said called him DSini Desums.

[00:12:28]Herbet Vetszel said that uh it's longer so I won't do it in German. Uh the words of the most powerful man on earth uh now mean nothing. Can I interrupt you for a second here because something seems to be off here. How come if I take your point? How come if the New York Times or the Washington Post for reasons we know cannot really be really straightforward to be they choose not to be.

[00:12:58]>> Okay. Right. Um how come that you know like comedians in the late night shows happen to do that job?

[00:13:09]>> Well, we saw what happened to Jimmy Kimmel.

[00:13:11]>> Yeah. They tried to take him off and finally, you know, it's first they came for the immigrants, then they came for the trans children, but when they came for the comedian, that's when we got protest in the US. So, I don't fully blame media alone. I blame my fellow citizens. However, last weekend I was one of the millions of people who was out marching in No Day. And back to the New York Times, they did one little photo on the on the front page. They they ignore the voice of the people.

[00:13:42]>> Okay. But trying to counter your uh your uh first statement that democracy is dead >> dying in the US.

[00:13:50]>> It's dying. It's dying. It's pretty much alive after last weekend.

[00:13:56]>> That no kings democ demonstrations they were huge.

[00:14:00]>> They were huge but that doesn't but we've lost the Supreme Court. We've lost Congress and we've lost the White House.

[00:14:06]>> That's always going up and down. Uh, well, I'm of an age. We Yes. We say the pendulum swings.

[00:14:12]>> Yeah.

[00:14:13]>> I'm of the age that I'm very worried I will not see it swing back by the time I'm gone.

[00:14:17]>> So, you think next year the the midterms are going to change nothing?

[00:14:22]>> Very possibly because they're cheating in Texas. They added five seats. They just added another seat in I think North Carolina. Um, and don't forget that the American system, the electoral college in the US Senate was built on the basis of slavery.

[00:14:41]The real truth of America is that we never finished the Civil War. And that's what's happening right now is that it's still about race in the US. And the system that was set up to was to advantage the smaller slaveholding states of the South. That's why we have the Senate structured the way it is.

[00:15:00]That's why we have the electoral college. And that's what has enabled very clever right-wing extremists to manipulate the system to be in charge.

[00:15:12]Given the fact that Trump tries to establish a new form of media coverage and that he's banning journalists and he's suing like big news outlets and so on. Last week we saw that the journalists fight back. They came together and said they said we will not oblige the new rules of the Pentagon and we will not sign that contract.

[00:15:40]Trump's no worse off for it. Trump uh is doesn't need media anymore. He used media and by that I mean entertainment media NBC um well he got into office.

[00:15:53]He's not in jail right now. It's not as if he needs those reporters. There's no Yes, they had to walk out. They absolutely had to walk out. Um, in fact, they should have walked out of the White House 6 years ago. They should have. Jay Rosen at New York University and I argued online that when the White House turned into an absurd circus, media outlets should have sent the interns to record the meetings. But we in the press give an undeserved respect to the institution that they've ruined.

[00:16:28]>> Well, they did not make like great um um headlines with interns in the White House, but that's a different story. Um Jeff, >> that was another regime.

[00:16:40]>> You said you you said like the the the traditional media is failing us. There was some hope. I I was there at the first day when after the election of Donald Trump when everybody was even the New York Times was 90% sure it's going to be Hillary and then 24 hours later you're like the world was different and I was there at the first morning conference of the Washington Post with Marty Baron leading it and I saw so many like completely shocked faces of the entire journalistic board back then.

[00:17:21]Everybody, not just within the Washington Post, even with the New York Times, they said, "Oh, it's actually a good thing that Jeff Bezos bought it." And they all said, Marty Baron personally said, "He's not interfering. He's giving us leeway.

[00:17:38]He is uh actually like the best owner of a journalistic uh publication he's ever worked for. Not anymore.

[00:17:51]What happened?

[00:17:52]>> Poor Marty Baron, who I think is one of the best editors we have uh in the English language and >> came from the Boston Globe.

[00:18:00]>> Uh Boston Globe, Miami Herald and New York Times. He uh made the Washington Post in its time better than the New York Times. I believed we had real competition at the level of national media. You in Europe have many national media voices because we're so damn big in America. We didn't have that. We have the New York Times and and monopolies and cities. So, we finally had competition with the Times and the Post.

[00:18:26]Marty wrote his memoir. He praised Jeff Bezos in the memoir. And poor Marty is now embarrassed by the praise that he gave. Um I think simple self-interest on Bezos's part uh took over and um yeah the the the the post so Gol Shaklami this morning who's an old friend of mine from Kand Nast cautioned about media companies having interests in other industries because it creates a conflict of interest which a Donald Trump can use as leverage.

[00:19:01]>> Okay, but here's the number one question. And I'm sure every one of you has just like me when we not only saw with like the the uh taking the oath part in the um Cong in the in the in the Congress um in February or January, but also like two or three weeks ago when you know they had yet another big meeting at the White House and everybody Mark Zuckerberg and everybody was there, Tim Cook book Sam Alman from Open AI and they were like really kissing his ass like nobody has seen before.

[00:19:44]It was like really you couldn't you thought it's AI generated but they were actually saying those words like how great he is.

[00:19:55]What is [ __ ] your money for when you don't make use of it?

[00:20:01]>> Well said. Well said. No, but Can you explain explain to us why the richest people on on this planet >> do not have the coonus and the the to just just not to show up. You don't have to offend him, but just no, I'm busy. We got the new iPhone next week. Uh we have, you know, because a lot is never enough, right? They always want more.

[00:20:29]And we see more following. This last week we saw Mark Beni off at Salesforce who was we thought a fairly reliable ally of >> last man standing.

[00:20:38]>> Uh he no more because he said that he invited that the federal troops should come into San Francisco and then when all his friends >> uh got angry at >> really military >> yes military invade San Francisco and his San and he lives on his on his ranch in Hawaii.

[00:20:55]>> Um and his friends in San Francisco Yes, they do. or New Zealand. Um, both so I >> Yeah, I but literally they they couldn't care less. And on the other way, if just two or three of them would just join forces and say he's not, you know, like intimidating us and we don't work against him, but we are not working for him. it would be over because they have such I mean those platforms have such a gravitas. What we need in the opposition is leadership and that's part of the problem is the Democratic party is a mess right now and we feel we don't have leadership. Uh we would follow a leader who had the courage to do that but they don't and I don't know what solves that. I don't see a way out of this right now. That's the And so and so my my concern is for you. We have the Trumpists and you of course have AFDA and um your media is being more honest about America for Google.

[00:22:18]Um, and so I don't I don't have the nuance to understand the coverage of Germany. I can better understand the German coverage of America.

[00:22:28]But my prayer for German media is that it is as blunt and honest and courageous covering Germany as it is covering America. And that goes to your point earlier. It's harder to do it when it's your country. But if you don't, you're screwed.

[00:22:45]If we don't judge, where are we? One of the things I hate now about the discussion in America is this trope of polarization.

[00:22:55]This idea that there are somehow two equals. And it's not. It's a it's a it's it's out of whack. And when you call it polarization, you move the extreme to the center. And that's what's happened in American media.

[00:23:10]>> You mean like there are good guys on both sides?

[00:23:12]>> Yeah. Exactly. or both sides in in the media itself.

[00:23:16]>> And and so unless we start judging, we're nowhere. We we we started with your thesis that we're on the way already in fascism in the United States. Fascist the beginning of fascism. Can we? Yeah.

[00:23:36]>> Oh, I think we're well into it.

[00:23:38]>> You're into I think they've they right now the fascists are in charge. full stop.

[00:23:43]>> I know that you are a very uh well read and known uh person about the German history. I I I I sometimes I I I don't want to I don't want to say it as a German. It feels it feels wrong, but maybe would you say that the collaboration of big tech these days is what we have witnessed here in this very country 100 years ago?

[00:24:12]That's the fear. I urge journalists in the United States to read Hana Arant.

[00:24:18]The origins of totalitarianism is the map for what is occurring.

[00:24:23]And she makes the point that the elites of Germany, the industrial elites went along because they basically enjoyed the destruction.

[00:24:36]Um, and I think that's what's happening in the US >> because they have the islands, >> the escape islands, >> the escape islands. The other thing that I think is >> Mars.

[00:24:45]>> Yes. The other thing I think is different, >> and I'm getting way past my over my skis, as we say here with with history.

[00:24:53]I'm just a journalist. But Germany had to endure the utter destruction to rebuild.

[00:25:02]And I'm always impressed with the consciousness of that here. It's never enough. There's always problems. I understand that. But it's it's visible here.

[00:25:14]>> So, you're saying we learned our lesson?

[00:25:17]>> I think that the pressure is always there to remind the lesson. Whereas the United States, once again, our civil war didn't really end. The reconstruction turned away, turned around all of the things that were accomplished and the Jim Crow laws of discrimination came in.

[00:25:38]We didn't have any victory against that until 1960s with Voting Rights Act and our Supreme Court is about to denude the Voting Rights Act.

[00:25:49]>> We are going back to Jim Crow.

[00:25:52]>> Jim Crow was like the racism >> racist laws in the 50s, I think. Right.

[00:25:57]Yeah. Uh well, yes. Yes.

[00:25:59]>> All right. Um let's open up the can of worms called AI.

[00:26:11]Many things that we've witnessed over the past two decades kind of resemble to what we see today. Again, we say see the same players like going through the internet just grabbing everything, making big money out of it, fair share or whatever, and the former colonists, Europe becomes colonies of those big tech new colonial masters.

[00:26:55]We give all the data. They give us free apps free but we get nothing in return.

[00:27:09]I know you've been in struggle like with what would Google do like in big fights with DNA and co but you too have changed your attitude toward towards those platforms. Can you tell me do you remember the one day when you said no it's not enough that Google is not evil Google is now asked to be actually to to do actually good. I remember you coined that phrase one day and I was like whoa.

[00:27:47]You're like you've always been on the side with Google in the beginning and then all of a sudden you said no it's not good enough not to be evil. You now have to be good and you are failing us.

[00:28:04]So if there was a day it wasn't Google it was Twitter.

[00:28:09]So come the internet. I started my blog a week after 9/11. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center. That's what made me start blogging. And my blog is on WordPress, which is open source.

[00:28:21]>> We're talking about Buzz Machine.

[00:28:22]>> Buzz Machine.

[00:28:23]>> Yeah.

[00:28:24]>> And um I thus supported a pro an open- source protocol on the internet. Right. Then along came Twitter and uh like a dog saying squirrel uh it was a distraction, right? I could go on to Twitter and I moved much of my own meaningless discourse to Twitter.

[00:28:47]>> Okay. When Musk took over too late, I realized the mistake of that. So you invested so much time and effort and brain power into a platform >> that there was public discourse and conversation in a platform that could be taken over by a narcissistic nihilist named Elon.

[00:29:07]And so that's where I've seen the problem. Um yes, right now uh Twitter is >> gone >> garbage. Um, Facebook in your in your hall of shame of media moguls, Mark Zuckerberg is is the quizing.

[00:29:27]Um, Google still does some good things.

[00:29:31]Uh, but Google isn't as active as I would like in being good. Um, uh, the the open the the the AI platforms are are now big companies. But here's where I hope there's a difference.

[00:29:47]I was optimistic about the internet to a fault.

[00:29:49]>> Mhm.

[00:29:50]>> Um AI right now is controlled by huge corporations or >> corporations we were talking about open >> plus open AI plus anthropic wellfunded VC funded companies.

[00:30:04]>> There's Peter Teal.

[00:30:06]>> There's and Peter Teal who's the really scary power behind this.

[00:30:10]>> Our our German experts in Silicon Valley. Let me uh do one more plug here for um what was it here? Um uh Klaus Meritus, my handwriting is terrible.

[00:30:24]Regarding Peter Teal uh in dite de oligarch deser uh that he's acting like a like a like a suffering victim in this is ridiculous.

[00:30:35]Anyway, the difference with AI is that there are open-source versions out there and I talked I'm on two AI podcasts. One called intelligent machines, one called AI inside. We interviewed somebody last week who um has an open- source model that he that they built to be open.

[00:30:58]Point one. Point two, the fascinating paradox of AI to me is that it is the technologists making the app that's going to replace themselves because it's so easy to use that we don't need them once it's built.

[00:31:14]That's a little optimistic, I know, but my point in the end is we have choices again. Are we going to screw it up again? I confess I screwed it up with the internet by not supporting by neglecting my blog on WordPress and putting too much onto Twitter and Facebook. Now with AI and you have you have um two examples here in Europe. One is a Mistral in France and the other is in Norway.

[00:31:46]Shipstead gathered all of the publishers in Norway to contribute their content to uh making a Norwegian language LLM with a university. They said, "We'll get to the business model later, but let's just see if we can do this >> and they did and it was better than the English versions." That was media playing smart rather than playing victim. And the question is, can we be smart now about AI?

[00:32:16]So far we're not being there and so far I would be pessimistic but I think there are some opportunities here which we can talk about.

[00:32:23]>> But don't you think this ship has already sailed in terms also of the the money war that is going on? Like I mean they pay sums of of of money. I was at the leip syndrome the other day and they have the smartest and brightest people there full stop but they have to follow the rules of Germany of the EU and they are very have tight budgets and when Mark Zuckerberg pays like gazillions of millions of dollars and gives them the number one uh currency that they are really after it's not money, it's it's computing power. Those guys you can you can get with computing power because they want their projects to to to to come alive literally. And uh so so is isn't this just already kind of decided before the this competition even started?

[00:33:31]So, a few things. Artificial general intelligence, AGI, is [ __ ] It's never going to happen. It's the wrong goal.

[00:33:41]>> Twitter does have >> um and uh it sets a goal out here as if we're trying to make them alive and come to life. And it's ridiculous. And it's leading to all kinds of bad decisions.

[00:33:53]One of which is they think that it's about scale over everything. And that's why this huge money is going in that if we just add more um scale to the machines, we will be superhuman.

[00:34:08]That's never going to happen. They're wasting the money.

[00:34:11]>> If you go to somebody smart about AI like Yan Lun at Meta, >> yeah, >> he argues that instead we have to go to a different um path. Uh that scale alone won't do it. The present models won't do it. He tells his students at New York University, don't work on LLMs. That's that's a dead end. What they want to work on now is real world modeling. The the AI doesn't know that when this P pen goes off the table that it still exists.

[00:34:42]It doesn't understand the real world.

[00:34:44]That's where robotics is so important.

[00:34:47]Jensen Wong, the founder of Nvidia, his kids are in the company. What are they working on? Robotics, >> of course.

[00:34:54]>> That's what's going to teach them, right?

[00:34:56]Elon is working.

[00:34:57]>> So, it's going to be different models and these huge data centers that they're building, >> right?

[00:35:02]>> Meta's as big as Manhattan, >> right, >> is going to be a waste of money.

[00:35:06]>> There's going to be different ways that'll bring progress, I think.

[00:35:10]>> Um, but right now, they have VC money and they're spending it like crazy.

[00:35:14]They're not only doing it to get um employees and programmers, they're also getting it to get the biggest news companies. The deals that have been made so far paying off major news companies are also [ __ ] because they're not really licensing content. What they're doing is buying the silence of those companies when it comes to legislation litigation, right?

[00:35:39]>> Um and what's and the whole ecosystem of news is left out.

[00:35:46]>> Only the few big guys get a bag of money.

[00:35:48]>> Yeah. But come on. I mean even the Germans participating by Dupn Beagel and so so on like the big guys they they sell their crown jewels jewels um whereas the others let them being taken just in the Lou >> right so so at least they get some money back >> but but only the big guys get the money they don't really do anything to build the system and um I was so happy earlier on the stage to hear um uh Ulie Kurpin >> Kurpin yes from talk um the cooperation between IP and runfolk.

[00:36:26]>> Yes.

[00:36:26]>> A public private partnership for a pool of information. I've been arguing in the US we need to create an API for news. We need to bring together all the news that doesn't get these big deals that doesn't have that money and say to the AI companies, okay, we're going to make it we're not going to sue you because we're too small. We're going to make it possible for you to use our content, but we got to talk. Let's talk about money.

[00:36:52]Let's talk about u positioning, branding, links, and so on. Now, the problem is there's no gold at the end of the rainbow from this. Where I think we're going to end up with AI is two things. One, media will want to be involved because that's the only way they're going to get discovered in the future. And two, even if there is a revenue share, it won't be revenue of much at this point because the business model of AI is not clear.

[00:37:22]>> Okay. But I I really want to want to don't want to let you go with this so easily.

[00:37:30]Correct me where I am wrong. We have the same players mostly in the AI race new players who are as bad >> but the old ones are still there and they are bigger than ever. one. Second, we agreed that at some point like Google, Facebook back then, even Twitter and so they decided to go with the money rather than to connecting people, >> right? So because the incentives for hate were higher than for bringing people really together, I look at it a little bit differently. The cost of civilization was too high.

[00:38:18]>> Okay. But let's go with your analogy with that squirrel. Squirrel squirrel.

[00:38:23]Right. So they chose like the easy low uh like unhealthy calories in order to spread wisdom and unity because it paid so well on the on the stock market.

[00:38:48]So we have the same players.

[00:38:51]We have still a rotten model for social media and now they're making social media with synthetic media.

[00:39:03]Why should why should the outcome be any different than what we have experienced with the last two decades?

[00:39:13]same people, same people, same uh business models, same in incentives.

[00:39:19]>> Um that's Well, I'll quibble with you there. The people aren't all the same.

[00:39:24]The investors are. That's a difference.

[00:39:26]Not a good difference. I'm just saying it's a difference. Uh and the business model of AI is not at all clear. Not in the least bit clear at this point. Uh so people are chasing a bag of money, but I don't think we know where that money is going to be. Right now, it's still venture money. That's what got us in the crash of 2000 was people's used venture money to get audiences.

[00:39:47]Let's talk about it in another way in terms of our relationship with AI.

[00:39:52]We've got to recognize the reality of it. People are using it.

[00:39:56]>> Whether they should or not, they're using it.

[00:39:59]>> 17% in the US are already getting their news from uh chat bots.

[00:40:07]>> So every week now I go to archive.org or uh ARXIV, which is where all the preprints are, and I look at every single paper that mentions AI. It's 5 to 700 papers a week. I don't understand most of them, but I find a dozen interesting papers. So, the other day I found one that was very interesting and relevant to this out of the University of Sarland, by the way. They found that um they looked at reputable news sites versus disreputable disinformation sites. Okay. The reputable news sites block AI six times more than the bad guys.

[00:40:47]>> Yeah, of course. Well, of course, you say, but what happens with the public mission of journalism? If people are going to use AI and we knowingly stand back, I'm being provocative, and let AI be filled with more disinformation.

[00:41:06]what is our larger mission to society?

[00:41:09]Then there was another paper I read at the same time which said that if you want to poison AI, you don't have to do it with programming. You don't have to do it with prompts. All you have to do is put misinformation on the internet and it will suck it up.

[00:41:22]>> Right.

[00:41:22]>> So we in journalism and in media stand back and say, "Okay, let AI [ __ ] up the world. They're not paying me."

[00:41:30]>> Yeah. But how do we prevent that? Like let me draw a comparison.

[00:41:37]In the US, there's certainly not a problem of too few or too little calories.

[00:41:45]People are eating calories and they are basically for free.

[00:41:52]Only the really rich people can afford to go to to uh Fresh Foods or what was it called? Right.

[00:42:00]>> Jeff Bezos also. Right. So, and they can pay $30 for a sandwich with like really good quality, high quality food.

[00:42:12]>> But it's happening the same way with the media. Like everything was free. You like there's no lack of information, but there's like carefully good crafted and and and researched information and the rest, you know, like is just good enough for most of the people. And how do we prevent that? Exactly. That this digital divide that only the rich can afford the good information and the the rest is just, you know, like gets a chatbot. We've got to be honest about our relationship in media with the public. In the United States, trust in media has been falling since the 1970s.

[00:42:53]Uh only 28% of Americans now trust media. Now obviously that's a lot more Republicans than it is Democrats. But still even Democrats only half trust media. So that's one problem right is that we are stuck in the situation where I hear journalists all the time saying how do I rebuild trust that presumes you ever had it. And for a lot of Americans they didn't trust the media. If you our famous anchor on television news named Walter Kankite, he would end every broadcast saying, "And that's the way it is." For if you were black or Latino or immigrant or LGBTQ or disabled, it wasn't the way it was for you. You weren't represented there. Mass media was the media of people who look like me, old white men. It wasn't the media of people.

[00:43:42]>> Scarcity. It was, you know, just a limited >> all the news. all the news that's fit to print >> print. So we didn't have this trust.

[00:43:50]Voices were not heard there.

[00:43:52]>> What the internet enabled was for voices who for too long were not heard to now be heard. And that's what the old powers resent. My theory here is that after print movable type came the reformation.

[00:44:09]Uh well now and I it didn't cause it.

[00:44:11]I'm not a determinist but without without print Martin Luther would have been burned at the stake like Yan Hus I think so print caused different opportunities so we say >> I think the same is true of the internet black lives matter to me was the racial reformation of America the election of Donald Trump is the counterreformation >> right and so when you have a a new abundance of speech those who controlled speech resent it and try to control it.

[00:44:42]>> So, uh coming back to your Gutenberg parenthesis, do you think we live in a time when you like the printed printing press was invented and until we reached to the to the final like to democracy there were a couple wars because you know like power was was was shifting was questioned like first with the church then with the feudal feudalism and the kings and queens. No king day in America these days. There is that analogy. So do you think that we will uh have to go through another kind of I wouldn't call it civil war but maybe civil unrest in the United States until everybody realizes how to use AI. Um um uh fan portish that's the nightmare is that we have to go through something like that at the point.

[00:45:46]>> Do do you believe I mean you're >> That's my worry. That's my worry at at the um >> Is it a coincidence you're dressed in black or a coincidence you're dressed in black or >> I'm Antifa? Um I got to get back in the country. So no no I'm not Antifa. I am Antifa. I'm against fascism but I'm not Antifa anyway.

[00:46:03]>> Okay. No, but but do you do you really personally believe because there must be a reason I even I I I my blood was like really like uh freezing uh even Sam Alman has a bunker like I I believe it was on a panel with the Wall Street Journal. He admitted it's full of guns.

[00:46:25]>> Yeah. like all the all those tech bros, they have like a bunker or an island or something. Are they all fearing that there's going to be an >> Yeah, but they're also insane. The whole talk about AGI and Doom and Poom and all that is ridiculous. But back to your point of history, I was on a panel with a I I debated a German regulator at Peruia at the International Journalism Festival and I joked that uh after print you had to go through the 30 years war and peasants war. Exactly. And I said maybe we got to go through a 30 years war and he scolded me with no humor and he said it is too soon to joke about the 30 years war.

[00:47:10]Uh so all right maybe we have maybe we will have to maybe we have to go through that cauterization.

[00:47:16]Um and let's remember that the early days of print print was not trusted.

[00:47:21]>> People said anybody can make a pamphlet like anybody can make a Facebook post.

[00:47:24]>> Oh and it was not just a Gutenberg uh Bible.

[00:47:28]We also had like a lot of I mean like the the the the burning of witches like all those like those were printed like u fake news we would say today.

[00:47:38]>> Malas Maliperum was the was the manual for hunting down and killing witches. Uh print was used to print ballads and broadsides to go after witches. Um it enabled it didn't cause but it enabled the scientific revolution, the reformation if you think that's a good thing. uh and and uh the enlightenment, but it also enabled, as Elizabeth Eisenstein, the key scholar of book history said, alchemy and witch hunting, >> right?

[00:48:05]>> Uh it was a general machine. There was, and this is important, I think, as we think about trying to control AI.

[00:48:11]People say, well, you must guarantee that AI is safe. You must control it.

[00:48:16]It's a general machine like the printing press. That's like saying to Johannes Gutenberg, okay, you could use it, but don't ever let a guy named Luther near this thing. Yeah, there's no way to predict how a general machine is going to be used. And so that's AI. That's the internet. It's in the hands of anybody.

[00:48:35]The only the only solution to this is the one that the right-wing in America is attacking most viferously, education.

[00:48:44]The only weapon against ignorance is education. The only weapon against hate is education. And what are they attacking? Education. At the local level. In my town in New Jersey, the school board was taken over by right-wing nuts. They killed a sociology textbook because it was not nice to white people. Honest to God. So, they are at every level in the US. What they're what Trump is doing to universities now, they are attacking education. That's where the war needs to be fought.

[00:49:14]here in the US. I grew up like with the wisdom like whatever happens in the United States 10 years later we will have here in Europe. Do you believe that's going to happen here too? I remember years ago I got visiting firemen as we like to say uh Hubert Bura uh Kai Dickman uh my friends here from German media would come to the US and say we want to find out what's happening in the US because we have to learn here and I would say the only thing that's happening in the US is we're dying faster than you are. So take advantage of the time that you have to avoid the fate that we've given ourselves. I think that's true in media and I think it's true in politics and society.

[00:49:55]What do you have to do?

[00:49:57]What judgments do you have to make in media and education and politics to avoid the fate that you see happening in my country?

[00:50:07]I remember like I went on a big trip through the US starting in uh Iowa and then Washington DC and we ended up in Seattle and it happened to be the day when the Seattle Post Intelligencer did I get it right? Yep.

[00:50:28]>> Like uh switch to from print only like online only. So they literally like just, you know, stopped the press and the guy that we were having a a a a a talk with or like a date with literally learned that he had to take his cardboard box and go home.

[00:50:55]He was a Pulitzer Prize uh uh winner and he was like really devastated that day of course but he didn't want to turn our us down. So we had a really really depressing day at the in his office. So I asked him the question of if you had a time machine and could go back 20 years or 15 years from now, what would you do different? And I remember it like today.

[00:51:26]He answered, "If I had to do it all over again, I would certainly go more like aggressive. if I would go like allin, experiment more, like trying more, failing more, doing more. We didn't do much of that.

[00:51:46]And then he said the beautiful phrase because you know when you know you're going down, at least make it interesting.

[00:51:56]So what is your what is your kind of uh attitude towards like journalism and media here in Europe today? What would you advise the people who still have 10 or 20 years to to go until they can retire?

[00:52:13]>> So, I started young, but I um have spent 50 years working in mass media. I have regrets.

[00:52:21]The next book I'm researching is about the death of mass media. And I think that I presumed that scale mattered, that size was important, that if you weren't big, you didn't matter. I think that's a dire mistake in society. That's not a pluralistic view of society.

[00:52:38]That's a monolithic view of society. So number one, and I started a program with my colleague Carrie Brown in engagement journalism. Uh I think we have to change the relationship that we have with the public. Um number two, I think we have to bring media down to a human scale.

[00:52:56]Number three, this is a hard lesson. I think we have to teach ourselves that we are not in the content business. Content is a Gutenberg era notion. It fills things. It has a beginning and an end, an alpha and an omega. It's a logical progression. And I don't think that we're in the content business. I think in journalism, we are a service. We are a service to communities. and that we need to help communities um not only understand themselves, that's our ego, but also feel heard, be able to talk, be able to communicate um and change our fundamental relationship. We think of ourselves as a factory for something called content.

[00:53:41]And we think all of our value is intrinsic in this thing called content.

[00:53:45]And when the AI companies in our view steal it, then we're left with no value. And the truth is that the information business is a commodity business because in an enlightened society, you can't own information. You can't own knowledge. We don't want a society like that. So, um, I think we've got to fundamentally rethink who we are and what we are in society.

[00:54:13]>> I was downloading a presentation. I I told you last week I I'm old enough to teach journalism today and there's no class, no journalism school, no student that has to attend my class that doesn't get to see this slide of Jeff Jarvis and because this is something that Jeff taught me as a young journalist and I'm going to read it to you like um I think it was in Berlin somewhere at the EA or I don't remember like 10 years ago. So So you corrected me in the middle of my sentence and you said, "Richard, no, you're mistaken.

[00:54:58]You are not in the news business because I was a news anchor back then for public German television." Richard, you're mistaken. You're not in the news business.

[00:55:08]You're in the relationship business.

[00:55:12]that is your core product so to speak and that really like helped me to refocus and I I I don't think that I mean I was I was a Taylor Swifty in Munich but you like her music is so yeah uh oh that's dangerous what I'm doing here no her music is fine but that's not her product her product is the relationship that she has built built over the fa past 15 years and 12 eras of whatever um that she went through and she took her audience from one place to the next to the next from one label to the next one. And here's the thing that we journalists could really learn even you from Taylor Swift.

[00:56:03]She didn't post her stuff only on Twitter. She took back her her creations, left the platforms, the music labels, and created Taylor's version. She re-recorded her albums and got back her her content.

[00:56:28]I think would that be a way out and like going into into into into the AI era that we don't just feed the AI machines with our data with our very being but just to maintain and to guard our most precious crown jewels our data. But your crown jewel is not a thing called content. And if you're Taylor Swift, there is a value in the original creation. You don't want me singing her song. You want her singing her song. You don't want me writing lyrics about girlfriend's past. You want Taylor Swift writing about boyfriend's past. Right? News. We made a mistake in the news business, an egotistical mistake of thinking that we are storytellers.

[00:57:21]And the problem with being a storyteller is that the storyteller has power. The storyteller decides who's in the story, who gets to speak, and who doesn't, and what the story is, and how it begins, and how it ends. And people feel as if they're robbed of their own lives and their own experience when they end up in our stories.

[00:57:41]And and so then along come technology companies. And again, we think our value is the story, the content. And then when when we find out that that it's not, we're lost. One of the key lessons of people not clicking on AI is they don't want to. And nothing we can do can force them to do that. Our business model is still that you must come to us for our stories. What if you came to us for other things? What if you came for to us for uh conversation, for connection to other people, for solutions in society, for constructive journalism?

[00:58:21]>> Yeah, but we're talking about constructive journalism since 10 years now. Where is it?

[00:58:25]>> I think we're seeing steps, but I think we still think of ourselves as the creators of a product called content and stories. And that's when that's your framing, it's very hard to have a conversation.

[00:58:40]>> One last thing and then I want to open it up to the audience.

[00:58:45]>> If there's one thing that I'm really like scared like like like nothing I've been scared before in the media world that I've witnessed so far. That's going to be relationships between humans and chat bots.

[00:59:05]We see it already that many many many young people like talk to chatt day and night. They get all the informations.

[00:59:17]They use it as a mentor as something to cheat their homework with but also to get advice life advice and so on. And Mark Zuckerberg himself said, you know, like the American, the average American has way too few friends. So, we're going to create artificial friends for you.

[00:59:39]So, this is like the the the guy who's like a what this guy who puts a building to fire a >> arsonist.

[00:59:50]>> An ar the arsonist wants to become the firefighter now. And he says, "You use way too less time with real friends, so you don't have enough friends. So we create you artificial friends." So problem solved.

[01:00:05]>> I think the most irresponsible thing the AI companies have done is to make them is to use that chat motif.

[01:00:12]>> Yes. But but it is so compelling. It is so it is more addictive. It is the most addictive drug that I have ever experienced. And I've been to California.

[01:00:25]No, seriously. Like they they they imp they they they fake emotions. They fake, oh, Richard, you're you're so smart. You should get like the Nobel Peace Prize for that thought. And so on. It is really It's really addictive. It's really smart also because it has all the information on you.

[01:00:45]>> Mhm. Yeah. I I think that there's for one thing every time a young person goes into AI can we not at a minimum say this is not a person this is not intelligent this is just a machine it gets things wrong it doesn't know you it doesn't like love you but have fun we didn't they didn't position AI as an amusing toy positioned it as a step on the way to humanity that was their greatest ego and that's the problem where we are I Okay.

[01:01:16]But but just just just don't you see that kind of as an epidemic like on on its way and we see it's coming. We see it's working. We see, you know, like it's driving people to commit suicide.

[01:01:31]Okay. Things like that happen in the beginning. I understand. But in a general, why should I be a journalist at the Zooto when my chatbot just reads my piece, talks to my audience, and nobody ever understands that this like the the information carefully crafted, handpicked by a happy journalist, organic fed and bred, Richard Gutier actually created that.

[01:02:04]>> So, one thing that that one of our teachers in the engagement journalism program that I started, I've left CUNI since uh did was he held open newsrooms.

[01:02:13]He went to communities where he brought people in and they helped decide what the journalism should be. He built relationships. So, the point wasn't I've already finished my story now come to my story, come to my content.

[01:02:25]>> Instead, it was you are part of this process. That is a different is a whole different way to look at journalism. So new skill for us journalists is not only >> collaboration >> and to create relationships.

[01:02:37]>> Yes.

[01:02:40]>> All right.

[01:02:40]>> There's a mic there.

[01:02:43]>> But you argue >> who wants to go first >> argue with me >> here. Please. Uh wait wait wait. Do we have a microphone? Yes.

[01:02:49]>> Yes.

[01:02:51]>> Mr. Javis, do you have an idea how this thing with uh with AI will end? if end is the right word.

[01:03:01]>> I think it's very early days. I think the internet is also very early days. We see Marshall McLuhan says that media are made by made of the prior media. And that's what we see with AI. And I think that um when I had this person on a podcast last week, he made a new model. He made it entirely with synthetic data. He didn't need our stuff at all to build what he built. So, I think we're going to become more media is going to become more um uh sent to the to the curb and less and less important to AI. I don't think we know what it is and what it can do yet.

[01:03:41]Again, it's not artificial super intelligence. Just today, a whole bunch of people, Prince Harry, came out with a statement, you must ban ASI. Well, it's like saying you're going to ban unicorns.

[01:03:54]They don't exist. you're fighting the wrong fight. Um, I don't know where AI is going to go. I think it's pretty incredible. I think it can, you know, if it can if it can help fold proteins and and come up with new drugs, that's how we should be using it. Concentrate on those efforts rather than saying we're building this general intelligence.

[01:04:14]That's stupid. I think >> since you mentioned Meluhan, Mclhan is not very well known in Germany. has no real tradition in the media and communications science and and research.

[01:04:28]Um give me your perspectives about supply and timid demand because in Europe we think that um Tik Tok is doing something it's bad for kids. We have to regulate it. So first there's Tik Tok and it they do harm and then we have to um step in. Could it also be that there's kids who don't speak the language? The parents are working full-time. They have no time for the kids and Tik Tok is the nanny. So, there was first the problem and Tik Tok is a solution. How do you differentiate between these these perspectives?

[01:05:03]>> I I I don't want to diminish that serious question, but I do go back to history. I was looking for the quote um where uh critics in the um 200 years ago complained about novels are ruining young children.

[01:05:21]Par children's parents are still their parents and I think they've got to figure this out as best they can and the companies need to be more responsible. I agree and we need to study this. We need we need data. We need experience with it. We need research. Just as the time when research is being cut back in universities, that's the wrong time to do it. Um, and we need to know more. I don't think we can presume that it's going to be bad in all times. Uh, but we neither can presume it's going to be good.

[01:05:50]>> Hi. Um, you mentioned some sort of API you'd like to see in the future. Um, do you have any examples? Anyone working on?

[01:06:01]Oh um you mentioned you'd like to see some sort of news API that would be in between the publishers and the crawlers um of OpenAI for example. Have you seen anyone working on that? And what sort of requirements would you say uh you'd have for some sort of API? The best example I've seen I mentioned which is shipstead in Norway uh decided to build a LLM with the university and they convinced all the digital media players in the country to contribute to it. Um so they had control over what was happening as a result they and and and and they said we're not going to exploit this economically until we have agreement here. So it's joined it's going to be just an experiment and just research. I think that's very smart. I think what I've heard here in in Munich today uh from Far Clipin about the pool of information that comes together from um Berunfuk and and Ipen is very smart in New Jersey where I live we're working on a a content sharing network and I would like to see whether the next level of that could be that we could then take that content and go to AI and say screw the big guys do you want something that's more representative However, I'm very realistic in the US.

[01:07:20]Newspaper publishers in the US do not play well together. They never get along. They never collaborate. So, I'm not terribly optimistic.

[01:07:31]Now, I have a question. um this the entire industry of artificial intelligence corporation uh they see have certain characteristics of a financial bubble and uh for me the important question rather seems to be what happens when that bubble actually bursts and there is just a quick note this weekend I've just had a conversation with someone working at Google and he said it's basically just kind of reacting to uh what open AI is doing so it's kind of a chaotic game someone is doing something the other one is doing a reaction to that. And to me, it seems like on the long run, they're kind of screwing themselves while screwing the other people as well. So, how would a reaction be if the thing like crumbles down and then the venture capitalists are like, well, can you now pay the bill for the Manhattan uh data center that you've built?

[01:08:23]>> It's worrisome. Uh I agree, but I don't think that it's the outcome is yet known. I read a paper a few weeks ago that said that it could be basically a toy and of no value. That's a bubble.

[01:08:38]But it also could be have utility and value. And if in fact right now it's being used by you know chat and that kind of stuff that has no value. But if it's being used in science, if it's being used in business in ways that have value, um then it's not necessarily a bubble. I think people are going to lose money on building data centers. Yes, that's a bubble. That idea of scale is a bubble, but um artificial intelligence so-called generative AI does potentially have utility. Uh the business model isn't clear, just as it's still not clear for the internet. But back to Gutenberg, it took 150, it took from 7 from 1450 until 1710 before copyright was created. And so the business model was not clear all of that time. A lot of publishers went out of business in that time. Um, and I think it will take time to figure out what the business model is. So, the bubble will burst. Some people won't lose money. Whether AI goes into another winter or not, I'm not sure that that's going to happen. But can I can I really shortly interfere here because it's the second time that you say the business model of the internet still is not clear. Those are the [ __ ] richest companies ever created in the entire history of human mankind. and they are all making money like crazy with ads.

[01:10:02]>> And I think that's >> what do you mean that there is no business model?

[01:10:05]>> I think that's going to go away.

[01:10:07]>> I think that what I see happening right now with brands, they understand relationships. They're using the internet and AI to build directly. Um they're going straight to AI and they're begging to be included in AI because that's how they had discovery. I had lunch with a with a newspaper executive in the US a few weeks ago and he said his first complaint was, "How are we going to get discovered? Google goes away, social goes away. How are we going to get discovered?" The second thing he said is, "We're cutting off all the [ __ ] AI companies." Well, how are you going to get discovered? That's what you got to figure out.

[01:10:44]>> Okay?

[01:10:45]>> Advertising, I think, will diminish. And I say this, I know in a building that's built by advertising, I think will diminish as companies understand, brands understand they can build direct relationships >> to someone in the back.

[01:10:58]>> Yeah. Okay.

[01:10:59]>> Yeah. Thanks for the conversation at first. Really, really interesting. Um, Professor Jarvis, I have one question because you really criticized the New York Times and I really like the New York Times. I think it's one of the best, in my opinion, one of the best newspapers in the world. And so my question is, is there any quality media in the US left? Because if you look at the public service media in the US, PBS and NPR, I read I also watch PBS NewsHour, but Trump is also destroying the public service media in the US. So is there still quality media left in the US?

[01:11:38]Absolutely, there are pockets of quality. There are people who are doing very good things. There are still journalists of the New York Times who do tremendous work. My complaint is with the editors and how they position everything in a political bent the wrong way. There are still a few journalists left at the Washington Post who are good, but a lot of them have left. Um CN CNN, God knows what's going to happen if the Ellison's taken over. CBS 60 Minutes, they're going to have to leave because it's going to get ruined. So, at the mass level, basically my answer is no, there isn't. But there's tons of new things. Again, this morning, Golie Shaklami uh talked about Politico. She asked me what I thought of their coverage. I said, "Sometimes very good, sometimes it pisses me off." Um but it's it's not trying to be mass. It's trying to do something at a different level. Um Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. I can, you know, name some of the places like that. Uh at a local level, there are people who are doing good work. Uh but it's not going to replace what was.

[01:12:41]This big thing gets replaced with that big thing. Instead, this big thing is first going to be replaced by chaos until we figure it out.

[01:12:53]Let me close with a final question to you that hopefully sums up what we've learned today from you, Jeff.

[01:13:02]Um we started with the your thesis that the mass media is over.

[01:13:09]So what is the next iteration? What is coming next for journalism? Not entertainment but journalism. Second, we have many young people here today who are I don't know why still want to become journalists.

[01:13:28]What will be their role you think and what should they what should they uh do today in order that they will have a meaningful but also paying job in the future?

[01:13:42]>> My proudest accomplishment in my career was helping to start the program in engagement journalism at CUNI City University of New York. Mind you, they've screwed it up and that's why I left. But we have eight years of alumni who were doing amazing work and they start by building relationships. They start by going to communities and listening to communities and communities feeling heard by them and then serving those communities. And those by community I don't just mean geography. I mean um black Americans with mental health issues. I mean um families who lost children to uh addiction. I mean victims of climate change. all kinds of definitions of a community. A community is not an external definition, a a a demographic. Nobody walks up and says, "Hi, I'm a boomer." Right? A community is about self- definitionf. And that means that you have to listen to the definitions people give themselves of themselves and respect that definition.

[01:14:42]Now, the the response might be, okay, what about the trumpets, Jeff? Isn't that a community? And I come back to Hana Arant and she argued that the base of totalitarianism was loneliness and you can be lonely in a crowd. The base of totalitarianism was people felt alienated from community from their self and they became vulnerable to the siren call of the authoritarian.

[01:15:13]And I quoted this often. I I I I quoted it in Gutenberg. I think the great lesson from from her is that when people are in that situation, they hold on to abstract notions.

[01:15:28]And in America, I don't believe that the Trumpists really care more more than anything on earth about trans kids or guns or abortion. They don't wake up every morning and say, "This is the most important thing in our lives." When they say those things, they are signaling their belonging to the cult. And media make the mistake of of taking that as the agenda. And that's what we report on rather than going to these people and trying to get them to talk about their actual lives and to build relationships that way. So I think that people who build on engagement journalism have a future are our brilliant alums are doing things. They have jobs. Um, but it's a very very very small beginning. I think we're going to have to remake journalism fundamentally.

[01:16:17]Lots to do for all of you, for all of us. We are all going to be around for the next couple of decades. So, there's there's no escape. We'll have to face AI and we'll we'll see each other on the other side. Please give a big hand to Jeff Jarvis.

[01:16:40]Thank you.