A View from the Field: How Disinformation Threatens Elections

A View from the Field is an ongoing feature that highlights the efforts of Free Press’ team of organizers and advocates.

We provide regular updates from the field as staffers work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a just and equitable media system.

• Jenna Ruddock took part in a virtual Tech Civil Society Roundtable that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission hosted. The discussion explored the collection, use and sharing of people’s sensitive data.
• Rose Lang-Maso spoke during a panel discussion at Duke University’s The Power Shift Summit: Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Tech Policy. Topics ranged from the threats that algorithmic discrimination and disinformation pose to elections to how to advocate with marginalized people on Capitol Hill to what it’s like for women who hold intersectional identities to work in the tech-policy space.
• Jessica J. González participated in a panel discussion at the “Diálogo Series: A Deepening Journalism Crisis in L.A.” CALÓ News and the Latino Media Collaborative hosted the event. “I believe that local news and civic information are public goods — and right now, thanks largely to runaway corporate consolidation and hedge-fund greed, they’re being critically underproduced by the commercial market,” Jessica said during the gathering. “Without a doubt, journalism is in crisis. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. has lost over half the newspaper reporters covering state and local beats. Here in California, we’ve lost nearly 40 percent of local reporters. … We can’t chart a sustainable and equitable future for local news without structural policy change.”
• Diamond Hardiman participated in the panel discussion “Reparations for Black Media” at the Black Media Futures Conference. The conversation explored the challenges Black media outlets have long faced, strategies to secure sustainable and equitable funding, and the moral and political case for media reparations. The Black Media Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism hosted the conference.