A panel composed of members of the media, a European regulator and a Democratic congressman will convene to discuss “disinformation” Tuesday as part of the World Economic Forum’s weeklong meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
The panel will include Harvard’s Brian Stelter, president and CEO of Internews Jeanne Bourgault, chairman and publisher of The New York Times A.G. Sulzberger, vice-president for values and transparency Vera Jourová of the European Commission and Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, according to the WEF.
The panel will explore how “the public, regulators, and social media companies” can “better collaborate to tackle disinformation.”
Sulzberger took over as chairman at The New York Times from his father — Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. — at the end of 2020.
The Ochs Sulzberger family has owned The Times since 1896, and Sulzberger is the sixth consecutive family member to serve as the publisher, according to CNN.
'Please don't lose courage' – @idriselba tells #wef23 it takes stamina to stay the course, as he calls on business to continue to invest in mitigating against climate change. pic.twitter.com/6ygRSsZAxT
— World Economic Forum (@wef) January 16, 2023
Stelter previously anchored the show “Reliable Sources” on CNN — which was canceled in August 2022 soon after CNN President Chris Licht reportedly began pushing for the company’s reporting to be more bipartisan — and at one point compared the influence of conservative media on supporters of former President Donald Trump to ISIS-like “radicalization.”
He currently serves as the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, with the school announcing in September 2022 that he would lead “a series of discussions about threats to democracy.”
Internews describes its goal as training “journalists and digital rights activists,” combating “disinformation” and offering “business expertise” to promote the financial success of “independent media,” including local news outlets and “individual activists and reporters.”
The organization lists among its donors Open Society Foundations, a George Soros-backed philanthropic organization, as well as the Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, both backed by influential left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar.
Jourová, a Czech politician, publicly approved Twitter’s decision to apply a fact-checking label to some of then-President Trump’s tweets, according to Politico.
More recently, she praised the European Commission’s strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation — a self-regulatory regime intended to encourage companies to “fight disinformation” themselves — for providing more “robust tools” to monitor the implementation of these “anti-disinformation” measures, according to a European Commission media release.
Moulton, a veteran of the Iraq War who first assumed office in 2015, currently serves on the House Budget, Armed Services, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees.
He dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary in 2020 after failing to attract the attention of voters, according to NBC News.
The New York Times, Shorenstein Center, Jourová, Internews, and Moulton’s office did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.
