Page 197 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

15 AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAN RUSBRIDGER … 191

and your working and footnoting and linking and being open to challenge
and correction and clarification. All these things that would make people
think, “Ah yes, here is an institution that operates to higher standards.”
BB: I don’t know if you came across an article that Emily Bell wrote a
few months ago describing the way in which Facebook was almost
going to sign a deal for which, if you wanted to access the New York
Times, you were going to have to do it completely through Facebook.
What do you think of the idea of placing a global levy on companies
like Google and Facebook as part of a media reform campaign?

AR: I think Emily is one of the most interesting people at the moment
writing about all this stuff, and it’s striking. You have people who are
technologically sophisticated who can understand these issues, because the
issues of how Facebook worked with algorithms to select what you see and
what you don’t see and the degree to which they supposedly feed you stuff
that fits in with your existing interests, all that is intensely interesting, and
at the moment almost nobody understands it. If Emily slightly understands
it then she’s ahead of most people.
BB: Given the lack of action by policy makers on global warming, are
you worried about the direction that the US might be taking in cli-
mate policy under Trump?

AR: Yeah, of course, terribly worried. But at the moment you can’t tell to
what extent anything he said during the campaign is going to be mirrored
by what he does in real life. But yes, I’m very worried.