Form that explored the Publics Trust in media among the topics discussed were media bias and social media this is about an hour, 40 minutes. I am Steve Clemons of semafor. We are thrilled to have you here with us this morning for a major event for us. Today we are going to be speaking today we will be speaking with commentators on the contemporary battle and whether news can operate in a highly polarized landscape. Our event is going to be live streamed. Hello to everyone online joining us on twitter and youtube. You can follow us and use semafornews to join the conversation. I want to say a major word of thanks to jim clifton, john clifton and gallo for being not only our venue partner today, but our very good friend and we are going to be partnering on many other things that my friend justin smith, the founder of semafor will share in a moment. I want to thank the Knight Foundation for its support not only of this conversation but other conversations down the road on what we need to do about the nature of news. Without further ado, welcome justin smith. [applause] good morning everybody. So excited for today as apparently people on twitter are excited as well. We are really looking forward to a vibrant and unusual conversation because i do not think many media organizations today in america actually could convene this type of discussion. That is very much the point. I am justin, cofounder of semafor, a new 21st century born global news brand. We will Start Publishing later this fall. We are aiming for october. That timeframe to begin our first journalism. We have got a bunch of the early team, 15 or 16 fulltime staff, incredible journalists and publishers from around the industry. My partner ben smith, who will be leading the conversation, and i both left our positions at bloomberg and the New York Times after both of us, several decades building different News Organizations from the economist to buzzfeed to the atlantic. We have really been in the trenches of global news media. When you are in the trenches building and trying to innovate, you realize the existing global journalism business was really built decades and even centuries ago for a very different time. The design and the architecture of this news environment was very much created before the remarkable and as extensional changes of the media world that has it is only 16 years old. A big part of why we are excited to invent and create something new. Most critically, in 2022, newsreaders all around the world are overwhelmed by too many choices, too many options, information overload, and no longer sure of what to trust. The news trust deficit, as our friends have chronicled, is at an alltime low. The combination of this older system and very concerned news consumers, for us, we believe this is a moment that calls for a new platform to be built from the ground up and one that employs the best talents and most innovative, forward thinking editorial ideas to ensure new types of transparency in journalism, accelerate insight in this avalanche of content we all struggle with every day, elevate individual talents, and importantly in a multipolar world where the u. S. Is no longer as dominant, to explore on a consistent basis, competing global perspectives. As steve mentioned, today marks our first public event here. This is part of the foundational Strategic Partnership that we are so grateful for having with the gallup organization. We are willing to work across a number of organ it a number of areas and we are complementary. Gallup is so respected, an incredible data source. Our journalists will be able to partner with that data in incredible ways and we will bring it to a live format like this. Thank you, jim and john for your belief in us. To build this together. Lastly, but importantly, this event really has been made possible by the Knight Foundation. Jim brady is going to talk to us. Thank you for your support. Your mission is very much aligned with ours and we are grateful to do this with you. Good morning, welcome and thank you. [applause] this is so much fun. I am going to bring up our stage our partner who supported todays program, jim brady. We were commenting that jim brady who was the Vice President of journalism at the Knight Foundation, he and i were on a panel years ago with john segan dollar and we were talking about trust in news. We have been at this for a long while. Give a hand to jim brady, thank you for sponsoring this series. [applause] thank you. You guys are innovating from the start with an 8 00 a. M. Start time for a journalism conference. [laughter] for more than half a century, our foundation has been supporting local news efforts around the country. We have a special interest in communities. We are always happy to see new players on the team. We wish you the best of luck. These are trying times. Tensions are as intense as any time i can remember. We remain steadfast in supporting journalism. Semafor has assembled an influential line of speakers. We will ask tough questions. These discussions will generate disagreement and probably discomfort. That is fine. The issue of trust and polarization in news cannot be solved inside ideological bubbles. The opportunity to hold powerful people accountable. Our sponsorship of this series is just one of the many ways we are shaping the future of news. Since 2002, we havent across the field of journalism to navigate the changes that have come with the digital age. We are the largest founding funder of the american journalist project which is helping across the country. We invested 5 million in report for america, which helps irrigate news deserts. We have been longtime supporters of nonprofit news and provide more than 700 News Organizations transformative training and knowledge. Just this year, we granted 3. 2 Million Dollars to create the knight lma lab which is helping iconic publishers make the transition to digital on a technical and financial way. Last year, the news match program we created raised more than 42 Million Dollars to support 275 nonprofits around the united states. We have also supported organizations around the globe whose work keeps journalist safe such as the committee to protect journalists and the International Center for journalists. We support free speech and the Reporters Committee for freedom of the press. Bottom line, we are committed to exploring all possible animals avenues to provide a futile future for journalism. Democracy needs to be healthier. I look forward to listening and learning. [applause] thank you. We are going to keep at this and our goal is not comfortable conversations, but the uncomfortable ones. I think we are going to have a great conversation today. Our first guest is taylor lorentz, columnist at the Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Prior to joining, taylor was a Technology Reporter at the New York Times. Joining her on stage is ben smith, cofounder and our founding editorinchief of semafor. [applause] good morning. When he said uncomfortable, he did not say the thank you all for coming. We are excited about this and you have probably heard the intro. The intro was about uncomfortable conversations, so be warned. Taylor and i were colleagues at the New York Times, which is uncomfortable conversation central. I was widely viewed as a spy and got thrown out of all of the internal and taylor started a quarantine flak where people could talk to me. Which im grateful. It was great. I want to start with something we basically agree on, but it makes a lot of journalists uncomfortable. This idea that individual reporters are brands. Sometimes the words creators, influencers get used. I think a lot of journalists feel nauseous when they hear those words. Why do you think that is . There is a stigma around certain words like influencer and brand because they are tightly tied with consumerism and commodified in yourself. We are not supposed to do that, we are supposed to be above that is journalists, traditionally. Journalists have always had brands and if you consider the word rand, basically reputation. We have had hugely famous journalists in the past. I think the difference now is those journalists control the brand. They have more autonomy over their own brand versus the institution. You get on cbs news. You have been the most associated with making the case for the rest of us that you should suck it up and be in influencer like everyone else. Do you feel you are Winning People over . I dont need to win people over. This is just the nature of the media landscape it is the crux of what i cover. I cover technology, but its really about how technology is disrupting media through the influencer world and everything getting were distributed. I think the notion that in every field, in sports and politics, for better and for worse, power and attention are gone from institutions to individuals. That is the world we live in. Ash semafor, we are certainly thinking about that and to some degree saying we are going to yoke our branch to yours. We like to build around great journalists. You work for the Washington Post, a rather wellknown brand does not necessarily like, no ones ever heard of us, we have to hitch our wagon to taylor lorenz. I am curious, how do you think, particularly when it comes to trust, in some sense when you say reputation, you are saying trust as a journalist, trust my voice. The Washington Post is a classic institution that is saying, ignore who is writing it. Ignore all the atmosphere. Trust the Washington Post. How do you think about the relationship between those things . I would push back on that in the sense i do not think that has been my experience at the post. Woodward and bernstein and plenty of my colleague has a strong brand. I think the post has been good about incubating talent. Of course i am honored to work for a brand, but in terms of establishing trust, you can see people establish trust as individuals so you need to be accountable in that way. It is obviously a dance. I tend to focus on my authority to buy feed. Nobody would trust me going off and covering, i dont know, cars . You live in l. A. True, but i stick to my authority, stick to my beat, i dont try to compete to be the authority on everything. Do you feel the tension between asking people to trust you and steering people toward, just trust the post . We have standards, we have editors, that is really the promise of the post. I am not saying from the perspective of management or how this operates, but more from the audience perspective. I think we see these tensions play out a lot of tiein time in the creator economy. I guess that tension does not manifest so much because it kind of depends story by story. People come to me for my stories. If they trust the post election counter coverage, it is not my job to establish that, i am shoring up trust on a specific beach. We know the post is good on covering influencers because we have taylor lorentz. Do you worry if you make mistakes you are burning the Washington Posts trust . In some ways you have to be more conservative at a institution like the post . It is a two way street. Not only do i have to be cautious of the posts credibility, but the post, and any Mainstream Media institution , has to protect their reporters. That has something we have seen a lot of traditional media struggled to do. The post has been great, but we are sort of in this world now where we operate in concert with each other. I think on this Bigger Picture question, i think i sort of embrace as a reality that people connect individuals to journalists, rather than to primarily a brand. Arent we fundamentally in this to tell other peoples stories . Not our own . Its funny, i do not put myself in my stories at all. My stories resonate because of the content i am covering, but people dont know anything about me personally. I am not necessarily doing that. Not to say theres not amazing reporters doing that. Is in a lot of her stories but uses her experience to tell amazing tales. I feel like that is a fluid thing. Do you think you can draw sharp lines . You are probably the most extremely Online Reporter in america, or one of them, between the way you essentially tell your own story on social media then downed in a news article. It seems to me a lot of readers see both. Is there a hardline . Look at how content creators operate. Theres content, what you produce, then there is you as an authority or personality. In traditional media, this way the way this plays out is maybe i read your article on politico, then i see you give commentary on cnn. Its you, just two different products. I think of my journalism as one product, i guess. As a fellow content creator. [laughter] lets move to something in this space that we disagree on. You talked about the institutions standing by them. I think you, certainly, a lot of women face atrocious harassment that often crosses lines. But also, really heated disagreements. Something i have seen you tweet, and i searched your twitter this morning. [laughter] you use the phrase bad faith. 15 or 16 times into lastly did your tweets. How do you know who is in bad faith . What is my faith . You are looking into peoples hearts and saying, this person who disagrees missed they are not mad at me because i got something wrong or that i am too liberal, they are fundamentally in bad faith. You can tell the difference between someone who disagrees with you when somebody who is not operating in good faith based on the nature of their question. If they are coming to you in an honest capacity and saying hey, i noticed xyz. Ok, i will take your feedback. I hear this all the time, on every story, i hear lots of different perspectives. Especially trending stories. If somebody is making personal attacks or misrepresenting you, actively participating in harassment in the sense that you see them retreating retweeting other people who are not there for constructive kit criticism. Can you tell between constructive criticism and nonconstructive criticism . You can make a guess. A lot of these people say maybe i was angry, but im not in bad faith. You are just a liberal hack. [laughter] and having those conversations, being open, i am a huge blocker on twitter. If someone is annoying me, locke. Also, no worries, sorry about the mistake. Lets hear it out. It is also so much of these types of tensions that come out on social media, you have to think about the incentive structure and whether people are just there for the retweets or they are there for their own crowd. I tried to respond to every person that asks me a legitimate question. Especially trending stories, the ones that people trending stories . Like, ok boomer. People want to share their feedback and i love that because it gives me more story ideas. I think this thing that bugs me about bad faith is that you are basically guessing, right . I think how could you know . How could you purport to know . I think it is quite obvious. It is somewhat of a guess, but it is not a heart guesstimate. Of course if people are drunk, sure. If somebody is i dont want to revisit the details of this, but there was a Washington Post story, the person who the error was about was furious and being not behaving at their best, i would say. Is that bad faith . Lets consider that persons history and the role they played in gamer gauge. But you made an error. Of course they are mad. There was an error in the story. But why not just say, you are not in bad faith. Absolutely. If you read my emails, thats exactly what we did. Exactly. What you guys did in public, you did the thing i think is just defend, defend. I wonder if there is there was a full 24 hours where i said, how can i help . The only thing i said about that was after i had been it was very clear that it was bad faith. Did i anticipate that guy was not coming in good faith . Certainly. I thought, this is an obvious thing i can correct right away. When it became clear he was doing his live streams and i dont want to relitigate it. Hes just another content creator . I work with content creators for a living. I deal with that kind of drama. Thats what was interesting to me. 24 7, somebody is making a reaction video about my stories. But that one was on twitter. Because media people are on twitter only. As we know. The crossover of tiktok culture and twitter culture. There is many people i would say, even people that have harassed me in the past i will let this go in a second. You can see you can say this guy is being horrible and overreacting its not just overreacting. That he is capitalizing in various ways, but how do you know it is in his heart that he is mad or not . He says he wants to go to war with the media and destroy the Washington Post. Thats probably half the people in this room. [laughter] it goes back to judgment. We use judgment every single day. All i can do is respond to people in good faith, say hey, i want to work with you. I want to correct that. If you come back with that, with this Crazy Campaign and that continues for days, i am going to assume you are not there. What i shut him down . No. I want to hear people out. I have dealt with it for over a decade. This is not my first rodeo. I guess i see the term bad faith mostly gets dashed to rightwingers. Youre seeing this on this twitter, tiktok spectrum, but the critics of Mainstream Media are mostly to the right, do you think that is mostly a primarily a rightwing phenomenon . You feel sometimes when people who love your work are sharing it they are in bad faith . Anyone can be in bad faith. Anyone can be a troll. I think obviously a lot more extreme figures on the right lay into that a lot. I get criticism from all different kite all different types of people, depending on the story. You have to have faith in your reporting. I agree that bad faith is not the best term but i have not come up with a better one. It makes me nervous that you are looking into somebodys head and their heart. I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I appreciate that. I feel like there was a moment where you asked, i