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It’s been more than a year since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, an event that caused Recode’s Kara Swisher to declare last year that journalists needed to be tougher on serial liars in tech and politics.
This week, Swisher returned to Recode Media with Peter Kafka to grade whether the media lived up to that goal in 2017 — and the impact of the Silicon Valley companies whose platforms distribute most of their content. Overall, she said, she’s still frustrated by the unwillingness of tech leaders to accept their share of responsibility in the media space, and not because they’re blind to the problem.
“I think they know that these platforms are being badly misused, and they don’t know what to do about it,” Swisher said. “I think it was a slow burn, a slow dawning on them. The penny dropped really lugubriously.”
“They’re a new kind of media company,” she added. “They’re not media companies in the tradition of The New York Times or even Fox News. They’re a media company in that people primarily get their news from them, and they are a gateway point. They should have more responsibility of what’s on their platform.”
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On the new podcast, Swisher also talked about why she’s more impressed by Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel than by his peers, why Silicon Valley isn’t thinking about artificial intelligence’s potential for reinforcing bias, and why she’s tired of many tech executives’ perpetual-victim mentality.
“My issue is they are the richest and most powerful people in the world and they’re always acting like they’re victims,” she said. “That’s exhausting from a group of people that have an ability to actively change the world.”
“I’m not giving them the responsibility of preventing every awfulness of humanity,” Swisher added. “Humans can always surprise you, just how low they can go. But you should have some anticipation, tools that people could put into place.”
If you like this show, you should also sample our other podcasts:
- Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with the movers and shakers in tech and media every Monday. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- Too Embarrassed to Ask, hosted by Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode, answers all of the tech questions sent in by our readers and listeners. You can hear new episodes every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcastor wherever you listen to podcasts.
- And finally, Recode Replay has all the audio from our live events, such as the Code Conference, Code Media and the Code Commerce Series. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on Apple Podcasts — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Peter. Tune in next Thursday for another episode of Recode Media!
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
