Through to Thriving: Pursuing The Truth with Dr. Jasmine McNealy and Naomi Nix
Anika Collier Navaroli / Aug 17, 2025Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.
Welcome to another episode of the special podcast series, Through to Thriving. In this series, I am talking with tech policy folks who can help us imagine futures beyond our current moment.
For this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jasmine McNealy, an attorney, critical public interest technologist, and professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology at the University of Florida, and Naomi Nix, a staff writer for The Washington Post, where she reports about technology and social media companies.
We talked about how they found themselves on the path through journalism and into tech policy, the distinctions between truth and facts and whether there has ever been such a thing as a singular truth, how communities of color have historically seen and filled the gaps in mainstream media coverage, the rise of news influencers, and how journalists can regain the trust of the public.
We reminisced about prescient conversations in the earlier days of the internet:
Jasmine: Okay. 2011, a pre Snowden era. On Twitter, there were vibrant communities that were happening… One of the chats that I participated in was like all these privacy oriented people, whether they were industry or advocacy government people, academics would have conversations for an hour, like once a month. And they would talk about what's on deck for privacy, what's on deck for privacy and technology and platforms, and all these things that are happening. And like every bad thing that was predicted during those chats has happened so far.
We also talked about what it is like to currently work in institutions that are under attack:
Naomi: The mission feels as urgent as ever. While trust in media, and particularly, I think, mainstream media has declined, and that feels sad and discouraging. But also feels like a challenge of like, how do we explain how we work? How do we continue to try to win the trust of the American people, of our readers? And how do we do it in a way where there's a business model that allows us to exist and to do that work? That's a really tough challenge. But it feels important.
We discussed the value and continued importance of the future of journalism training:
Jasmine: I think it's something that must continue. However, we all know that you don't have to go to journalism school to be a journalist—or to be considered as doing journalism, I should say. And so this has been a part of the conversation of the professionalism of journalism for a long time, and that is: what is the training that people need to have, or what is the kind of framework that people need to have to be doing journalism with regard to objectivity, whatever that means, but specifically with regard to facts and putting out factual information—or information, period, and then trying to pass it off as facts? What is the kind of mindset that people should have with regard to information sharing? If we want to just telescope it out from journalism as a general matter, these are questions that we have to have as a professor in a college of journalism and communications. My hope is that we continue to make this a part of training and not shy away from it with respect to the students that are coming through, and quite frankly, any professionals or anyone else that comes through as well.
Naomi: I think that is really important, in part because of the rise of news influencers who are sort of operating outside of mainstream media organizations. I think at the moment we're still at a point where a lot of the sort of original reporting is very much still happening in mainstream news organizations. And then we have the rise of news influencers who are responding to some of that reporting and putting their own spin on it or adding context that they think their audience should know. And I think the more that internet influencers and media consumers understand how journalism works, the better our information ecosystem will be.
We also discussed their advice for the next generation of practitioners who want to combine journalism and tech policy:
Jasmine: I would say read a lot. Read a lot of different things. Read history, read sociology, and read nonfiction. But then do not be afraid to write for yourself. Please write for yourself. I'm begging you to write for yourself. But also, you know, I'm not missing the visual journalists at all, and the photojournalists—do that yourself as well, but be willing to be vulnerable in writing for yourself and accepting feedback on it as well.
Naomi: I think it's important to try to take the opportunities that are going to challenge you the most and that are often the more difficult opportunities over the more prestigious opportunity or the thing that you think might look good on paper. Because the more you just improve your objective skills to do the craft, the better off you'll be to navigate the various changes that'll come in the industry. Because the craft isn't always easy, of pursuing truth, of capturing it, of building a beat, of editing, of capturing a moment. Go for the thing that's gonna teach you the most.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Hey y'all. Welcome to another episode of Through to Thriving. I am Anika Collier Navaroli, your host and a Tech Policy Press fellow. During this special podcast series, I'm talking to some really amazing people in tech policy, and we are exploring futures beyond our current moment. Today, I am speaking about pursuing the truth with Dr. Jasmine McNealy and Naomi Nix. Y'all, welcome to the podcast.
Jasmine McNealy:
Thank you.
Naomi Nix:
Thanks for having us.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
I am so happy to be able to have this conversation with the two of you. But before we get into all things, as I'm calling it the capital, the Truth, capital T, I would love if you all wouldn't mind introducing yourselves to our listeners. Jasmine, would you mind going first?
Jasmine McNealy:
Jasmine McNealy. I am a faculty at the University of Florida where I direct the Infrastructure for Communities, Ecology for Data Hub. I have to get that right because I forget even though I created the name, but I am interested in emerging media and technology including artificial intelligence. And I come it from a law and policy frame, but also former journalists frame as well, and looking at things like privacy and data governance and what it means for individuals and communities and beneficial outcomes.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Just the easy stuff, Jasmine.
Jasmine McNealy:
Yeah.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Well, thank you so much for joining us. Naomi, would you mind introducing yourself to our listener?
Naomi Nix:
My name is Naomi Nix. I am a reporter for the Washington Post where I write about technology primarily about social media and the impact that social media platforms have on our society, on people, on our politics and our discourse, simple things like that.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Just the other easy things that everyone is working on here. So just to start us off, we are all working in the field of journalism, which is a hell of a field in this particular moment. So I would love to talk to you both about just taking yourselves back from 2025. How did you get here? What was the path that took you here? Why did you decide journalism and this pursuit of the truth was going to be the thing that you wanted to do with your life and your career? Naomi, would you mind joining in answering that for me?
Naomi Nix:
I like to say I got bitten by that bug really early on. I was a voracious reader as a kid and recreated my own newspaper.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Oh, okay.
Naomi Nix:
It was called Triple N, the Naomi Nix News. I don't know how exciting it was when I was writing about the new vacuum cleaner that we bought, but it only went up from there. And I wrote, I had a sense that I was going to write for my high school newspaper. I became editor of that high school paper and pursued it in college. At a time when social media was just getting started, I am old enough to have a Facebook at the time when it was only eligible for college.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Dot-edu accounts, yes.
Naomi Nix:
Yeah. And so that was really a moment in which I began experimenting with multimedia and pursued a career in local news for some time. And then several years ago, I ended up moving to DC and the tech clash was just beginning and Bloomberg at the time was starting a new team to cover it, and the rest was history.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Jasmine, I feel like you've told me some of this story before and I feel like you told me you wanted to be an international correspondent. Am I making that up?
Jasmine McNealy:
No, you're not making that up. Before that, as a kid I thought myself a poet and a writer. But then I really enjoyed science and math as well, so I thought I was going to be an architect and an engineer. And actually I came into undergrad as an engineering or pre-engineering major, whatever. And so I graduated with a BS, but my BS is in journalism and Afro-American Studies.
So I did newspaper in high school and wrote for the newspapers in undergraduate. But I finally, journalism was the thing that stuck with me. And I did think I was going to be, I thought it was going to be a foreign correspondent after reading the book, Out of America. But a guy, he was one of the core correspondents for the AP and he was in Africa during Rwanda and all of the turmoil. And I thought, oh, that's awesome, that's what I want to do. Never happened. But yeah, journalism has stuck with me.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah, yeah, I think the journalism bug does seem to hit people pretty young and pretty early on, and I think it's fascinating to hear a little bit about how you all found your way into this field. Naomi, you mentioned that Bloomberg was working on, what did you call it? Apologies. They're new.
Naomi Nix:
So at the time that I joined the company, they were starting a new team focused on corporate lobbying and tech companies. They were moving about in Washington. At the time, it was right after Cambridge Analytica. And so the play around that was really changing from tech companies, teaching lawmakers how to use their products, to tech companies now having to navigate potential new regulations and a debate about the role in society.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. How did you go from Naomi Nix News and Cubed and writing about your vacuum cleaner to being interested in tech policy and not being your beat?
Naomi Nix:
I didn't have an interest right away. I was looking for a job and Bloomberg was starting this new team. I had never covered Washington. I hadn't really spent much time as a business reporter, but there was this interesting story happening. And at the time, there weren't actually that many reporters covering these issues, really new. I had spent years covering education in which a lot of the debates there have been going on for a while. Should we expand charter schools or should we keep them to a minimum? That kind of stuff was interesting.
But what was really cool about what was happening in that moment, like 2016, 2017, is these questions were really new for Washington. They didn't quite understand how the digital platforms worked. They didn't understand the business models. They didn't understand fully the risks that internet platforms posed. And I also didn't at the time either, and so we're sort of running alongside each other while seeking to hold these powerful institutions accountable, and hold lawmakers accountable for what they do and don't do to regulate them.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
The 2016, 2017 period seems so far away as we imagine our current moment. It was almost a decade ago, but it feels like a little bit of a lifetime ago. Jasmine, you mentioned that you are interested in your work on generative AI, also on social media. What brought you into the tech policy and technology world?
Jasmine McNealy:
So I started off looking at, I should say my dissertation looked at how journalists, what happened when journalists got unlawfully acquired information. And a lot of that dealt with privacy, so like private beats sued for privacy and trespass and even trespass into hacking into phones and digital private information, and deceptive recordings and those kinds of things. And so it was a natural curve into straight-up digital privacy.
And so this frame, I come from digital privacy, anonymity, obscurity, and then moving all over to more like data governance, which is not just a journalistic or media thing but it's like a broader context. And they're all connected to each other because journalists are not thought of as different than anybody else. So what a journalist can do, everybody else can do, or what everybody else can do, a journalist can do.
And so thinking about what data, private information that connects to people, what does it mean in these different contexts including media and the outcomes in the courts, and what it means for legislation. Or how to create better legislation regarding our own personal data and who can use it, who can access it, for what purposes, what are the punishments for those kinds of things? It's been completely interesting to me and that's how I moved into AI, which is built on data.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
It seems very timely right now, your dissertation and the ideas of private information and how it's being used, especially in journalistic outlets and newsworthiness and all of these conversations that we currently see happening, which I find to be one of these interesting things as we're talking about 2016, 2017 is these issues were still there back then. The very same things that we are still talking about now and the very same issues were very much planted back in that time, as you all are saying.
One thing I just would love to ask is what do you all miss about? I think, again, we're thinking about it on a decade. We know what happened, right? We have the luxury of looking back and seeing in the rearview mirror exactly what happened, but that was the good old days. What do you all miss?
Jasmine McNealy:
I would take it back even further than 2016, 2017. I would take it back to 2010, 2011, pre-Snowden era and also there was on Twitter, there were vibrant communities that were happening. And one of them would like these chats that people would have. And one of the chats that I participated in was called private chat, and it was like all these privacy-oriented people, whether they were industry or advocacy, government people, academics would have conversations for an hour once a month.
And they would talk about what's on deck for privacy, what's on deck for privacy and technology and platforms and all these things that are happening. And every bad thing that was predicted during those chats has happened so far like 10 years later, five years later. It's interesting to look back and if anybody-- Can't get the Twitter archives for that-- but if anybody could look back at those tag posts, they would see, yeah, this law firm was predicting, these people from these law firms were predicting this, and the people from industry were predicting this and it actually happened.
I think it's funny how prophetic some of the discussions that were happening way back then before the commercially available AI space and platform space have actually come to light and become real, and that's interesting to me.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Okay. All right. Naomi, you?
Naomi Nix:
I guess we think of that question more as a consumer, which is I miss because there's something I miss. It felt like in that period that you're mentioning, Jasmine, I felt very free to share online when I actually thought. And honestly as a college kid, I don't know how profound my thoughts really were, but there was a kind of freedom about posting on the internet and more of a safety in those smaller environments that doesn't exist now. We have to think very carefully about our words and what we say and how we are just embodied on the internet, how the very aspects of our identity will be seen or viewed or attacked in some ways simply for existing.
And that's not how it felt back then. It felt like a freedom of an opening of a door of... There felt like there was a lot of promise. And I think that's just inherent in the shape of any technology that risks will always come. But yeah, I do miss how it felt to be an early adopter or a little bit on social media and on the internet in those days.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah, there was like a hope, right, or an excitement on top of, Jasmine, you're saying there are so many people who could clearly see the dangers and the risks. And we're hoping that maybe by talking about these risks or highlighting these risks, we might do something to prevent them from happening.
And instead as we know, we've been living in this world, we are now living in a really interesting time in history which the attacks on journalism have been happening for the past decade and have been relentless, journalists being called the enemy of the people. We see this attack that's happening on academia in so many different places and the rollback on fact-checking that has happened at all of these companies.
And what seems to be a little bit of an attack on the truth itself or any sort of institution that holds or purports to hold or be able to help you find truth and/or knowledge. Both of you all work in these places. What does it feel like at this moment to be sitting here and still continued and dedicated to doing this work?
Naomi Nix:
The mission feels as urgent as ever. While trust in media and particularly I think mainstream media has declined, that feels sad and discouraging, but also feels like a challenge of how do we explain how we work? How do we continue to try to win the trust of the American people, of our readers, and how do we do it in a way where there's a business model that allows us to exist and to do that work?
That's a really tough challenge, but it feels important. And in the moment when people are believing known falsehoods, when conspiracies online have created communities for people are affecting politics. Right now we're in a debate about the Epstein files. That feels like really a moment in which figuring out how conspiracies affect our politics. And how distrust in general in institutions affects our politics feels really evident that the mission of being a journalist, of pursuing truth, of putting facts on the page and of holding powerful institutions accountable still feels really urgent to me.
And so that hasn't shifted, but I think what has shifted is the overall environment of how that work is being received and the instability of just the market in general for doing this work. We haven't solved that, and so I still feel nervous about what the future is for some of these institutions and how we'll figure that challenge out.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. We're definitely going to talk a little bit about the future of so many of these institutions, and I appreciate you sharing those nervousness, that anxiety that I think so many us are having about this. Jasmine, what about you?
Jasmine McNealy:
I don't know if there's ever been one truth.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Tell me more. Ooh, let's get into it. Let's go. Let's do it.
Jasmine McNealy:
All of us on this have a certain level of melanin and we all come from communities who have had a sharp critique of journalism for a very long time, especially mainstream press. And even our hometown newspapers, we had a critique because it was how they are framing to use some words, they're framing the stories dealing with certain communities.
So I think certain communities have always had this perspective of this is not the full story, or this is not the story, period. Or they're always showing us like this, or they're always talking to the one crazy person, or they're always... So there've been multiple truths all the time, and certain communities have had always lower trust in mainstream press than others for very valid reasons.
So we've always had multiple truths. However, there are certain facts that when they're gotten wrong, then there's an amplification of the C. Now C, we've been new, and then add technology as another layer, and that misinformation, disinformation is amplified to certain other communities who are willing to accept it for various reasons.
I don't know if you all remember when you get a fact error in journalism school, automatically everything else you're at 50%-
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Automatically fail.
Jasmine McNealy:
You're failing, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, and that's with mainstream press...
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Interesting.
Jasmine McNealy:
That includes the framing of, it's not just reporting, that includes the framing of the issue and who your sources are. And did you talk to the other side? What I'm saying is did you talk to the people that are important for this story? Did you talk to the people that you're writing about? Is this just the press release that has gotten maybe a few more words and everything else is taken as gospel?
So these are questions that I think people in communities have had for a long time, but it's amplified by, as you say, economic factors, I would say cultural factors, and then amplified also by technological factors as well.
Naomi Nix:
Jasmine, I think you make a really good point, which is I think in journalism there's a really simple mechanism for correcting simple factual errors. If I misspelled someone's name or get a title wrong, we can correct the story online and put in a little correction, acknowledge the mistake. But when it comes to figuring out, oh, a collection of stories over the course of a long period of time created a narrative and we missed a nuance, especially in situations in which the information is just coming out as we're getting it, it is very difficult to figure out how you go back and acknowledge. We could have written that story but we didn't, or we missed this implication about this new sort of development.
There isn't really much of a formalized mechanism for media organizations, especially at a time when to acknowledge gaps in coverage in that way, and especially at the time when the news cycle is just moving so quickly. And so that is a difficulty and I think one challenge to retain trust for media organizations and has affected people of color who have rightly seen the gaps quite evidently because they were living them.
Jasmine McNealy:
Yeah. I totally agree with that. And I also think that's why for a long time, there were communities had their own papers to, I don't know, fill in the gap. This is the news that we appreciate. It's about us. We're talking to our leaders, we're talking to our store owners, we're getting the real scoop on the crime in whatever neighborhood, whatever the case would be. We're also showing the positive sides of us in our communities as well.
Now with economic factors, putting a lot of pressure on community newspapers, there's a lot in a lot of that news that would be juxtaposition from mainstream news and people are left with, all we have is name the big newspaper or as the venture capital has come in and these other sources that have bought all of our hometown newspapers, and they may have one or two people working for the newspaper now, which doesn't really get to what's happening in our cities much anymore. We're locked with respect to the kind of information that we used to be able to get that was really important to the broader community.
And again, it's framed as it's in a certain way that perhaps is against how a community sees itself. Really it's a combination of factor that I think, again, boosting this kind of distrust in mainstream media.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about this distrust and what we can do to regain trust in the future of journalism and of media. And I want to get back to something that you said, Jasmine, that I'm still struck by, which is this piece of multiple truths in this piece of... Is there such a thing as the capital T truth? I don't think I've ever actually talked about this, but I think this was something that I, it was a journey that I went on myself and going through my whole whistleblowing journey and coming out and talking to Congress and having this set of facts that I witnessed and that I experienced, and then recognizing that I had this guiding principle of the truth, right? I'm a trained journalist, I'm a trained lawyer, this thing means a lot to me.
And then I realized it doesn't mean the same thing to a lot of other people, and that was a shock. I see you all nodding your heads but that was a shock to my system. That was genuinely a complete shock to my system of recognizing, oh, here's this value and this thing that I would be willing to risk my life for that doesn't even necessarily register. How do you all deal with that kind of, I don't know, juggling act, balance, whatever we want to call it?
Jasmine McNealy:
I don't know if I do deal with it.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Tell me more.
Jasmine McNealy:
What I want to say is that I think we're talking specifically about news and what we get from news. It's knowing and learning that news is a kind of ever evolving thing. So especially if it's dealing with events, breaking news, and we know that what happened or what's reported right at the beginning is never going to be the sum total of what's reported over time. So being able to hear more, and I think that's not just for the breaking news but for all stories, to be able to hear more, multiple perspectives, angles, to be able to see the different angles.
I know those of us who are chronically on social media, seeing one video is okay, but then when you get the other point of views, it makes the story larger and you understand it more. I think that's the kind of approach you have to have with much of the news, the reporting that we get.
It's never going to be everything. I think there's going to be more that's available and more that's not available, which is something you have to contend with as well. But being open to the fact that this is not the full story, this is not everything I think is a level of literacy that you develop over time.
Naomi Nix:
I think for me, it gives me two challenges as a journalist. One is I always have to be cognizant of who I'm talking to and what worlds they occupy, and making sure there is a lot of diversity there with people with lots of different perspectives who at a time when... Especially on the internet, people are really operating in this sort of siloed realities.
And I as a journalist have to cultivate the ability to look at all those different realities and all those different worlds and all those different echo chambers and make sure that I am connected to some degree with all of them.
And I think increasingly as we become more and more, as conversation and discourse on the internet becomes more and more decentralized and people flock to their pockets of the internet where people think and talk just like them, that becomes a really more urgent challenge for me as a reporter to make sure that I'm taking it all in.
But then the other challenge is some echo chambers, some little pockets of the universe are operating with more objective facts than others about given things. And we have to stick to our guns on what the underlying facts are, even as we're challenging ourselves on the narratives that we write about those facts.
Some people will be very upset with me, have been very upset with me when I say there was no substantial evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, that there's been lots of investigations. We just have not seen any evidence that that happened. Of course, there are some pockets on the internet that is a given fact that happened. I can accurately and retain relationships with people who believe that, who might have insights or perspectives about how internet platform should be governed and how their internet, how discourse should operate without feeling the need to put out some objective fact that's false.
And so it does get a little trickier, but in some ways, even to the conversation we had earlier about people of color often seeing the gaps in mainstream media, I think that practice is actually useful in other contexts of just challenging yourself to keep a diverse rolodex and take in lots of different perspectives while sticking true to objective facts as a reporter. And yeah, it's harder.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah, I appreciate you bringing up objective facts. I was reading a piece this morning from Glenn Kessler, of course, who's the Washington Post fact-checker who just took a buyout and is no longer going to be working at the paper. But he wrote, in reviewing many of some 3,000 fact checks that I have written or edited, there is a clear dividing line-- June 2015, the month Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for president. And he ended by saying, in an era where false claims are the norm, it is much easier to ignore the fact-checkers.
Thinking about that world that we are currently in, when you talk about objective facts, Naomi, what does that even mean if we're sitting here in this space where we're saying the fact-checkers are being ignored?
Naomi Nix:
I do think in a lot of situations, there are objective facts. I think people sometimes assume or ascribe narratives and implications on those facts as objective facts, and that's not true. How we interpret them is always going to be different, but if the president said something was going to happen in two weeks, we're not going to say he didn't say that, he said that. Now whether you see it as a rough estimation or just a way that he interpreted it, just a way that he is saying this is my priority, that's up to you. But we're not going to change the sort of nuts and bolts of what was said, what was done.
And I think in this environment, there is a sort of inclination or there is a challenge to put the facts out there and help readers to some degree to understand them without getting caught up in partisan disputes about interpretations and narratives and realities. And that is trickier, I think, right now when people distrust media and distrust are saying certain stated facts just aren't true. So I don't know if that answered your question really.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Look, these questions were all relative. Jasmine, you mentioned fact errors. I went to the University of Florida and got my undergraduate degree there in journalism. And as you mentioned, if we made one factual error, which was what were they like, proper names, nouns, basically anything, you got minus 50 points. And so we got negative grades on a regular basis, and Jasmine knows this. We had a professor, our reporting professor who started his first day of class, this slide said how to get a C in my class. And that was the aim because we were all going to get negative grades and at some point, we had to get to a C, right?
And so this is the rigor that I was trained in with facts, and to be in a space where facts are just fast and loose, how do you operate in that? What does that, especially sitting in a journalism school that is still teaching this sort of paradigms?
Jasmine McNealy:
It is something that must continue. However, we all know that you don't have to go to journalism school to be a journalist, or to be considered doing journalism, I should say. And this has been, I think a part of the conversation of the professionalism of journalism for a long time, and that is what is the training that people need to have or what is the kind of framework that people need to have to be doing journalism with regard to objectivity, whatever that means, but specifically with regard to facts and putting out factual information or information, period, and then trying to pass it off as facts? What is the kind of mindset even that people should have with regard to information sharing if we want to just telescope it out from journalism as a general matter?
And these are questions that we have to have. And as a professor in a college of journalism and communications, my hope is that we continue to make this as a part of training and not shy away from it with respect to the students that are coming through and quite frankly any professionals or anyone else that comes through as well.
Naomi Nix:
I think that is really important in part because of the rise of news influencers who are operating outside of mainstream media organizations. I think at the moment, we're still at a point where a lot of the reporting, original reporting is very much still happening in mainstream news organizations. And then we have, although not exclusively, but we have yet the rise of sort of news influencers who are responding to some of that reporting and putting their own spin on it or adding context that they think their audience should know.
And I think the more that internet influencers and media consumers understand how journalism works, the better our information ecosystem will be for the reasons you just mentioned, Jasmine.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Next question I wanted to ask you all, given the sort of complexities of the work that we're talking about, why do you still do this work, especially looking... Talk a little bit about the future and what you see, but what in the current moment is causing you to still want to be in this space and feel that your work is meaningful in this space? Naomi, I'll kick it to you first.
Naomi Nix:
The first thing that comes to mind is right now I don't imagine myself doing something different. I still enjoy the work. I still think it's important. There's still goals I have about career goals, but also just the type of work that I want to put out into the world. And I still feel committed to it, but open to the changes that I think will come. I don't think I will be doing a reporting on tech companies in this... If I continue to report on tech companies, I don't think it'll look the same in another 10 years. It's the way we put the news out there and the way we communicate. I think we'll continue to evolve and I feel open to those changes while remaining true to the mission.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. Jasmine, what about you?
Jasmine McNealy:
I think there are still things that are happening that are of interest. And more so, I think that how specific communities are moving in the moment or have been moving and it's playing out now is of interest as a way out/through the things that we are experiencing now and that we haven't experienced before, and perhaps a way of preparing for future things as well. And so I'm interested in that. I'm interested in also the potential for equity and equitable outcomes from information and news, but from, we could call it just from data and data use.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Jasmine, I love how much you love data. It makes me very excited to know that there are people who are really actually data-driven, you know what I mean? Not just use that term just to make themselves look cool. I'd love to talk a little bit about the future of the field and what that would look like. Naomi, you just mentioned that changes will come, right? Reporting won't look the same and it might evolve. What do you envision then as the future of tech policy reporting and media and journalism?
Naomi Nix:
Oh man, I don't have a crystal ball. Right now, one important challenge facing journalists who cover tech. There's a couple of them. One of them is it used to be that if you found a bad practice on the internet or something, there was a negative consequence for how the companies were operating, that you could write an accountability story and the company would in some ways have to respond. But how do you hold companies accountable for how they handle say, misinformation if they are actively saying they no longer care about misinformation? That puts the journalists in a tricky position and I think there can be a potential temptation to go along with that narrative.
And so one challenge is how do you continue to do the work when the politics shift? I think another challenge is AI and how we cover what does feel like this industry shifting dynamic and technology and world shifting technology, and staying on top of the new technology developments without getting too caught up into the horse race of the industry competition, keeping our eyes on the ball about what people actually need to know about this, and what regulators and policymakers need to know about this.
And I think that's another challenge that feels urgent right now for the tech press corps. And then of course, there's this sort of journalism shift of people are going into sort of a more branded direction. That's been occurring for some time, but between the newsletters and like I said, the news influencers and people going independent, and our competition is not just the Washington Post versus the New York Times, it's the Washington Post, New York Times versus the entire attention economy and figuring out how you get what is important work to the forefront in that kind of environment and what vehicle that shows up in.
And I think for me, who gets to take the risks to go independent and whose voices get to be elevated in that way? I think those are some really important questions to chew on going forward.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Agree. Jasmine, what about you?
Jasmine McNealy:
Totally agree with Naomi. I would also say I would love for J schools to continue to hammer the importance of being correct, and the importance of diverse sources and various perspectives. And I'm not doing this whole both sides thing. I don't believe in that. What I am saying is that one person's angle of the car accident is not the same as the other person's angle of the car accident. And it'd be really good to have both and more as part of the story.
But again, the objective facts thing, hammer that home. If you have to do the fact error is 50 points off, then do that because it's super important, but also that we don't get caught up in every bright and shiny new thing and then make that the personality of the field and of the educational system. I understand the power of artificial intelligence broadly defined, and I still know the power of being able to think for yourself and write your own story.
And so let's not get the traditional training thinking, critical thinking part lost in the let's use technology part of it. No more pivots to video that screw us up or reshape a field in very negative ways.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. I appreciate you all. I know as you said, we have no crystal ball, but you all have been here, you've been doing this for so long. And so thinking about the past, present, and what the future looks like, what inspires you to continue to work in the field, especially in this next future that we're thinking about, Jasmine?
Jasmine McNealy:
So I think there's work to do and so we're going to keep it moving. That's just basically it.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. What about you, Naomi?
Naomi Nix:
I think when I talk to regular people about how they're thinking about technology and how some of the issues that often I'm talking to people about who are studying it or they have some sort of expertise, and then when you see people chewing on the same questions in their everyday life about how do I keep my kids safe on the internet or how do I figure out which news source or which information is credible or how much time should I be spending on some of these social media apps, that to me reinforces why this work is necessary. And especially with AI and some of these new technologies, people are naturally curious. What would this be good for and what should I be worried about?
And I think to keep the regular person in mind, that gives me hope because then I get to get away from just the Silicon Valley echo chamber of what's important. And I find that inspiring and useful.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. I think getting away from the echo chamber is so important, especially for those of us who are really steeped in technology and being able to go touch grass, as I say, and go deal with regular folks and regular people who have no idea what AI is. Or one of my friends was like, what is a hallucination? And I was like, okay, you're right. You know what I mean? Let's take several steps back here on what this thing actually is versus where I run rampant on my rants from.
And I think that's something that's really important. I would love to ask you all what sort of advice you have for the next generation of folks who want to have a career that sort of follows in our footsteps and combines tech policy, media, and journalism.
Jasmine McNealy:
I would say read a lot. Yeah, no, read a lot. Read a lot of different things. Read history, read sociology, and read not fiction. But then do not be afraid to write for yourself. Please write for yourself. I'm begging you to write for yourself. I'm not missing the visual journalists at all and the photo journalists and those do that yourself as well, but be willing to be vulnerable in writing for yourself and accepting feedback on it as well.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah, that accepting feedback, the editing as we all know. All right, Naomi.
Naomi Nix:
Yeah, I definitely agree with all of that. I guess one thing I might add is I think, and really this would go for any career, it's important to try to take the opportunities that are going to challenge you the most and that are often the more difficult opportunities. I think sometimes over the more prestigious opportunity are the thing that you think might look good on paper because the more you just improve your objective skills to do the craft, the better off you'll be to navigate the various changes that'll come in the industry.
The craft isn't always easy, of pursuing truth, of capturing it, of building a beat, of editing, of capturing a moment. Yeah, that would be my advice. Just go for the thing that's going to teach you the most.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. Naomi, you mentioned this earlier of pursuing truth, putting facts on a page, holding powerful people accountable. And that's the work that I think we all have been doing and the work that I think so many people in the future want to do. And I want to end with this one last question, which is around regaining the trust. What does that look like and what steps can we take now to have a future where journalism and fact-finding and the truth are aims, not just for those of us who work in the field, but for our greater communities as well?
Jasmine McNealy:
I think trust is regained or gained when people see that you come through on what you said you were going to come through with, and that you meet expectations, but also when you're transparent about how you are getting where you are or how you got this information, who you talk to. Those explainers that organizations used to do were, I think, very helpful in helping people to understand what the process was and how people, the reporters in the news organization went through the process of gathering this information.
I think those kinds of things are super important. But coming through with what people expected you to do on a story or whatever the case may be, I think it's really important to gain trust or regain trust as well.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
Yeah. I love that you mentioned that process of gathering information. Just to say again, touching grass, I've had so many conversations with folks who are not living in the Silicon Valley bubble, who said things to me like, aren't all mainstream media outlets owned by billionaires? And why should I trust them, that there are these standards. And even things like sourcing and acknowledging in traditional journalistic practice, like you have to have at least three people saying the same thing before it can be published and why that is different than the random information that you might be getting on Instagram and understanding that there are still this sort of checks and balances. Naomi, what about you?
Naomi Nix:
I think transparency, it seems also authenticity. A voice is becoming more important in regaining trust, I think sticking to our standards. And I do think media organizations, and now I'm thinking about mainstream ones, haven't done the best job at telling our own story about how we work about those standards, about the process. I think at a time when people are just not trusting institutions at large, it is on us to explain how we do what we do and be transparent about that. And that seems critical, but this does seem like a tough challenge that doesn't really have one easy answer to solve.
Anika Collier Navaroli:
I think you're right, Naomi. I think if there was an easy answer, one of y'all would've solved it by now because you're both so brilliant. And yet we are still here when we are still talking about this. And I want to thank you both for joining us today on the podcast to talk a little bit about the truth and fact-finding in journalism, and all of these wonderful ideas and things that we hold close that I think are important, not just for those us who are in them but for a functioning democracy and for being able to have a society that is educated and informed and working together. So thank you so much both of you for joining us and for having this conversation.
Naomi Nix:
Thanks.
Jasmine McNealy:
Thank you.
Justin Hendrix:
That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. You can write to me at justin@techpolicy.press. Thanks to Anika and her guests. Thanks to our co-founder, Bryan Jones, and thank you for listening.
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