What’s Mr. Potatohead up to now that he’s been fired from CNN as Chris Licht attempts to turn the failing network around and into a news network America trusts again (good luck with that, Mr. Licht)?
Well, Brian Stelter is now a professor at Harvard, as The Harvard Crimson reported, saying “Former CNN chief media correspondent Brian P. Stelter, whose weekly show was canceled by the network last month, will join the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy as a fellow this semester.”
Stelter said in an emailed statement to The Crimson that “I hope I can bring the spirit of my longtime Sunday morning TV show to Harvard’s campus. Most of all, I hope I can convene discussions about media and democracy that will add value for students and the wider community.”
But indoctrinating the labile minds of the youth at the Shorenstein Center isn’t all that Stelter is up to. He’s also speaking at the WEF, chairing an event that focuses on “disinformation” and speaking to media and political personalities on the subject.
The WEF website page on the panel discussion described the topic of it as being “How can the public, regulators and social media companies better collaborate to tackle disinformation, as information pollution spreads at unprecedented speed and scale?”
The Daily Wire, reporting on Stelter’s discussion, said:
Stelter asked Arthur Sulzberger, the chairman of the New York Times Company, about the current state of disinformation since social networks began to feel “pressure” about monitoring content over the past several years. The executive compared condemnations of “fake news” as “enemies of the people,” phrases popularized by former President Donald Trump, as following the pattern of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. He called for “real sustained effort” from social media platforms and lawmakers to reject the phenomenon.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) likewise said that the Trump phenomenon “proved that lying works” as a political strategy. “Part of jumping on his bandwagon was buying into this game that you could just lie, and not only could you get away with it, but it might actually help your career.”
European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová described a “very broad exercise” in monitoring disinformation within the European Union and said that 90% of the requests for removals on Facebook come from government agencies.
Giving an example of the sort of things said during the panel, the Daily Wire also reported that:
Moulton said there is a “healthy concern” in the United States that European censorship goes “too far.”
“Yes, they are ahead of us, and they’re doing some smart things. But I know when I use the internet in Europe and I get all the warnings about cookies and whatnot, that actually makes me feel safer,” he said. “We also have a healthy concern that we are not going to be censored.”
Those discussions are well in line with what Stelter will be doing at Harvard’s Shorenstein center. There, he will, according to press releases surrounding his appointment to the position, “convene a series of discussions about threats to democracy and the range of potential responses from the news media.”
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