about this, they get very exercised. and we need -- and this kind of comes down to what is internet freedom? what is free expression on the internet? without reasonable amount of privacy from surveillance? it's going to be very difficult to use the internet as a medium for empowerment. >> there's got to be, there must be, a larger global discussion about what free speech and free press means on a global state. it has to happen. because we have now the technology. it's only very, very recent. we're sitting in the embodiment of the first amendment. i bet the number of people here who actually know what article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights says from the late 1940s would not be able to describe it.

and yet that is the foundational legal document, that is the equivalent of the first amendment on the global stage. and our ignorance about how to make this debate happen on a global stage i think is very troubling. >> so we're talking about debates, values, ideas, laws, all very good. but i think we have to remember it's also about vested interests. so it's not just about nicely, in clear language with good arguments explaining to the chinese why american values are correct. this is very threatening to regimes that are very powerful. and that's why they don't want it. >> what we supply in china right now is news about the blind lawyer that they're not getting very many other places. should we be supplying that? or should we take the view that singapore is right, we shouldn't bother them? we have clearly decided that that is information that we should have and anyone should have. and has a right to.

>> let's take some questions from our audience. you've all been -- first victor's hand shot up before anyone. let's get the microphone to the gentleman in front. >> sitting here thinking what a marvelous panel and i'm agreeing with everybody on it about the importance of public funding, first amendment, no censorship, et cetera, and globalizing the conversation. but i'm worried about technology. and we did a survey at cjr where we found that -- where we looked at the relationship of magazines to their websites. we found that even a magazine like "the new yorker," probably the best of them, doesn't fact-check for its online stuff with it rig or that it does for its print magazine, arguing that you need speed because you need traffic. even the best of the magazines don't copy edit with the rigor online that they do for their print publications.

the online convention is, everyone has a handle, whereas in the traditional media, the convention is that you don't use anonymous sources except where it's absolutely necessary. the traditional media have a separation of advertising and editorial whereas the online world, it's all mixed up together. so the question i have for all the panelists is, how do you maintain or achieve and uphold appropriate standards to the new technology media in this complicated world that you're all talking about? >> who wants to take that one? >> you know, i'll say one thing. i'll give an example. you know, this doesn't show us in the most wonderful light but i think it does, in a way. we cover russia pretty closely and our internet presence is strong there.

and we were played by someone impersonating alexi novani, the blogger. or at least so mr. novani says. to this day we're not able to know for sure. someone impersonating him said some things to us which we put as quoting mr. novali, and he said, no, that wasn't me. and we checked with him and he said it wasn't him, and i'm sure it wasn't. but there you are. what is a responsible news organization supposed to do in that circumstance? you quickly go back and check your source. you go back to where it came from. and we had a way to get to mr. novalni. he says it's not him? you quickly, and we immediately, said, mr. novani says this isn't him, how interesting. how interesting. and we of course don't know which agency or entity was impersonating him. but this is the kind of thing that happens on the internet, as you said. and we do have to move quickly.

mr. novani's news so if he makes comments that are interesting, people are going to want to quote them. but we've set more strict standards about how to check that you really got him. >> but is it a fair observation that on the internet, i'll ask you, that the notion of saying, we don't quite have this yet, let's hold off until we really nail this down, that that's a real old media thing to say? if i can say, it's out there, it's been alleged, it's been charged, it will make it on the web? >> i have worked on fleet street as well as in new york. so i will tell you something that i heard in the news room once was, that's too good to check. that's something that fleet street editors feel is a good attitude for young reporters to have. so it's not just about internet versus print. it's about cultures and working at reuters has been a revelation

for me in that they are a 24/7 culture from the get-go. we tend to think of 24/7 as a new thing but there are news cultures that have been 24/7 forever. and still cared very much about facts. and been very sort of punctilious about checking. so i do think it's a lot about culture. i also think victor is right, that there is more kind of a loosey-goosey cultural acceptance on internet. yesterday on twitter i followed a debate about politico where the question was, does politico think it's okay to publish that there is a rumor? before they've confirmed is it true or not? then you keep on reporting the rumor and reporting whether it's true or false. that's kind of a cultural choice. not just because the internet exists. i think the pressure of everybody being there and the pressure of -- now i think journalists feel they are

competing not just with other journalists but with everybody who has an iphone. adds to that sense of urgency. the only other thing i would say is there's a flip side too. and especially i work a lot now, especially on sort of the build of our new site, with this younger generation of digital natives. and from their point of view, they feel like old media is insufficiently fact checked. one of the things that drives them crazy is anything that doesn't have a link to the source. so actually being inaccurate with your sourcing is much harder online than it is in print. because you can just go check that link right away. and i think the internet community keeps you a lot -- can keep you a lot more honest. back to those -- the olden days of foreign correspondents, they would write about people who never in a million years were going to see what they wrote. >> over to rebecca.

>> in our global voices community all the time, people will say, "new york times" just did such and such a story, half of it came from so-and-so's blog, this other story that i saw somewhere misquoted so-and-so, completely misconstrued what happened. because i was there and i saw it. you know. that certainly adds value. then you've got the other problem where, you know, who reported first on the helicopters in abbottabad in pakistan getting osama bin laden? a blogger who said, oh, there's a helicopter crashed a few blocks away. and so i think, you know, of course people then have to start reporting. you can't wait. i think i'd rather that the journalists sort of get in there than let this go on twitter, rumors spreading for a long time, before any journalist actually weighs in.

but i guess the other point too, and this just to broaden this conversation out globally and coming back to singapore and to kind of transpose this conversation into some other cultures. you sometimes hear non-professionals shouldn't be allowed to report first because they don't have their facts right as an excuse for censorship and as an excuse to say, you know, these are the people who are allowed to report the news and if you're not given a badge or a card you can't report the news and it's illegal and you're -- you know, and you can be arrested. and so we have to make sure as we're having this conversation because as lee rightly points out this is really a global context for media that we're not saying, okay, there's only certain types of people who are allowed to be journalists, who are allowed to commit journalism and any other way of conducting journalism somehow is irresponsible, bad for the

public, and should be shunned. we have to be careful about how we frame that. >> one thing and then we'll get another question from this side of the room. >> i think this is an argument for what victor raised, for multiple kinds of media, including some publicly funded media. you just get a different type of voice that comes out of a publicly funded -- they have bbc and npr, voice of america. and commercial pressures coupled with the nature of the new technology are pushing inexorably toward this kind of highly current sorts of news. you really benefit from having multiple systems, multiple voices. and in fact, that's what we've had in the united states for the last half century. we had broadcasting, which was regulated. and we had the print media, which was free. and public broadcasting.

>> take a question. here's a mic. >> two quick points and then a question. i'm an editor at politico. we don't publish rumors. i'd like to just point out to our distinguished ivy league president that another ivy league president, rick levin of yale, is devoting a lot of time to changing the culture in singapore by partnering with the national university there and trying to instill our values in that culture. so my question is this. if you were sitting around yesterday and you had the choice as anyone in washington did of watching an exciting game between the red sox and the orioles or watching the new president-elect of france give his speech, which you could

watch on france 24, which would you do? >> is that directed to -- professor -- to president -- >> i didn't know the game was on. so i watched the president of france. [ inaudible ] >> -- i'm not sure that in this new world people really want to -- >> let me take -- this is andy glass of politico. let me take his point and also add this to it. when we have discussions like this, we like to talk about covering revolutions and crises and covering people who've been thrown into prison for expressing themselves. but much of what the media does is also new music reviews, celebrity interviews. the newspapers when they thrived had a monopoly on tv listings and stock tables and box scores. are we seeing new forms, say,

whatever social media folds into, are we seeing journalism in a digital age fold into larger -- larger things like a newspaper, which is -- which is a vehicle for all sorts of information? it's not only tough reporting. are they linked together? or have we so disaggregated journalism from the other things it used to come along with, which were rock music or the society page it used to be, that it's tougher to get people to pay attention to it because we're only going to talk to those who will pick the french presidential inauguration speech over the red sox-orioles game. what do you think? >> they're different platforms kind of serving different segments. you've got the platforms where people go for general stuff, and maybe it's more entertainment-heavy, but you're also seeing on the internet a lot more segmentation and specialization and niche -- and sort of online media directed at niche audiences actually doing pretty well with those niches.

so there is a certain -- there is a pretty big percentage of americans who actually were interested in that speech. not the same number as would want to watch the baseball game. but there's enough that, you know, depending on how you kind of set up your platform and how you're targeting your audience, there are online publications like "foreign policy" for instance has a very lively and successful website targeted at foreign policy wonks. no, it's not the same size as the audience for the baseball audience, but it does quite well with that audience. >> i don't know. i think it's very true, and i think it's really bad, but i'm not sure there's anything we can do about it. so i lived in the soviet union when it was still the soviet union and then afterwards. and when it was still the soviet union, you could actually see people on the subway reading dostoyevsky, chekhov, tolstoy, that was sort of normal.

and then the soviet union collapsed and they were reading porn. and before that, my family's ukrainian, so i had thought it was just a higher culture and sort of culturally superior, that was the grandparents' point of view, and then you saw it wasn't. it was that's the only thing available and when other things were available people wanted other things too. but i think that this actually goes back to lee's argument. it is one reason i think maybe you want to have some forms of intervention, to create a common platform, because we're no longer forced into the common platform. >> i would say on the first point -- thank you for the observation about yale and setting up a liberal arts college in singapore. because universities are doing exactly what we're talking about here with respect -- what needs to be done with respect to the press. that is, we're in a new era. we just started being in this era. we are incredibly interdependent

now economically and technologically with the rest of the world. we have to know more than we do. we have to educate young people to be part of this new world. and how are we going to do that just sitting in morningside heights and thinking and having lots of international activities based from there? and universities are responding now in different ways. and one is the yale, nyu, qatar, abu dhabi, singapore model of a branch campus. we're doing something different. we have what we call global centers in eight different cities now around the world which are a network and will help faculty and students study and work on research around the world. but we're doing i think in the university world what needs to be done in the press world. >> a question in the front row and then to the back after that. >> would news vouchers make news better or worse? suppose within the government subsidy that you're proposing,

president bollinger, some of it went to news consumers and they could pay for the websites that charge? would that make things better or worse? >> well, i mean, i think -- i think these kinds of questions are very important. and i don't want to speak as if i have thought through every dimension of this. my own personal view at this stage is that having funding mechanisms that create and nurture institutions like npr, like our international broadcasters, like pbs, like universities is going -- that will give you these very important and distinct voices in the world of the press. if you just give a tax rebate or a voucher to individuals, you know, that won't result actually in this kind of -- free market economists will say that only

proves that in fact when you're trying to do is impose something on people who don't want it. and that's an old debate. and i happen to take the view -- the opposite view. i think we have collective public values. we have national parks. we have public lands. we have city parks. we really benefit as a society from having a mixed system in which we can make our individual choices and we don't always read shakespeare when we go home at night and we do turn on the baseball game and watch it. and we don't always participate in public debate when we should. we have that option. but we also have the option of going into a national park which doesn't have golf courses, doesn't have amusement parks and the like, and it's been preserved as a matter of public values. and i think that that's what we need in an american world service. >> a question in the back row. >> thank you.

i am here almost by accident, and i happen to be the owner-publisher of alaskadispatch.com. i'm quite sure none of you in the room has heard of it. i urge you to look at it. but it is an online-only news site that is conceded by others besides our own family to be the most comprehensive source of independently read and acclaimed news and information in alaska. however, we have no physical world presence. and so i am sitting here listening to this conversation and thinking back to my prior years when, for example, the "washington post" went through the janet cook incident and realizing that print as a medium or broadcast or cable television as a medium has not necessarily done all that perfectly at presenting truth. and we all can concede the many examples. so what is your feeling, all of

you, or any one, about how a site like mine, which is as honest in its attempt to present straightforward, highly edited attempt to present straight forwarded, highly edited and vetted journalism, how is that to be recked by folks like you and particularly by the readers of the world as something different than other things you would refer to as citizen journalism? >> i would like to venture an answer. rebecca, you want to try? >> sure. it has to do with reputation. i think news organizations or online organizations that are doing a good job have developed a reputation of being credible and straight forward and fact based. and that's how you distinguish yourself from random commentators who may not be as

rigorous. but i think that's -- i don't see how else one goes about distinguishing one's self other than reputation, you build a brand, you build a name for yourself. >> and you hope that your readership increases over the years on the basis of that. where's the microphone now? let's get another question from the audience. >> it was touched on a little bit earlier, but if you could go back to the issues of how technology's affecting reactions to war zones. we talked a little bit about syria. but right now the united states and other countries are not really covering the drone strikes in pakistan because the military just said we're not allowing u.s. access to the pakistani side. i think viewers are sometimes not -- well, the less sophisticated news junky viewers might not be aware of the fact

that the information they're reading on yahoo news or whatnot has not been firsthand reporting because somebody's relying on a a citizen blog, to cobble together a report and the editors are happy and cnn is happy because they feel they're reporting it. but i think there is this disconnect coming. it's in newsrooms and from what i believe i think it is becoming increasingly more difficult for news organizations to cover war zones. we saw it in the gaza strip in 2009. we've seen it in syria now and pakistan. but because it's proliferation of technology and we are kind of still able to get information from these war zones. we kind of still feel like we're doing our job. but the trends are there. if journalists worldwide don't unit and push back and say we want access and we don't think it's okay that you're refusing to allow any journalist in, these things are going to become a cultural to themselves. >> i'm not sure where the

journalist where have accessed the drone strike. >> that they're not allowed at all in the northwest tribal zone. you have to sneak in and the u.s. military is not commenting. >> the the voice of america covering the drones? >> of course. of course, if we can double source we'll report that there's a drone attack. i would push back a little bit. there's more pictures and information or alleged information about war zones and about everything else than there was before. the point is in a war zone it's tons of information. which part of it is accurate? that's where the journalism comes in in a way is sifting through. we increasingly as a news organization and i know my old

employers at krrks nn and abc news had the same thing are really getting into the business of analyzing, for example, photographs. where was this picture taken? we spent time on that. we had professional help figuring out where this was taken. i don't think there's less conch. i think there's more. there's more information but we're less sure about its authenticity sometimes. it's very hard to get to sites to have aist who has credibility get to the place. that said, we get into syria, from time to time, other news organizations do, i'm very proud of the courage shown by the journalists who do that. >> to complicate the picture even more, i'm on the board of the committee to protect journalists. they've pointed out a trend in war zones that the percentage of freelancers not citizen journalists, not people working

for big organizations. aren't tied to the support from a news organization are amongst the largest growing source of news. they are more vulnerable than ever. and the number of deaths of freelancers and local journalists in war zones is growing very rapidly. i would like to make two quick comments. all the information that i have about major news organizations and the coverage of war, current wars establishes that we have far less than we ever had in recent memory. in so far as that's true, it points up the essential problem of how do we get the information

we need in the modern world? it's interesting that we to longer think about what the first amendment might say about a claim by journalists to have a first amendment right of access. only 30, 40 years ago the supreme court made a narrow decision 5-4 saying that we would have protection for whatever the press basically published. that was a very vital debate about the scope of the first amendment in 1970s and 80s. and it should be again. i'm not saying that this particular supreme court would be favorable towards that.

but when you think long-term, you think several decades and how principals develop. one of the things we should be thinking about in is united states is a first amendment right of access especially the war zone. >> the last question began with the impack of technology. and i would just note here and ask the former television journalists for confirmation the device which one can take pictures of an event and then transmit those images back to someplace which used to be perhaps a crew of three or four people who would drag some vast camera somewhere. the videos we're look at could have been shot with something that looked like a single lens reflex camera. the access -- the ability to make video images and in any location has become phenomenally greater.

>> the ability to transmit them live. in the early 90s we had to have a crew with a satellite dish. either that or it was stick a videotape on a flight and get it somewhere. >> i was in new hampshire just before the primary i realized what the current press corp. looks like, which is a bunch of monopods with cameras stuck on them. gaining more direct live access to an event than just about any media could have delivered until 10 or 20 years ago. the landscape has been greatly changed. we could go on like this for quite a while. i must say these are it be kind of issues that justify and require the existence of the columbia journalism review to treat seriously with questions the intersection between technology and free speech and new media and commerce. i wish i could share all the

optimism about public funding that we've heard expressed today on the panel. it seems to be some necessary alternatives to that. to david ensor and christie and lee, thank you very much. [ applause ] >> i'm chairman of the 50th answer very colombia journalism review. i want to join in thanking all of you today. for five decades cjr has believed you can be both a watchdog of the media and an ally in the models that sustain quality journalismism i think we believe those goals are more critical than ever before. i think today's discussion whether around public spaces, funding and values twitter as a curuation of access to act chemoya, the role of