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China and Russia Condemn U.S. Strike on Iran—but Stay on the Sidelines

China and Russia Condemn U.S. Strike on Iran—but Stay on the Sidelines

Voter registration

With Ranked Choice Voting in NYC, Women Win

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News Ambassadors radio pieces begin to air across the country

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The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumApr 25, 2024
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Divisive partisanship continues to threaten democracy, especially in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

A new program, News Ambassadors — part of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund since 2022 — is working to lessen the divide through a collaborative journalism project to help American communities that hold different political views better understand each other, while giving student reporters a valuable learning experience in the creation of solutions reporting.

The program is directed by Shia Levitt, a longtime public radio journalist who has reported for NPR, Marketplace and other outlets. Levitt has also taught radio reporting and audio storytelling at Brooklyn College in New York and at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., as well as for WNYC’s Radio Rookies program and other organizations.

The project links journalism students to counterparts in politically or demographically dissimilar areas to collaborate on stories exploring solutions to contentious issues. News Ambassadors also fosters collaborations between journalism schools and public radio stations across the country to help fill gaps in local news coverage. The project trains journalism students on strategies to report stories that uplift solutions and common ground, and then students report stories informed by these new tools. The strongest stories are shared with local radio station partners for possible broadcast.

This spring, News Ambassadors has introduced students to solutions journalism and complicating the narratives, a conflict mediation- informed framework designed to help journalists improve their reporting on polarizing issues. This collaborative project helps young reporters better understand the perspectives of people outside the bubbles where they live, and helps American communities that hold different political views better understand each other.

News Ambassadors’ first stories are starting to wrap up from the 2023-24 project cohort.

Today’s audio story

Latinx people have lower voter turnout than the general population of Athens, Ga. Reporter Izzy Wagner visited a local nonprofit, Ulead, that’s working to boost civic engagement to help immigrant students succeed.

Wagner recorded this audio report.

This is the first of what will be many News Ambassadors pieces by radio station partners. For this piece, WUGA has been working in tandem with the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Solutions Journalism Hub of the South to foster new radio voices as a part of its News Ambassadors program. Izzy Wagner is a senior and a News Ambassador.

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Entertainment Can Improve How Democrats and Republicans See Each Other

Since the development of American mass media culture in the mid-20th century, numerous examples of entertainment media have tried to improve attitudes towards those who have traditionally held little power.

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Entertainment Can Improve How Democrats and Republicans See Each Other

Entertainment has been used for decades to improve attitudes toward other groups, both in the U.S. and abroad. One can think of movies like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, helping change attitudes toward Black Americans, or TV shows like Rosanne, helping humanize the White working class. Efforts internationally show that media can sometimes improve attitudes toward two groups concurrently.

Substantial research shows that Americans now hold overly negative views of those across the political spectrum. Let's now learn from decades of experience using entertainment to improve attitudes of those in other groups—but also from counter-examples that have reinforced stereotypes and whose techniques should generally be avoided—in order to improve attitudes toward fellow Americans across politics. This entertainment can allow Americans across the political spectrum to have more accurate views of each other while realizing that successful cross-ideological friendships and collaborations are possible.

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Congress Must Not Undermine State Efforts To Regulate AI Harms to Children
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A cornerstone of conservative philosophy is that policy decisions should generally be left to the states. Apparently, this does not apply when the topic is artificial intelligence (AI).

In the name of promoting innovation, and at the urging of the tech industry, Congress quietly included in a 1,000-page bill a single sentence that has the power to undermine efforts to protect against the dangers of unfettered AI development. The sentence imposes a ten-year ban on state regulation of AI, including prohibiting the enforcement of laws already on the books. This brazen approach crossed the line even for conservative U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who remarked, “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years, and giving it free rein and tying states' hands is potentially dangerous.” She’s right. And it is especially dangerous for children.

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Many people inside and outside of the podcasting world are working to use the medium as a way to promote democracy and civic engagement.

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After the 2024 election was deemed the “podcast election,” many people inside and outside of the podcasting world were left wondering how to capitalize on the medium as a way to promote democracy and civic engagement to audiences who are either burned out by or distrustful of traditional or mainstream news sources.

The Democracy Group podcast network has been working through this question since its founding in 2020—long before presidential candidates appeared on some of the most popular podcasts to appeal to specific demographics. Our members recently met in Washington, D.C., for our first convening to learn from each other and from high-profile podcasters like Jessica Tarlov, host of Raging Moderates, and Ben Rhodes, host of Pod Save the World.

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True Confessions of an AI Flip Flopper
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True Confessions of an AI Flip Flopper

A few years ago, I would have agreed with the argument that the most important AI regulatory issue is mitigating the low probability of catastrophic risks. Today, I’d think nearly the opposite. My primary concern is that we will fail to realize the already feasible and significant benefits of AI. What changed and why do I think my own evolution matters?

Discussion of my personal path from a more “safety” oriented perspective to one that some would label as an “accelerationist” view isn’t important because I, Kevin Frazier, have altered my views. The point of walking through my pivot is instead valuable because it may help those unsure of how to think about these critical issues navigate a complex and, increasingly, heated debate. By sharing my own change in thought, I hope others will feel welcomed to do two things: first, reject unproductive, static labels that are misaligned with a dynamic technology; and, second, adjust their own views in light of the wide variety of shifting variables at play when it comes to AI regulation. More generally, I believe that calling myself out for a so-called “flip-flop” may give others more leeway to do so without feeling like they’ve committed some wrong.

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