A View from the Field: Combating Disinformation

A View from the Field is a biweekly feature that highlights the efforts of Free Press’ team of organizers, advocates and leaders. Every other Friday, we’ll provide their updates from the field as they work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a more just and equitable media system.

• Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González delivered the keynote address at Medientage Munchen (Media Days Munich), “Europe’s biggest annual convention for the media and communications industry.” Jessica discussed the Stop Hate for Profit campaign’s Facebook advertising boycott along with our other work to hold big tech platforms accountable.
• Jessica sits on the Real Facebook Oversight Board (RFOB), which is composed of critics who call out the company’s failures to crack down on hate and disinformation. She participated in two recent RFOB livestreams in recent weeks. In one, she and other board members provided live commentary on a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in which the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter discussed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, one of the internet’s fundamental laws. In the second livestream, Jessica joined Nell Greenberg and Fadi Quram of Avaaz, Sasha Havlicek of the Institute for Strategic Dialog, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Rashad Robinson of Color Of Change and venture capitalist Roger McNamee in a discussion of election-related disinformation and changes social-media platforms must make for the sake of our democracy.
• Jessica spoke to a Georgetown Law seminar about Change the Terms, a campaign Free Press co-founded to push the platforms to fight hate and disinformation. 
• Organizing Manager Alicia Bell spoke on a panel for environmental-justice writers and journalists about building relationships with organizers and covering environmental injustice as an issue stemming from white supremacy. Alicia also spoke to two sections of a graduate class in mass communications at the University of Oregon about the connections between Free Press’ engaged-journalism and media-reparations work.
• Vice President of Cultural Strategy Collette Watson and Senior Director of Strategy and Engagement Joseph Torres spoke to a community group in Maryland about Media 2070, the visionary project Free Press launched in October. The centerpiece of the project, a 100-page essay, documents the long history of media harms against Black people and makes the case for reparations.