I said two words — vagina and sex,” says Anshita Koul, “and everybody in my home town, including my family, was shocked.”

Koul was talking about her participation in Queens of Comedy, an India-based reality show for female comedians. “At least I have an equation with my family,” she adds. “There is always dialogue, even when it gets really awkward.”

On social media, though, it was made clear to her that she had crossed an invisible line by joking about her sexual frustrations in a long-distance relationship. Her largely Kashmiri audience on Instagram and YouTube was surprised and shocked to see her speak about her private life.

“There is no sex education in school,” she explains. “So talking about it is a big deal.”

Especially when women are doing the talking.

Female comedians being underrepresented and heavily content-policed is, of course, hardly limited to India. But there are some distinct circumstances in the country, including a censorship board that often influences what women can do onscreen–and who can make the jokes.

Movies in India need to be certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which contributes to reduced female representation, particularly when a woman’s sexuality is not created for the male gaze. Most recently, we saw this with the banning of Lipstick Under My Burkha, a black comedy on sexuality and oppression, which was released to worldwide acclaim but was heavily delayed and censored in the country in which it was made.

In light of these regulations, the internet has become an important vehicle for female comedians to be heard, even when their humor falls outside the bounds of conventional acceptability. Because there are no official censorship guidelines for video-streaming websites, online platforms are finally bringing about a way to tell women’s stories that are not conceptualized and approved by men.

This lack of censorship is happening at a time when more people are accessing online video content than ever before. In the past two years, high-speed internet connections on smartphones have become affordable for a large section of the Indian population. In 2017, India had more than 300 millionsmartphone connections and over 80 million users for video-streaming applications. The market was valued at $280 million in December 2017.

This proliferation of smartphone usage has been a boon to women in particular, providing them the autonomy and privacy they often need to access boundary-pushing comedy online. And that comedy, in turn, is expanding at an exhilarating rate.

In December 2016, Amazon launched Prime Video in India and signed up 14 stand-up comedians to create original content for their platform. When a talk show host asked a panel of comedians about the complete absence of women in the line-up, the men suggested that it was simply a result of women not having one hour of content.

It was a while before the lone woman on the panel, Aditi Mittal, got an opportunity to speak. Mittal was later offered a stand-up special by Netflix, which she titled The Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say. Her routine included sets on buying bras, street harassment, and breast cancer awareness.

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Mittal is among a growing cohort of Indian women connecting to an increasingly-online savvy audience. For her part, Queens of Comedy’s Koul has focused on changing the narrative of her hometown of Kashmir, which is largely only in the news as a contentious flash point between two nuclear neighbors — India and Pakistan. In her comedy, Koul talks about the region’s street food, Kashmiri slang, and most parents’ deep desire to turn their children into engineers. One of her more popular videos is a satire on the excessive attention given to a son-in-law when he visits his wife’s home.

Another groundbreaking comedian is Prajakta Koli, who runs a successful YouTube channel called “Mostlysane” with over 1.3 million subscribers. Koli creates content about dating, grooming, drinking, and college examinations.

Most of the material is simply a funny view of everyday life, but Koli comes out strongly in support of some causes. Last year, in June, she released a music video called “Shameless” that begins with the protagonist in the prison of body shaming. The song has been viewed over 3.5 million times.

A popular video by “Girlyapa,” meanwhile, offers a lighthearted take on periods in a country where menstruation is associated with a number of taboos. Conversations about periods are almost non-existent in most homes, and women are expected to hide their “condition” from the men in the family.

On International Women’s Day last year, Girlyapa also released a video about a girl telling her conservative mother that she isn’t a virgin. In the past year it has been viewed over 6 million times. Girlyapa’s video would have been deeply contentious if it had aired on television, or if the conversation had appeared as part of a mainstream movie.

Tellingly, major production houses are now starting to cash in on the action, too. The Y-films subsidiary of Yash Raj Films — one of the largest and most profitable Bollywood movie companies in India, which has made immensely popular movies propelled by female propriety and “family values” — recently released a comedy called “Ladies Room” online. The video features two female protagonists battling plumbing, pregnancy, policemen, landladies, bosses, and career changes in a series of six restrooms.

How Badass Women Are Reinventing Comedy For The Digital Age
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And it’s not just unknown performers who are changing women’s comedy: Well-known celebrities are finally getting involved as well.

In July 2017, a short film written by Radhika Anand and Akanksha Seda and uploaded on YouTube featured three women who regularly appear in Bollywood movies. Titled Khaaney Mein Kya Hai (What’s for lunch?), the video uses the allegory of cooking to describe sex and desires. It has been viewed more than 6.7 million times in the past year.

Most significantly of all, this openness online has seemingly inspired more provocative content in mainstream Bollywood. In February of this year, Pad Man, inspired by a social activist who introduced low-cost sanitary pads to his Indian village, was released theatrically on Valentine’s Day, starring Bollywood A-lister Akshay Kumar. One of the promotional events was a campaign on social media where celebrities posed with a pad — an attempt to help people shed their awkwardness about menstruation.

These are all important steps forward, though as Koul is careful to point out, “Our conditioning is so deeply ingrained. It is not going to change overnight. But talking about it and being open to change are good beginnings.”

Meanwhile, female comedians push on. On Queens of Comedy, Koul and her fellow performers joke about about body hair, creepy attention on the street, religious stereotypes, unfair laws, body envy, sex-ed for suicide bombers, and more. Many of the episodes have quickly racked up half a million views on YouTube, including those with dark and controversial content.

Producers, Koul says, have informed her that the program may be censored on TV. But that won’t stop it from reaching a wider audience, for one simple reason: Online, the content will appear entirely unedited.

Around the world, it’s been alarming and frightening to read about the rise in hate crimes and the boost that Donald Trump’s presidential victory has given to white nationalists. Unfortunately, some aspects of Trump’s impending presidency have also triggered a sense of déjà vu.

As a journalist in Singapore, America’s skew toward authoritarianism, particularly Trump’s dismissal of and threat toward press freedom, is starting to hit close to home.

Singapore is often portrayed as a global success story. It’s known as an expat safe haven with a high GDP where the streets are safe, things are efficient, and it’s easy to do business. These outward signs of development and modernity often lead to the impression of a well-functioning, democratic state, but the reality is somewhat different: Under the impressive sheen of the city-state’s achievements, Singapore’s social and political sphere continues to be run with a patriarchal authoritarian streak under the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) — a party that has held on to power for over five decades.

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Under the sheen of achievements, Singapore continues to be run with an authoritarian streak.
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Authoritarianism often conjures up images of societies where people live like automatons within a police state, accompanied by the overt brainwashing and top-down dominion displayed in George Orwell’s 1984. This mental picture makes claims of Trump turning the U.S. into an authoritarian state seem melodramatic and over-exaggerated.

But authoritarianism isn’t just about show trials or disappearing dissidents. It’s about the gradual consolidation of power through the erosion of democratic institutions and processes, the reduction of transparency, and the increase of conflicts of interest. In Singapore, a long list of offenses, including non-violent ones, are deemed “arrestable.” This means that the police can search your home and seize your property without a warrant. You are only required to have access to legal counsel within a “reasonable” time, which means that people, even 15-year-old teenagers, are questioned by the police without being able to have their lawyers with them. With a single party dominating Parliament, bills are passed at a stunning pace, leaving little opportunity and space for contestation.

These cutbacks often don’t have an immediate day-to-day impact on people’s lives, which means that most people don’t see it as a big deal or an urgent problem, but the effects are more insidious than you might think. As power gets more centralized and checks and balances recede, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.

“What can you do? It’s just like this,” is something you hear a lot from Singaporeans. Your country feels less and less like it belongs to you, and more like a place in which you are allowed to live only as long as you play nice and stay obedient. It’s disempowering, discouraging people from taking action and perpetuating the vicious cycle.

The loss of control creeps up on you on many fronts. One of the most profound and irreversible ways is through assaults, subtle or overt, on press freedom. For all its faults — and journalists will be the first to tell you that there are many — a free press is crucial to a functioning democracy, because it’s how citizens and voters get informed, and how the powerful are scrutinized and held to account.

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As power gets more centralized, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.
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But that’s not the way Trump sees it. After the off-the-record roasting TV networks received, one source observed to The New Yorker that Trump “truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment . . . He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”

This is how Singapore’s PAP government sees it too. The idea of the press as the Fourth Estate holds little sway here. Instead, the media is seen as part of the country’s “nation-building” exercise, and expected to perform an “educational role” to help Singaporeans understand the government’s policies. This means that principles like freedom of the press and freedom of information have been made subordinate to the interests of the state, as demonstrated by the country’s consistently dismal press freedom rankings.

The environment that Trump and his supporters have threatened to create for the press? We’re living it in Singapore.

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

When Trump declared that he would “open up” U.S. libel laws (a position that he may have reversed, because he doesn’t want to risk being sued himself), Singapore was already way ahead of him. PAP politicians have a long history of favoring defamation suits when countering both political opponents and media outlets: Local opposition politicians J.B. Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan, as well as international news publications the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review, have all been on the receiving end of the PAP leadership’s litigious bent. Most recently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took out a civil defamation suit against local Singaporean blogger Roy Ngerng, winning S$150,000 in aggravated damages that Ngerng will only finish paying off in 2033.

In a further assault on press freedom, prominent Trump supporters like Sean Hannity have suggested that press outlets that have been critical should be denied access to the Trump administration, something Trump has enforced before and after the presidential campaign. This, too, is common in Singapore and other authoritarian states, where the powerful seize the prerogative to offer information only to those who might be easier to control. They are able to restrict access to particular events like press conferences — even to those who have media accreditation — and foreign journalists have reported being denied visas to work in the country.

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When Trump declared that he would ‘open up’ U.S. libel laws, Singapore was way ahead of him.
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Off-the-record meetings also appear in the Singapore government’s playbook; confidential meetings with select groups, organizations, and individuals — from civil society, business, academia, and the press — are par for the course, resulting in the government’s ability to claim “public consultation” without having to actually be accountable or public about what the consultation entailed. As Margaret Sullivan observed in The Washington Post, such meetings result in skewed power dynamics where one side is able to control the narrative while the other is bound to silence.

Since November 8, the U.S. has been caught in a messy, confusing transition. Every day that the president-elect makes any move (including a tweet), it comes off as one step forward and two steps back; what will, or won’t, he do after his inauguration? How is he denouncing white supremacists and installing them in his team at the same time? Is he going to expand libel laws or not? What is his position on the “One China” policy? Does he or does he not intend to deport immigrants and implement a registry for Muslims?

With FREE SPEECH Act, Trump Fights Hostile Press, Makes America Great!

There is an argument among journalists to “wait and see,” to report on Trump like they would anything else. Michael Wolff recently argued that the press shouldn’t see Trump as a threat, but as “a story that needs to be told in rather conventional ways.”

“Yes, you do want to be stenographers,” he said. “You’re there to literally convey what someone in power says, and you bring it to people who want to know.”

That’s basically what the Singaporean mainstream media has been doing for years. And we are not better off for it. Instead, what we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance, not just in the political sphere, but in controlling the narratives and frames that we use to understand the society we live in.

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What we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance.
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For example, when migrant bus drivers from China staged a strike in 2012, the mainstream media was reluctant to use the word “strike” in their coverage, until the Minister for Manpower denounced the collective action as an “illegal strike,” thus delegitimizing the workers’ action and setting the frame for all subsequent discussion of the issue. The question of whether outlawing strikes is a breach of freedom of assembly and labor rights fell by the wayside — an opportunity to have an honest conversation in the media woefully turned into a series of pronouncements directly from government sources.

Without the media’s necessary role as watchdog, we’ve seen sustained normalization and justification of policies that further erode fundamental rights and freedoms. Earlier this year the Singapore government introduced, and eventually passed, a bill on contempt of court, criminalizing comments about ongoing court cases that might “prejudge” proceedings. The mainstream media, faithfully conveying the information dished out by the law minister, reported it as a good thing for Singapore, a simple consolidation of points of law. It wasn’t until later that civil society groups and actors — myself included — pointed out the implications on free speech and media freedom, but by then it was too late and the bill was passed a mere month after its introduction.

Fair, balanced reporting is important. But that has nothing to do with journalists becoming stenographers, or treating Trump like any other story. We’ve already seen how this strategy has led to the normalization and mainstreaming of extremist, racist rhetoric; just look at the absurdity of CNN hosting a debate on whether Trump should denounce supporters who question whether Jews are people.

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If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal.
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This is how it begins. If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal, in which the erosion of democratic freedoms are obscured.

It’s fair to see Trump as a threat, because he is. He is not a “conventional” president-elect; he is a man who has indicated a fundamental disregard for the First Amendment, for transparency and accountability, and many other democratic values that the rest of the world has long seen America as the embodiment of. This is not a time for stenography; it is a time for scrutiny and tough questions. Journalists — and everyone who cares about democracy — must keep an eye on the processes and institutions on which a democratic society is built.

Take it from someone who operates in an environment where the First Amendment is a faraway aspiration. It’s really going to hurt when it’s gone, and everyone loses.

In a matter of weeks, the most unprepared and openly bigoted president in modern U.S. history will take office. And with so many important rights at risk under Donald Trump (abortion, access to health care, and civil rights, to name only a few), now, perhaps more than ever, we need a Fourth Estate with a spine of steel that is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect the interests of the American people and those abroad who are impacted by U.S. policies. After all, the public interest is supposed to be at the very heart of the media’s mission.

And yet, chillingly, at this time when we need the media most — the media is most at risk.

Trump has bashed the press and repeatedly told his followers that the media is a dishonest bunch of liars whenever they do their job by reporting on his past, his policy plans, or his rhetoric. Trump is in fact the liar, but he has sold his millions of followers on the idea that they can’t believe trustworthy news sources; they can only trust him.

Trump’s anti-media views — which, frighteningly, echo those of his buddy and abetter Vladimir Putin — have manifested as a multi-thronged approach to undermining the press and dismantling its crucial influence.

He has attacked individual reporters — from Jorge Ramos with Univision, who Trump had kicked out of a campaign rally in August of 2015; to the New York Times’ Serge Kovaleski, whose disability Trump cruelly mocked at another rally in November; to Fox host Megyn Kelly, the target of his infamous “bimbo” and “blood coming out of her wherever” barbs.

More broadly, the president-elect has gone after virtually every major news source that doesn’t generate revenue solely by kissing his ass. He has nicknamed the New York Times the “failing” New York Times, and canceled a meeting with the publication in November before changing his mind and sitting down with key staff. He further called CNN the “Clinton network,” suggesting that any unfavorable coverage of him by the network was simply a bias for his Democratic opponent.

Beyond the reporters listed above and CNN and the New York Times, Trump has made a sport of maligning virtually every popular news source based in the U.S. He’s ripped apart Meet the Press, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair, among others, and blacklisted several outlets from covering his campaign events in person. Univision, Buzzfeed, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, and the Des Moines Register were all banned by the middle of June this year.

As if all of this weren’t enough cause for concern, the president-elect and his transition team still haven’t formally established a protective “press pool,” a rotating group of reporters that travels with the president and is kept apprised of his schedule, allowing the public relatively wide access to the president via the press. When a press pool has been allowed to travel with Trump, he’s been known to ditch them. This is an alarming breach of protocol, as it cuts the world off from what he’s up to.

And this is to say nothing of Trump’s vows to “open up” libel laws in an effort to legally challenge media outlets that deign to criticize his policies.

This behavior is unlike anything we’ve ever seen from a U.S. president in modern memory, and should scare anyone who has something to lose if a free press and free speech are compromised (note: We should all be uncomfortable with this).

So what now? As a businessman with no experience on any level of government or in the military, Trump is about as prepared for the responsibilities of the Oval Office as a parakeet who has Twitter, which means it’s of the utmost importance that members of the press thoroughly and boldly cover his presidency. But how is anyone supposed to accurately cover (much less investigate) someone who hates them and their profession, and resents and fears their ability to expose him?

If it all sounds hopeless, don’t worry, it’s not. The situation is serious, but it is possible to do good journalism under a president Trump; it’s just not going to be even a little bit easy.

Four experts on the media spoke to The Establishment about where we’ve been with Trump and what needs to be done going forward to protect the integrity of the industry and support the kind of journalists Trump doesn’t want: fearless ones.

Our illustrious panel includes:

Dr. Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack University, where she teaches radio production, feminist media studies, and new media and digital communication, among other topics. Her list of fake, misleading, and satirical news sources recently went viral.

Anita Kumar, a White House correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers.

Dr. Charlton McIlwain, a professor of Race, Media & Politics in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU Steinhardt, and the author of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns.

Jennifer Pozner, a media critic, public speaker, and founder and executive director of Women in Media and News. She is also the author of Reality Bites Back.

Trump was hostile toward the media from the outset of his campaign. In the last several weeks, we’ve seen reports of continued tough relations between the press and the president-elect. Should the media or the public be concerned about what kind of access to the president the media will have starting in 2017?

Melissa: The public, including those who work in media and news, should absolutely be concerned about what is happening. News organizations have long played an important watchdog role in terms of reporting on our government and public officials. If a president-elect or president limits access to certain media organizations, perhaps because one is being more critical of their actions, it could result in freedom of speech or freedom of the press being stifled. I worry an editor might think twice about publishing something if it means they will no longer have access to one of the most powerful people in the world.

Anita: Yes, I think the media — and more importantly the public — should be concerned. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump limited media access during the campaign, compared to previous nominees, and I think no matter who won we were going to be worried. For example, neither nominee allowed us to form a protective pool, a break from previous nominees in modern history. The president-elect still has not allowed reporters to travel with him and a couple weeks ago slipped out for dinner after telling us he was in for the night.

Charlton: Yes. The media and the public should both be concerned. The media, particularly journalists covering the White House and the president, serve a vital purpose of reporting, interpreting, verifying, and providing context for presidential and administration communications. They mediate public knowledge about politics and public policy. We should be worried about Trump’s penchant to bypass the press because in doing so he also bypasses this critical apparatus that provides, more or less, a sense of shared verifiable facts the public relies on for both information and political debate. Trump’s tendency and perhaps growing propensity to bypass the press by limiting access risks us all further being invited to constantly make political decisions in alternate realities that change from day to day and have no basis in truth, no matter how you define it.

Jennifer: It’s really important to talk about how to do accurate, impactful journalism when you have a person in power who is hostile to the very concept of a free press and who, not only that, is himself a master of manipulating false narratives, and spinning them in his favor. People in the press have been making snide remarks about the “reality TV president,” but people are not talking about what it means that we have a president who was in American living rooms every week for almost a decade, spinning a narrative about himself that presented somebody who has been multiply bankrupt and has stiffed contractors and is known for shoddy business deals as if he were the very model of wealth, success, and business acumen.

People think he’s stupid. He’s not stupid. He is incredibly savvy as a master manipulator of facts and narrative to get people to believe what he wants them to believe, and we can be damn sure he’s going to get people to believe what he wants them to believe about his administration.

It’s going to be extremely important for the media to resist normalizing Trump, a phenomenon that’s already fully in swing. What are the best ways journalists can refuse to normalize Trump in their work for the next four years?

Melissa: I think some of the normalizing we’ve seen is a coping mechanism or wishful thinking that his presidency won’t be as bad as people fear. I think we have to hope that’s the case, but we can’t act as if this is an ordinary situation. The main thing reporters and news organizations can do is continue to be vigilant in drawing distinctions between what he’s doing and who he’s appointing and what has been done in the past. That’s not to say we should look to the past with rose-colored glasses, but rather that we need to acknowledge that he is resisting traditional practices and setting questionable precedents.

Anita: I think we just need to do our job. That means we report what the president and his staff say and do, but we factcheck, hold accountable, and provide context to those actions and statements. It’s what we should be doing everyday.

Charlton: I think it is crucial that journalists don’t sacrifice their critical edge for access. I think journalists have to be willing to tenaciously call bullshit at every turn, when warranted. The more gross distortions go unchallenged — even the small ones — we take one step closer to normalizing Trump’s tendency to say that he is the sole arbiter of reality.

Jennifer: It’s important for the press to get used to being repetitive. We need to get very comfortable with saying “fascism,” and we need to get accustomed to saying it often. We have to get accustomed to calling things by their correct terms even if it’s uncomfortable for people in power or for readers. Instead of calling Stephen Bannon “a member of the ‘alt-right,’” we need to call Bannon and this administration “members of hate groups” and “white supremacists.” And we need to do this every time. Not just every once in awhile and not just in the op-ed pages. It is not opinion that some people in Trump’s administration are white supremacists, it’s a fact. And we need to be reporting that fact.

With the recent deluge of fake news — not to mention the widespread distrust of the media among Trump supporters and those who are disillusioned after the press failed to accurately predict the election — how can the press rebuild trust with the public?

Melissa: The press can start rebuilding trust with the public by examining many of its own practices, and acknowledging that those practices are contributing to the fake and misleading news problem. A recent story reported on by dozens of news outlets turned out to be a hoax based on a tweet. The story was that CNN accidentally aired porn instead of their regular programming. After one outlet reported on this, clearly without really digging into the claim (or contacting CNN!), it spread among media and news websites with no one really “hitting pause” and figuring out the veracity of the story until it was already spreading.

Equally as troubling as this kind of reporting of news like a game of telephone is the fact that when articles were updated to reflect changing information, Facebook descriptions and share attachments weren’t necessarily updated. For example, Vulture’s social media post about the story had the Facebook description “Shocking viewers who’d forgotten people watch porn on their TVs” with the headline “Boston CNN Channel Airs Porn Instead of Anthony Bourdain.” But when you click the article, the headline is totally different, as is the content of the story because it was updated several hours earlier.

Why wouldn’t they also update the now totally misleading social media post? I imagine it’s because such an update would probably generate less clickthroughs, but this is precisely the stuff that feeds distrust with the public.

Jennifer: That’s a complicated question now, after 30 or more years of right-wing organizing and financial investment in creating the myth of the liberal media, intentionally eroding trust on the part of the American people toward media outlets. Then at the same time we will have a president who tweets like a drunk 16-year-old about how the press is corrupt, and his rabid followers believe him.

Corporate journalism outlets have tried to twist themselves into pretzels to get the American public to believe they’re trustworthy when in the meantime, these same institutions have chosen profit over truth, accuracy, and standing up for the little guy. It’s difficult to imagine these corporate news outlets are suddenly going to grow a backbone under arguably the most anti-free speech, anti-media, anti-journalist president in modern times. But in order to protect the last gasps of American democracy, they have to grow that backbone.

Do you feel there’s a renewed importance for investigative journalism in the coming years under Trump?

Melissa: Definitely! My hope is that our current spotlight on fake news, misleading news, and traditional news will encourage and improve sustained and investigative coverage. I think the contemporary moment, which is one of distrust, also demonstrates the importance of alternative and nonprofit news organizations in reaching people. They can be an important place for breaking news and the debate of complex ideas, as well as for digging in deeper to the work of mainstream journalism, but we all need to be more careful with how news and information changes as it moves between these entities via secondary reporting.

Anita: I think there’s a renewed importance in accountability journalism, holding Trump and those in his administration responsible for what they say and do. I always think that’s important, but I think it’s even more so now.

Charlton: Investigative journalism is critical now more than ever. Trump and those he’s chosen to lead his administration have demonstrated they have little to gain by maximizing transparency. Investigative journalists must fill that gap. Investigative journalism may be our best hope — along with activists — for uncovering the implications and harms that will likely follow from the kinds of policies Trump and his administration are set to champion. Investigative journalism is one of our best checks on power and it has waned considerably in recent years. If we let it continue, we risk tyranny’s triumph.

Jennifer: Investigative journalism has always been extremely important. It’s why journalism is the only industry enshrined in the constitution. However, there’s been mass divestment on the part of corporate media from investigative journalism. So people who are still doing investigative journalism need to be equipped with the resources that they need to stand up to and fight the corruption, much of which will be hidden, of this administration. There needs to be more fellowships, grants, and foundations endowing independent news outlets and reporters with proven track records. There needs to be more news companies willing to take risks in what they will spend money on over the long term.

Investigative reporting isn’t going to give you clickbait, but do you want to live in a country that’s free or not? This might be our last stand.

How can the press try to bridge the readership gap between those who critically engage with a variety of news sources, and those who primarily read inside a biased and inflammatory echo chamber (on the left and right)?

Melissa: This is the perennial question among researchers, but I think we need to think more critically about what we mean by “echo chamber.” A lot of us seek out information that we may already agree with, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t exposed to a variety of viewpoints and political orientations during our daily lives. While filter bubbles are definitely a thing, as is the phenomenon of Red Facebook and Blue Facebook, a lot of people exist in a purple area and see content from across the political spectrum in their Facebook feeds. Ultimately, it’s not just up to the media to bridge this gap, although they can by rebuilding trust, it’s up to people exposing themselves to as many sources of information as possible. No one should only read Breitbart just as no one should only read The New York Times.

Anita: I wish that I knew the answer to this. I think an independent media that offers both sides of the story is more important than ever and yet I worry fewer and fewer people have any desire to look beyond their like-minded information sources. All we can do is keep doing what we do and do it well — inform, explain, and hold politicians accountable and hope for the best.

Charlton: I’m not optimistic that the media can do anything to bridge this gap. Perhaps it can, but years of evidence suggests that it may not only be not possible, but may not be desirable for media outlets. There’s lots to be gained financially from echo chambers where one does not have to compete with a wider array of news outlets with varying levels of credibility. Niche markets, even in media, are potentially profitable, and the sound of one’s own voice, bouncing off of every mirror, can be quite seductive.

Jennifer: We have a society that has been trained by Fox News and a poor educational environment (thanks to George W. Bush’s education policies) to be drawn away from critical thinking. Within this climate, we are faced with a conservative community that has decided facts don’t matter and that says wrong opinions are just as valid as facts. If as an industry we’re going to wrestle with how to bridge that divide, maybe we need multiple outlets writing service pieces about how news stories get reported and who our sources are.

We also need to be much better about eliminating false equivalencies. We can’t do a story that is 90% sources from the Trump administration and corporate America and 10% sources who say “they’re wrong,” and consider that a balance. Are we quoting sources from the public interest, or just government and corporate interests?