Thanos Dimadis in a discussion with Microsoft's President Brad Smith
Thanos Dimadis in an interview with Microsoft’s President, Brad Smith at the Roosevelt House in New York
During the latter half of the Foreign Press Awards ceremony, AFPC-USA’s Executive Director Thanos Dimadis interviewed Brad Smith, Microsoft’s Vice Chairman and President, who attended the event at the Roosevelt House in New York in person. Smith has played a key role in spearheading Microsoft’s work on critical issues involving the intersection of technology and society, and indeed, issues like cybersecurity, privacy, artificial intelligence, environmental sustainability, human rights, immigration, and philanthropy—topics that have a profound impact on the way journalists live and how they conduct their work.
When asked to define leadership, Smith—whose position as the longest-serving member of the tech company’s top leadership has led to him being considered "a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large”—said its essence amounts to being “called on, more than anything else, to try and adapt to a changing world.”
“It always starts by taking stock of how the world is changing,” he said, adding that “you then have to ask what it means for what you are trying to do, whether that’s as an individual or as the leader of a company… and then you have to formulate a vision, with other people, and then you have to actually [do it].” Keeping with the evening’s theme, Smith tied his own experiences with leadership back to journalism, saying that the two are inextricably linked by “curiosity.” Journalism, he said, trains people to be curious, o ask questions, find information, especially from other people, and to write well all traits, he said, that are the “most important in the history of humanity, no matter what you do.”
Attacks on press freedom are always a major topic of conversation during journalistic events, and the awards ceremony was no exception. When Dimadis asked Smith to share his thoughts on threats to press freedom and journalists in the current age, Smith said the three biggest threats he sees facing the Fourth Estate are those that target “physical safety,” “personal liberty,” and “economic well-being.” On that last point, there is no question that journalism at large faces a precarious financial future. Revenue for newsrooms in the United States has fallen year by year since 2000, for instance, resulting in widespread job insecurity for local journalists as well as reductions in the frequency and amount of news available for smaller publications.
“It’s actually starker than just peaking and falling,” noted Smith. “In 2020, that $60 billion [from advertiser revenue] had become $20 billion… but frankly—and this is why it’s somewhat embarrassing to accept an award from a press association—the [advertising] revenue that was going to newspapers is now going to tech companies instead.” He added that the “fundamental problem impacting the American press is, of course, what you do when you cut costs… it has forced newspapers to cut the money [that was going to journalists].”
Indeed, the fact U.S. newsroom employment has fallen by 28 percent since 2008, that wages continue to fall and jobs have become more scarce, and that a once vibrant local news ecosystem has been largely gutted—with nearly 200 counties across the country lacking access to news of any kind—weighed on Smith, who observed that all of these problems begin and end, and are even compounded, by dwindling revenue.
“I think we need to find a way to tap into better and new sources of revenue [over the next decade],” said Smith, who suggested tapping into “public sources of revenue” and finding “more ways to distribute content and bring our [work] to more people” is paramount to journalism’s survival. He said the Netflix streaming model could offer some inspiration for the future of journalism, noting that there has been a resurgence in “streaming [and] new forms of distribution,” ushering in “almost another golden age” that could very well alter the way journalists and news organizations produce content.
The conversation then turned to the role technology has played in allowing misinformation and disinformation to spread, largely unchecked, online. Smith acknowledged this as one of the greater challenges of our time, pointing to the Russian government’s propaganda machine, which with ruthless efficiency, has flooded the airwaves with misinformation and disinformation, much of it designed to obfuscate and falsify the Russian military’s actions during the ongoing war in Ukraine. For instance, one particular disinformation campaign concerned the Pentagon, which Russia falsely accused of funding biowarfare in Ukraine. On that note, Smith said Russia is adept at targeting the United States and Latin America with its disinformation and propaganda. “So how do we address this? You all need to address this,” he said to the room.
When asked by Dimadis what he would propose to ensure the safety of journalists around the world, Smith said the answer “comes down to protecting the liberty of journalists, as well as protection from other [safety or character attacks].” He said he is “a huge supporter and fan” of the attorney Amal Clooney, the wife of actor George Clooney, who specializes in public international law, international criminal law, and human rights and and won the 2020 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists. “It can shine a light in individual cases and put pressure on a judge, or a prosecutor, or a government to know that the world is watching,” Smith said.“The other thing that it can do… as one can do this with more cases and in more countries, you start to develop the ability to monitor and really measure on an international basis on whether or not journalists [worldwide] actually receive press freedom.”
Near the end of the interview, Dimadis asked Smith what he’d like to say to the up-and-coming journalists in the room about how he’d evaluate excellence in journalism as a citizen. Smith said that as a public figure who has been the subject of news coverage, it is not uncommon to live in a state of perpetual frustration. That said, he affirmed his support for the quality of news coverage as well as the efforts that people make to be fair.
“I appreciate the tight deadlines people work under, and quite frankly I appreciate it when you come to a place like this, because there’s a lot of jobs you can do from your house…but if you really want to get people to talk to you, you have to go and build some relationships,” he added. “So what you do on an individual and collective basis is just so valuable. At the end of the day, especially for democracies of the world, you really are the Fourth Estate.”
Smith pointed out that a healthy journalism environment affects democracy, noting that a healthy democracy cannot exist without healthy journalists. “Without the public’s ability to know, to take stock and debate what's true and what’s not… without the kind of reporting you all offer, the future’s lost, in my opinion,” he said, adding that the work journalists do for their respective media outlets is “indispensable to democracy, to the state of humanity around world, and it’s something that should be applauded every day.”
Finally, Dimadis raised the question of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will affect the journalism landscape going forward. Smith acknowledged that advancements in AI have moved at a brisk pace and will develop quicker than initially expected. As for journalists, Smith said that AI could find and summarize information extremely quickly and even edit pieces for journalists, but that ultimately it could never replace actual journalists. “AI does an amazing job at analyzing the world’s information, but it never has an original thought,” Smith said, noting that a journalist’s talent is in their own unique perspective and original ideas on information, which AI could never replicate.