Interview with Craig Newmark, on Funding Public Interest News Organisations

Well, a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. Our country relies on that to survive. In particular, it relies on the press and others fighting for free and fair elections. And that's why I focus on journalism and voter protection. I'm also trying to help the people who, in the longer run, protect American democracy or build it up more strongly. And this includes a whole bunch of groups including veterans, their families, and women who are trying to get into the tech field. In my mind, all those things work together. However, right now, the greatest crisis is with the election and how it's covered by the press.

I was already talking to people who were really smart about the press but also how it's weaponized. Sometimes there are people I met through the Aspen Institute and then there's people like Jeff Jarvis and so on who I'd already been talking to for a long time. That also includes Kelly McBride at the Poynter Institute and she's been giving me a lot of good advice about journalism and journalism ethics. So over time I kept realizing and learning more and more. I should have paid attention to things that I had already learned. For example, a long time ago, I saw a quote from Marshall McLuhan which said that World War II is an information war, a guerrilla information war fought equally by military and civilian participants. That has been true for a long, long time and only over time did I realize it more and more. I should have realized it in 2006 when people started talking with me about it. I only really started understanding it in 2017 when Jeff Jarvis gave me the NATO handbook on Russian information warfare.

Don't give me too much credit. Julia Angwin and others founded The Markup, I just helped give it its initial funding. However, I've seen that technology can be used both for good purposes and for bad purposes. I learned that 50, 60 years ago when I wanted to be a physicist and I read a lot about the development of nuclear weapons. So when Julia and others approached me about The Markup, that made a great deal of sense to me and so I decided that I should help them out and they're doing great work. Last week they announced the development of a tool which allows you to see what trackers are being placed in your browser by websites. I think it's called Blacklight and it's really, really useful. The idea is that again, technology can be used for good, it can be used for evil and sometimes both at the same time. And so regular people, we need some help figuring out what's going on and that means good reporting from organizations like The Markup.

Well, again, like my high school history teacher taught us, a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. And of course that immune system failed in 2016 and needs help even now. On a more personal basis, this all has to do with trust and it has to do with trust on a societal level as I've just talked about maybe too much, but also our daily lives rely on who we trust. For example, my wife and I just purchased some air filters given that we live in San Francisco and the wildfires have put a lot of smoke in the air, but we needed help looking for really good recommendations on what are good, reliable air filters. So, we went to a number of sources. One of them was Consumer Reports which is part of Consumers International and they provide good recommendations as well. So trust applies at all our levels of existence from the big societal and civilizational level to just getting through the day.