Amy Michell is at the forefront of researching the intersection of media and public policy.
Previously with the Pew Research Center as an original member of the organization’s journalism research team — back in 1997, before the Pew Charitable Trusts was even created — she’s now the founding executive director of the Center for News, Technology & Innovation, a group that recently launched an independent global policy research center.
“One of the things that led me to this new role at CNTI, over the last few years I’ve grown increasingly concerned, in the various public engagements and conversations I was having, about the lack of progress we were making in addressing the challenges of our digital news environment,” she says. “In many cases, it seemed we were going backwards, especially in safeguarding an independent news media and people’s access to quality news.”
CNTI’s mission is to “encourage independent, sustainable news media; to maintain an open internet, which is really about people’s access to fact-based news; and to foster informed public policy conversation,” Mitchell says. “We do that by synthesizing and conducting research and convening global experts across industry, across technology, across journalism, policy, civil society, to have thoughtful conversations that are aimed at trying to find solutions to these pressing challenges.”
But it’s more than that. Not only is CNTI having these discussions and encouraging conversations, challenging and envelope-pushing conversations, among people with various stakes and roles to play in the future of media, they’re creating resources to help educate people and policy makers alike to ensure a multifaceted approach to any policies that might arise.
When CNTI’s website launched in September, the organization published a series of eight issue primers.
“We’ve laid out 15 key priority issues that range from everything like how to address disinformation in a way that doesn’t end up putting at-risk people’s access to fact-based news or the safety of journalists. How do we address the issues of cybersecurity without unintentionally inviting in harmful actors. How do we increase algorithmic transparency in a way that doesn’t end up putting risks at safeguarding journalists and the work they do,” Mitchell says.
“For each one, we’ve created a primer. They lay out the complexity of the issue, especially when we consider the question of safeguarding the press and protecting the open internet. We then go through and synthesize the research to date, what does the research around the world tell us about this issue. We offer a summary but also links to original pieces of research and reports with descriptions of what they offer and what their focus is, and we also say what are the gaps in the research.”
There have always been concerns about the advancement of technology when it comes to reporting, first with bloggers and so-called citizen journalists in the early days of the digital era and now with artificial intelligence, misinformation and the use of technology.
“Technology has certainly played a very large and, in many cases, importantly positive role in being able to give smaller news outlets, startups, independents, to be able to reach audiences looking for the kind of news a minority of the population would have a harder time finding, or a smaller news organization to create and actually put out some quality news,” Mitchell says. “At the same time, it can also invite negative uses of it. That’s part of the balance that society has been facing through all of these different iterations of technology.”
That’s why now is the time to bring together experts and stakeholders to think broadly, deliberately and carefully about the future of news as technology expands and changes. “How do we approach these challenges and harms that we’re seeing happening in society while remembering the importance of these other elements,” she says.
Amy Mitchell is the new executive director of the Center for News, Technology & Innovation, which seeks to encourage independent and sustainable media, maintain an open internet and foster informed public policy conversations.
