Late one evening in March, I was sat in the JFK Forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School, surrounded by dozens of journalists and academics. We were watching Nina Martin and Renee Montagne, from NPR and ProPublica, collect their Goldsmith investigative reporting award for “Lost Mothers,” a harrowing and important piece of work exploring the shocking number of American women who die in childbirth every year. As they were being given a standing ovation, I finally formulated the question I’ve been struggling with lately: With this kind of brilliant and high-quality journalism being pursued around the world every day, why is it that the news industry is steadily shrinking?
In Italy, the government control of speech under the guide of "fake news" deterrence is being done in the worst way possible. It's not being handed to a regulatory body with instructions to sort of keep an eye on things. Instead, as Poynter reports, it's rolling out as a heckler's veto backed by armed officers.