Democracy & Elections

The Lawfare Podcast: Ben Smith on Gatekeepers in the Internet Age

Jen Patja, Evelyn Douek, Quinta Jurecic, Ben Smith
Thursday, February 11, 2021, 12:00 PM
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On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ben Smith, media columnist for the New York Times and former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. Ben spends a lot of time thinking and writing about the gatekeepers who hold the power to shape our public sphere. At BuzzFeed, he capitalized on the way the rise of the internet allowed upstarts to work around the Old Gatekeepers, the legacy media organizations; now, at the Times, he’s one of them. But there are also the other New Gatekeepers: the Platforms, flailing around as much as the rest of us in trying to make sense of the role they’ve found themselves in. So what does Ben think about the current state of the media ecosystem and where it's headed? And why, in his view, was February 26, 2015—almost exactly 6 years ago—the last good day on the internet?


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Jen Patja

Jen Patja

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Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Evelyn Douek

Evelyn Douek

@evelyndouek
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Evelyn Douek is an Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Senior Research Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. She holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School on the topic of private and public regulation of online speech. Prior to attending HLS, Evelyn was an Associate (clerk) to the Honourable Chief Justice Susan Kiefel of the High Court of Australia. She received her LL.B. from UNSW Sydney, where she was Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal.
Quinta Jurecic

Quinta Jurecic

@qjurecic
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Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Ben Smith

Ben Smith

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Ben Smith is a media columnist for the New York Times and the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.

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