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The media and tech industries have long battled over economics. But now they’re increasingly finding fault in the other’s values.
I’ve often argued that tech companies are media companies and vice versa. There’s a future where these two industries are indistinguishable from each other. As this collision takes place, the values and norms of the two industries will find themselves coming to a head.
Among the various fault lines in our country, a growing one has opened up between Silicon Valley and the media. What was once mainly an economic fight has grown into a battle around values. This manifests in flare-ups like that between New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz and tech founder Balaji Srinivasan or the #BoycottNYT hashtag after a New York Times reporter said he would reveal the identity of anonymous blogger Slate Star Codex.
It also manifests as accusations of “fake news” hurled back and forth among both parties. Journalists argue that through opaque algorithms and by acting as bad gatekeepers, Silicon Valley’s laissez-faire approach has been a net negative to our information ecosystem.
Conversely, Silicon Valley looks at traditional media as an old guard clinging to what little power it has left. They view the media’s coverage as overly moralizing. Indicative of the further cultural divide, one might interpret Silicon Valley’s critique of journalism to be that they don’t operate enough like universally applicable (i.e., “objective”) algorithms.
Notice that both of these claims can be true at the same time.
Read more here: https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/when-journalism-and-silicon-valley-collide/