Media, Democracy, and the 2024 U.S. Elections

- Good day, everyone. I am Karen Bonadio, Senior Director of Alumni Relations, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Alumni Talk policy webinar focused on media, democracy, and the 2024 US elections. The Alumni Talk Policy webinar series features HKS alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. This webinar is being recorded and closed captioning is available. I'm happy to introduce the moderator, Dick Tofel, MPA 1983, Principal, Gallatin Advisory, former President ProPublica will kick off today's timely and important discussion. Thank you, Dick.

- Thank you, Karen, so much. I think I can speak for everybody to say we're delighted to be with you here today and we wanna get straight to our discussion. First, let me briefly introduce my fellow panelists. Eric Felten, why don't you wave just so folks, I think it'll be clear, but is a 1989 MPA. Over three decades in journalism, he has written regularly for the "Washington Examiner", RealClearInvestigations, "The Weekly Standard" and the Voice of America. He also has his own jazz orchestra and wrote a column on cocktails and spirits for the "Wall Street Journal". Jackie Weatherspoon is a 1991 MPA. Jackie if you can wave it. Great, excellent, thank you. She's a member of the State Advisory Committee of the US Civil Rights Commission and the founder of Decisions in Democracy International, which trains women to run for public office and the mediation skills. She served six years in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and was also previously a senior election officer for UNDP. And Sabra Horne, if you, thank you. Is a 2005 MPA. She is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at BMNT, following 15 years in federal service at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the NSA, the Department of Justice, and the office of the Director of National Intelligence Before the Kennedy School, she was for 10 years and editor at Thomson Reuters. Okay, our broad subject today is media democracy and the US elections. I wanna start by giving each of our panelists a few minutes to give their thoughts on where we stand at the moment and what personally are their own greatest concerns on these issues at this point. Sabra, let's start with you, if we could.

- Thank you so much, Dick, and I appreciate the question about, what is the state of play currently? As always, I am optimistic about what we can do as citizens to help keep our elections safe, but I will say, my experience is quite informed by my history, primarily in the intelligence community. In 2016, I was Deputy Director for Information Sharing Collaboration at the National Security Agency when we discovered the Russian intrusion into the 2016 presidential election. I then went to CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2017, and was part of a group that alerted state election officials as to what had happened with the Russian penetrations into their state infrastructure. And subsequently, I stood up the election task force. At that time, we believed as federal participants in the important process of supporting state and local officials in conducting fair elections. We believe that the greatest risk was the infrastructure, the critical infrastructure of elections to include IT Infrastructure, voting machines, and the votes of each state. But it turned out that it was truly social media, specifically Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram among others that were so very critical in really shaping the way the public voted. And this was driven by inaccurate posts that were supported by nation states, specifically Russia, to really change how we were able to view the process at the election. So strangely, we did not anticipate that you could use a much cheaper and easier method to change the way the citizens believed that their political candidates were potentially able to serve office. So I think it's absolutely critical for us as we go into this election to ensure that we're doing all that we can to not only protect the critical infrastructure and support the states and local election officials, but to do what we can to ensure that we as citizens are keeping ourselves safe as well as our fellow citizens, thank you.

- Great, Jackie, your own assessment of where we stand at the moment and what your greatest concerns are at this point?

- It's good to be here. The first thing I wanna say is we are at the end of Black History month, and I wanna do a shout out to a number of my sheroes, Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Gray, and Annie Devine. They were part of the Mississippi Freedom Party and they had this burning desire to be a part of the process. We have learned as black women that if you are not at the table, you're on the menu. Let me that again. If you are not at the decision making table, you are on the menu. So black women, we have been trying to get there to participate. We know two years ago we celebrated the 100th anniversary of women trying to get the vote. And curious, when you look at that history, you find out that black women were there. But they were told, "You can't march with us." So what did the sororities do? They went to the back of the line and marched anyway. So sometimes some of you may be curious, why is Kamala Harris, our VP, always talking about the sororities? Well, they were there at the beginning. When you are the last to vote, you had this burning desire to say, "I'm a citizen." Keisha Blain wrote an article this week and the title was called "Wake Up America, Black Women and the Future of Democracy." And we know democracy if we are not at the table, it impacts education, it impacts healthcare, not only delivering children, but for older women insulin. There are so many areas, owning property. What are some of the areas where we find the most barriers? Gerrymandering, redlining, not wanting young people to vote, where we know in the last few cycles, they would take the polling stations two miles out of town where college students had to walk during class to get there. So again, I just say, we are here, we love America. We will always love America. And I have looked at what are some of the new things that are happening? One of them, and part of the media for us is 2 Black Moms and a Mic. Check them out, what they're talking about online. Look at the 19th, look at Errin Haines and what she is talking about in the media. There are some great women, and for us in our state, it's the Ken State Coalition. They have a weekly guide on everything that's happening in our legislature. So I'll tell you a little bit more, but thank you so much, Eric, for letting me open this up.

- Okay, Eric, again, where we stand at the moment and what your personal greatest concerns are?

- Well, I think where we stand at the moment is for all the talk of Donald Trump's violation of norms that has sort of driven a lot of journalists into abandoning norms themselves. And you know, the norms that I think are most important are norms of trying to have balanced reporting where you get the opinion not only of one party, but of another party. And it leaves us without an ability to make reasoned, careful judgments as citizens if we're only presented with one side of the story. And there's been a real sense that if Donald Trump is allowed to have his say that that is destructive and dangerous to democracy, I think rather the greater danger to democracy is if, and in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from having his say that journalists abandon the standards that have been essential for journalism, for centuries. And you know, it's Benjamin Cardozo wrote that, "Freedom of speech is the foundational principle upon which all of the rest of our freedoms rests." And I think it's important for journalists in particular, but for everyone to make sure that in their participation in the political process or in their action as journalists, that we maintain the commitment to free speech that allows everyone to be heard and allows the voters to make their own judgment about who to believe and what to believe.

- So thanks, that is a good setup I think for my first specific question to each and all of you. We will by the way, have significant time for audience questions toward the end of this. But even before that, we received a number of suggested questions in advance, and they're gonna shape considerably the questions that I'm about to ask our panel. Let's start with this and I'd love it if we could keep your answers brief so we could keep things moving. How serious do, and I'm happy to take whoever wants to go first, but I want to get to each of you, how serious do each of you think the threat to democracy is in the US this year, and how serious do you think the American people think it is?

- Dick, I'm happy to go first. I actually do think it is a significant year for our democracy. And I do look to media to be an arbiter of truth. I think as Eric has just demonstrated for us, that is the job of the journalist to seek truth and to report it and to do so fairly and to do so in a consistent way. And I think the challenge that we all have been given is that it's very difficult to understand what is truth these days and who is pushing the truth. And so being absolutely assiduous about understanding the sourcing that takes place, the understanding what actually is true and what is not true, and ensuring that we are really not only being truthful ourselves, but standing up for truth and doing so in a very outwardly spoken way. I think we are in a very challenging time because it's hard to tell what truth is, and we can't always look to our usual purveyors of journalism or reporting to really understand exactly how truthful the information that we are getting is. And so I think it's a huge challenge. I'm not sure that our citizens feel the level of threat in the same way I think that we saw in over the past several years that our democracy is a much more fragile thing than we ever could have possibly imagined. And we all must stand ready at all times to ensure that our democracy stands.

- Jackie, I'm gonna come to you next. How serious do you think the threat is to democracy in the US this year and how serious do you think the American people think the threat is?

- Let me, on the local level, what political parties are doing now, they're lining up candidates so that they could fill the ballot. So parties get it. Citizens, they don't pay attention till about September. And then they said, "Oh", then they start talking to friends. "Who are you gonna vote for?" By that time, they are just listening to buzzwords or some phrase that a candidate said, and that's why they're gonna vote for them or they don't. And that's where the information and disinformation comes in. You're relying on buzz words to figure out how you're going to vote. What political parties are doing now, in addition to having the candidates ready to go, they are trying to do education and they're asking themselves, "Should we go to TikTok?" What are those things that we can do to get citizens engaged now? America, this is a pretty happy Tony place to live in the world. So we get distracted by all the wonderful things, how life is, and we don't look at it as the same. We don't have soldiers running around, we don't have tanks in the streets, we don't have those things. There is food, there are organizations that undergird when there are challenges. We are not looking at what Nigeria was looking at this week where there was not enough rice, they was stopping cars. We're not even looking at what's going on in the Middle East in our towns where we're saying we can't let the trucks get through. We still have a choice of how many types of rice we're going to eat. So I think the American psyche and the zeitgeist is that we usually take our time, we wait till the end, hear the buzzwords and go, but parties are learning how to, we cannot wait. So in some states, like mine, everything jumps off this week,

- Eric, how serious is the threat and how seriously do you think the American people regard it?

- You know, I don't think that people necessarily think that we're in grave threat mode, at least, you know, sort of not in the way that a lot of cable news channels will have everybody with their hair on fire, you know. It does help to go back and look at the past and in American history things have been often much more contentious, much more difficult than they are now. You know, just after the founding you had sedition laws put in place that the parties were using to knock out their opponents. And you had people who had been at the founding of the Republic, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, using the law to try to hobble their political opponents. And I think if you look at what's been going on in, you know, the recent contentious politics of the United States, it's not as bad as even in those dangerous days when the Republic was new. And so I tend not to, you know, be too much of a hand ringer, but I do think that there's plenty of room to do journalism right. For people to speak their minds, to be heard on, whether it's through social media or, you know, town hall meetings. And as long as that remains, I think the Republic is sound and safe.

- Yeah, Eric, I'm just gonna push back for a second. I mean, I've read a fair amount over the years about the era of the founding, and I think it's a safe statement that Jefferson and most of the founders, Washington may have been different, would not have expected the Republic to last 250 years. So to say that democracy is not as threatened as it was at the founding, and maybe to add, as I'm sure you would, that it may not be as threatened as it was at the outbreak of the Civil War. Putting those two moments aside, do you think that things are more perilous than they have generally been throughout the run of American history? Or do you think this is just another average partisan fight?

- I wouldn't call it average because it's so flamboyant. I think in just to some degree, the fights we have now are extravagant. You know, with a character like Donald Trump as part of the action it makes for, you know, a circus, but I don't think that that's necessarily, you know, a tremendous danger. I'll just give one example. This was something I reported at the time it was happening just after the election, at which in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected, there came to light, as Sabra said, that the Russian government had computer whizzes who were trying to throw the election one way or another. And one example that was found was that there had been a fake Florida Trump event that was put up by the Russians. It just happened that in the same city in Florida, on the same day, there was an actual Trump event and the one put up by the Russians had about 10 people standing on a street corner. And there was footage of that and a few blocks away where the actual Trump event was you had a stadium filled with people. And I think that that's some evidence of the difficulty even for a malicious player that has lots of resources, IE Putin's Russia, you know, it's more difficult than it may seem to try to throw an election. And the organic support for Trump that day far outweighed the support that had been engineered maliciously by the Russians.

- I've got another question I'd like to get to, but first, Jackie or Sabre, either of you wanna jump in here?

- I can't help but jump in. So thank you so much Dick. And Eric, just to respond. Well, first I'll point out since I was in the intelligence community, you all as taxpayers actually paid to ensure that I was paranoid at all times. So I'm going to watch for danger, right? I'm going to ensure that we are keeping our citizens safe, keeping our institutions safe. And so I do look back at the 2016 election and it was simply a failure of imagination on the part of the intelligence community to, again, imagine that an election could have been swung through social media. It simply had not occurred to us. And so we were not watching for that. And that was a, you know, lesson learned that will never take place again. I think one of the questions that we'd gotten earlier in preparation for this was, do we have policies in place now that prevent social media from being used as a weapon against our citizens? And certainly we're not where we need to be. There's more that needs to take place. And I think, you know, I know that there are many eyes looking at how to actually do that in the right way, but I can't help but say I think our democracy is more fragile than we imagined. And there are many ways that, that democracy can be broken. And I think none of us, and I just simply have to say it, it's the elephant in the room. January 6th, taught us that literally in moments we could have had, rather than having the peaceful transfer of power, as was the example set by George Washington, our very first president who refused to take a third term that could have threatened our democracy. And so I have eyes on, and Eric, you are invited to my table any day because I like your optimistic view.

- Jackie, do you wanna say something before we move on to my next question?

- Yes, just briefly. There was a lot of writing on the wall that I saw. When the militia groups, they're in my state, not only are they in my state, they boldly demonstrated, not only did they boldly demonstrated they would try to harass people. Many years ago in my town, we actually had the KKK on the corner. These are reals, but it's when citizens stand up together, no one thought that the Proud Boys with do any, oh, they were harmless. They told us how they felt, what they believed in, but did we believe them? Thank you, Eric.

- So my next question, I think comes almost directly from this, what useful lessons do each of you think the press has learned about how to cover Donald Trump compared to 2016? I'm gonna leave aside 2020 because he was president then and also we were in a pandemic, two very different situations. But compared to 2016, what do you think the press has learned about how to cover Trump and what, in your view, do they still need to learn? Jackie, you wanna start on that one?

- Oh, okay. Thanks a lot. This is a tough one. Lessons in learning how to cover Trump? In my opinion, he's gotten too much airtime. He is very, very smart. In every case that he's had this time, he knows how to use the media. People enjoy his antics when you hear their response. So he has hoodwinked the press, in my opinion. What has the press learned? You could turn to certain networks and they will say, "We will tell you what he said, but we will not show you." So that's a way of letting people listen to his words and not the show. Every candidate knows that you can have a great backdrop, which looks like 3000 people. He could have maybe had 30,000. Candidates know how to manipulate the press. And we have to have press in the room that understands what actually is going on. And the press can do a much better job uncovering events on talking to citizens, and really not doing the show, but giving us the words.

- Thank you.

- Sabra, Eric? Who would like to take the next shot at this? What does the press learn about how to cover Trump and what do they still need to learn?

- [Sabra] Eric?

- I mean, I think that the question suggests that Trump is not something to be covered, but rather something to be managed, you know, a phenomenon that has to be dealt with like a...

- I'm gonna interrupt you there just to say the question doesn't presume that. The question presumes that Trump is qualitatively different from any major party candidate before 2016, and I'm prepared to stand on that one as objectively true.

- Right, and in what sense is he different such that it requires some kind of different standard of coverage?

- Maybe I didn't say standard, I said approach and your answer, you're fully within your rights of course to say the answer is none.

- Yeah, and, you know, that would likely be my approach to it, which is, you know, we see again as this this question of norms. And I think part of the challenge is to realize that how one covers Trump is not just about what is, you know, is not just about covering Trump, but rather we'll have implications and ramifications for how journalism is done for decades to come, long after Trump is off the scene. And I think that one of the things journalists need to think about is the long haul for journalism. So much of journalism is falling apart, you know, barely a week goes by in which there aren't another, you know, couple of hundred people laid off and sent to the benches. And so in that context, especially I think journalists need to maintain the standards of journalism so that journalism is a effective part of the political process in the United States going forward decades.

- Sabra?

- I would have to say I don't think we've learned as much as we need to. I think the one thing that we have learned is we don't have to hang on to every single word and report that. And I think we all can remember a time when there was just an avalanche of information and most of it was repetitive and not helpful. But what I wish we had learned is that Trump is just simply one of many. And although yes, a front runner, which we know tends to get the majority of attention and weight. People, as Jackie indicated, people are still making up their minds. People are still gathering information. And I certainly wish that the media were able to help us do a better job of sorting out actual, you know, a data-driven analysis of what politicians and prospective candidates believe, what their platforms are, how those platforms compare. Words are important. That's all we have prior to an election, what someone says they will do and can do. And so I would rather us have a much better understanding of how that actually compares from candidate to candidate.

- All right, I want to turn to one of the other candidates. There been a lot of attention recently to Joe Biden's age and physical frailty. I feel like frailty compared to his previous state seems to me again fairly clear he's not as physically strong as he was. How do you personally feel about the coverage of this and how do you feel about the subject and what do you think of the press coverage of the subject so far?

- I'll jump in on that one. I think the coverage of Biden's physical and mental state is unfair. Let's be honest, there is no person in this country who has more eyes on them than the president. So there is a nonstop analysis of every word, every movement, every motion, multiple cameras and echo chambers within social media as well. So it is not fair to, I think use those little moments of... I'm 59 years old, I am not in shape to run for president. It is a nonstop 24/7 job and I don't want to do that job, but I can't imagine having to be on all of the time. It is undoubtedly the case that there will be slips and so we're gonna catch more of them. So I think it's an unfair characterization.

- Can I jump in on that?

- I wanna let Jackie have a chance first please.

- I think it's disrespectful. We should all live so long to be healthy at 81, be able to do a job like that. What a gift he is with wisdom and experience, making connections. I remember years ago when I was in Bosnia, he sent an entire team from his office. He knows what he's doing and he knows the players. And in other parts of the world being older, you garner so much respect from everyone. Last night the president was on Seth Myers. I saw some of the clips this morning. He asked the same question, Eric, "Well so what's this age thing, President?" And the president came up with the jokes and the first joke he said was, "It's classified." So he's coming about this with humor, which I think he has to do because there's no such thing as respect of persons anymore in our country. So it's gonna continue, but I think his team is going to get better on how to respond. We all honor our grandparents. We are all thankful when they are able to talk to our children to give them that wisdom, to give them that hug. And that's what Joe is doing. Thank you

- Eric?

- I'm sorry, I just have to disagree. I don't have any judgment about, you know, whether Joe Biden is up to the job now or up to the job four years from now. But I can report on things that have been clear to anyone who, you know, just has any observation of the president. And that is that he moves with a stiffened gait. He speaks with some hesitancy. He's not the vigorous candidate he was four years ago. I mean, when you, you know, people put the tapes, you know, next to one another, it's just, it's clear. Now, I don't know that that, you know, what that means or what that entails and when one has become, you know, incapable of doing the job that's for voters to decide. I don't think that it's something that voters or rather the voters have to be protected from seeing and knowing. They see it when they see it on themselves. It's really a matter of, you know, judgment that anyone would have to have their own judgment on, but not judgment that ignores the, you know, obvious changes.

- I wanna go back to Donald Trump as the, I think probably the last thing before we go to the audience questions. Trump is set to go on trial on serious criminal charges in four weeks and perhaps again to go on trial over other serious criminal charges over the summer. What are each of your thoughts briefly on how the press should be covering these trials?

- I mean, I don't wanna monopolize things, but I'll jump in if there's a gap here, which is, I think the reporters should be covering what happens. What are the arguments that are made in court from both sides, both lawyers? I mean the court context is one that should be informative of journalists, which is there's a standard where you hear from both sides and both sides make their best case, you know, since many of these courtrooms, you know, don't allow cameras in the courthouse, it's up to journalists to then recount what happens in the courtroom to a public that's interested in hearing what happens. And I think the primary thing is that journalists bring back the information and that that's more important than making judgements about, you know, what that is going to entail.

- Sabra? Jackie?

- I'll just say I hope it will be transparent coverage and that we are able to understand, as Eric said, all aspects of the trials and in a fair and balanced manner. That is what I hope.

- Jackie?

- I was listening to the news today and I think it was the district attorney out of New York. He has asked like the other judges that there would be a gag order and part of that is for the safety of our judges. We've also the case a few weeks ago where the defendant didn't like what the judge said, jumped over and he had to be restrained, he was going to attack the judge. To me things are a little bit outta control as far as the protocol and respect for the court system itself. And I think that's what's a little awry. The press, they have to get, they have to do their job. But I think there's a way of recording a story where all people can stay safe, especially families. And we know about the judge, I think it was in New Jersey or Pennsylvania where her son and husband, the son was killed, he was shot. A number of them have been threatened. So I think this is a very serious manner what the press decides to put out into the public arena, thank you.

- Okay, do we have Karen or somebody, a question from the audience we can take? If not, I've got more, so. Okay, Chris Reichert.

- Hi. Good to see you, Sabra, nice to see you.

- [Sabra] You too, Chris.

- Chris, Eric, I look forward to getting your book on the best drink out there after this research. I have a question about the role, the strengths and weaknesses in the election system that's distributed to states. In other words, the strength being that it's hard to hack 50 elections or even more if you go down to the local level. But the strengths that we saw in January, which was the pressure that was put on local neighbors, friends, you know, people to sway the election, push it in a different direction. How do we see that playing out in 2024? Thank you. I'll take it offline.

- I'll take that one. Thank you Chris. As I emphasized at the beginning of this session, when we as federal agencies were supporting the state and local election officials in protecting their election infrastructure, we had a very finite understanding of what that infrastructure was, right? The IT systems within each state and locality, what the voting machines were, the actual votes themselves, what those tallies look like, wherever those were stored was that paper, was that electronic, et cetera. And so we had a very fixed understanding. We knew what that supply chain was like, we knew how it worked, but I think there's an incredibly new level of attention to all the different ways that we can shape public opinion and how might we do so. There was a piece in the New York Times on Sunday that talked about the importance of the actual, within each state, the political parties and the structures of the political parties and the importance of having those structures be fixed and unchanging and immutable. And so there are so many different ways to really play with this system in ways that I don't think we really anticipated. There are a lot of different ways that you can find weaknesses in every single aspect from someone becoming a candidate to when the vote is actually cast and what happens to it. So many places for things to take a turn for the worst.

- Jackie, Eric, either of you wanna jump in before we move to the next audience question?

- Yeah, first of all, I've been at the polling stations for many, many years to see how it works. This year our state got updated voting machines, but we still have a paper trail. A number of states are going just like you said, Sabra, to paper, but we've always had paper and the day of an election you can have observers there, they just have to check in. They can actually stay and see the vote count. There's no television there, so you're saying, "Oh, such and such a candidate, were they slipping something to that candidate?" No, you can be right there in person. We actually have international observers that come to our polling stations. NDI is very good at this of making sure all across the country we have internationals observing our elections. And I think the last thing I wanted to say, the election workers are trained, they don't make a lot of money, but they are trained and we make sure they represent each party. And I love our system because to be able to cast your vote is such a wonderful sacrosanct. And I will say it again as a woman of color to be able to pronounce your citizenship through the ballot, it's an awesome feeling and that's why people love America. Thank you.

- Eric?

- Yeah, just real quick, something that is worth looking at it, that is a function of the sort of razor thin margins in American politics that have been going on for the last 20 years. Back to Bush v Gore when, you know, a few hanging Chads in Florida were the difference of who won the presidency. What those swing states are have kind of moved around, but we've stayed sort of a even Stephen electoral calculation that can lead to a lot of antagonism because of how close things are. They're down the street from the Kennedy School at MIT, they have a thing called the election lab where they do a lot of very serious work on elections and they've identified what they call the big blue shift. And it's a reason that they are able to explain in innocent terms why again and again the Republican candidate for one or another office will look like they're ahead when it's time to go to bed and you wake up in the morning and extra votes have come in that are for the Democratic candidate. This leads to Republicans thinking that the election has been rigged. But in truth, it's a function of, you know, sort of how ballots are collected and when they arrive and when they're counted. That is actually, you know, sort of a systemic thing that is just about the process. And once you understand that, I think the argument for improving our election and trust in the elections is to try to figure out ways to not only have safe and solid elections, but elections that appear to be solid and safe and fair.

- Alright, thank you. Our next question is from Saul Kilstein, I think. Saul, you're up.

- [Saul] Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. I've been in the policy and government affairs arena for, well since the mid seventies when policy and Washington was a different creature. Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan used to meet over beers. Daniel Pat Moynihan used to say, "You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts." And we now have a, what I'd call a bifurcated media where you have people who listen to certain online and print and televised media where the facts aren't equally distributed.

- Saul, I'm just gonna interrupt you to ask if you've got a question.

- [Saul] Yeah, my question is, how do you reach audiences that hear and form their opinions that are simply presented as alternative facts?

- Okay, who would like to take a crack at that?

- I heard two questions in there. I'll take that, I heard the how do you reach audiences and then alternative facts. And I would say, you know, I think we have to look to our journalists to uphold standards of integrity and to, you know, look up the society of professional journalists, right? The premier organization for the profession, which emphasizes four principles, seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, be accountable and transparent. If we could have that from all of the folks who are reporting these days, I think we'd be in a much different place than we are right now. I think journalists have to understand the important role that they play and feel the responsibility ensuring that they are holding to those standards. Just as we as citizens have to do our part to really understand what is truth in what we're reading and how we have an adequate understanding of sources and are able to discern in this world of emerging artificial intelligence, which is helping us manipulate images and videos and audios at just astronomical speeds in ways we would never have imagined, shaping what it is that we think that we are seeing. I will say simply, I am so skeptical now of everything that I see online because we need to be. So there's obligations and responsibilities both on the parts of journalists as well as us as purveyors of that information.

- I wanna get to the next question, but I'm happy to let Jackie or Eric chip in if they'd like.

- Yeah, I just wanna say one thing. What I hear people saying, I don't believe either side and I'm not gonna vote. Secondly, that's the whole intention. They don't want people to vote. Thank you

- Eric, all right, if I move along?

- [Eric] Yeah, please do.

- Next question is from Gordon Robison. Gordon, you're up.

- Hi everyone. Good evening from Doha, Qatar. I am a 2008 mid-career and I'm also the executive producer at Al Jazeera English who is in charge of all 2024 election coverage. So, because following up what Sabra said, I do take our role very seriously. What would people on the panel recommend that I and my colleagues keep in mind in covering this election for a global audience? And I will give you one, you know, we have a lot of smart people in our newsroom, we have a lot of smart viewers, but before I left work a couple of hours ago, I was standing in the newsroom explaining to people that in the Michigan primary, Trump and Biden are not running against each other. Our system, I agree with Jackie, is wonderful, but it also, I think it's fair to say, confuses the hell out of the rest of the world. So what would you like me to keep in mind as I program for the rest of the world? Thank you much.

- Who'd like to take the first crack at that?

- Yeah, I'll just say, I read Al Jazeera online every day. I also read "The Guardian", to me, and that way you really need to have an international view. You need a world view. So I love the way Al Jazeera covers a number of stories in a little bit more death. And I know I'm gonna walk away from that, not saying I agree, but to say, oh, that's another way of looking at it. So I'm not looking for agreement when I look at the international press or the BBC, I'm looking out for more information. Thank you, sorry, .

- Sabra, Eric?

- Yeah, Gordon, such a honor to have you be part of this discussion and thank you for the question and thank you, most importantly, for the huge responsibility you shoulder in ensuring that truth is brought to light each and every day. It's interesting as I chat with friends around the globe, and certainly as we get closer to the election, questions come up and characterizations come up of the candidates, I think it's got to be a challenge for you to ensure that your reporters are staying away from those broad stereotypes. I think we, the United States in so many ways can just appear as caricatures rather than actual real individuals. So please continue to emphasize the nuances and the truth rather than the heat and drama of what it is that candidates are oftentimes trying to get across. So thank you for shouldering that responsibility.

- Eric?

- I think there's an opportunity that Gordon alluded to, which is given the large population of people from the Middle East, from families from the Middle East who are in Michigan and Michigan is likely to be a swing state and the votes of those immigrants to the US may make a difference in how Michigan goes. I think those are all opportunities to explain the political system, the voting system in the US and rather than being seen as a difficulty ought to be seen as an opportunity to, you know, explain how that process works so that when election night comes along, they'll understand, you know, what has happened.

- Yeah, I'm gonna take the moderator's prerogative, Gordon, and take a shot at this one myself. And having spent a considerable amount of time earlier in my career in international news, I think one of the most important things that you can say to your audience is to explain to them how unusual America is in international relations in the sense that I think it is a safe statement, that it is the most insular country in the world because it can be for some of the reasons that Jackie was saying much earlier in the conversation. America has had the luxury, sometimes at its cost, sometimes not, of knowing and Americans of knowing relatively a great deal, less about the rest of the world than people in most countries know about foreign countries. And I think this is something that people internationally often don't understand. That they assume that because they think a great deal about international relations that Americans must as well. And that the dialogue going on in this country is one that is informed. And that, you know, last night, for instance on Seth Meyers, which is a show viewed by, you know, I don't know, 10 or 20 million people, the President used the phrase two-state solution. I would wager that a relatively small proportion of Seth Meyer's audience knows what the two-state solution is or could differentiate it from alternative views of the future of the Middle East. So I just think that as people from outside this country watch this campaign, one of the things you can help them with is explaining what the baseline of sheer knowledge and interest is and what it is not. Anybody else wanna last word before we let folks go? All right.

- I just wanna say, sorry.

- [Dick] Sorry, go ahead Jackie, please.

- I had Marvin Cal for press policy. I didn't know a lot of his issues, but he started the course with, "In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh." And using that biblical phrase, when the word comes flesh, it's our responsibility to think about what that is. And I am ever so grateful for that course and for my time at the Kennedy School as a mid-career. So I wanna thank you all for letting me be a part of this panel today.

- Thank you from all of us. Karen, do you wanna take us out from here?

- Sabra, did you have a final word?

- No, just glad to be part of this great discussion, thanks, everyone.

- Thank you, so thank you to the panelists for a dynamic discussion and for all the alumni who joined today. Excuse me, we hope you enjoyed it. Our next webinar is March 14th, featuring Professor Grant Friedland who will discuss thriving driving and evolving your career. For the most up-to-date school news and events, please visit the HKS alumni website. We look forward to keeping you engaged in the future months. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you all so much.