>>Hello an welcome to Global Perspectives.

I'm Katie Coronado in for David Dumke.

Today's guest is media and entertainment attorney with more than 20 years of experience, Mr. Jorge Colon.

Jorge welcome.

>>Thank you Katie, thank you for inviting me.

>>Thank you for making time for us.

We know that you have a lot going on, especially because you are taking a look at the state of media in our country as well as internationally.

And that's where we'll start in just a second.

We want to know a little bit about you and your career.

Tell us about your background.

>>Well I've been in media for 24 years.

I started ironically, I started with the tabloids and then I went on to NBC, Telemundo, I worked at Viacom and then again at the tabloids and then at cable news network, CNN.

>>And as part of your positions, it was your job to do what for those networks?

>>I' the lawyer, the dreaded lawyer that all production has to run through.

>>So scripts and video-- >>It it's it's different in different organizations.

They have they have how lawyers interact are different.

For example, in the in the tabloids, we have eight lawyers that read everything.

And the networks we don't read.

We don't look at everything.

We look at things that are more likely to be a risk, contentious, potentially defamatory, privacy issues, investigative reporting.

That's when we get more involved.

>>So speaking of contentious, we want to talk about the state of media.

And, it's hard to talk about tha without talking about politics, but we want to stay as neutral as possible, because that is the goal of journalism, of people who tell the news and the stories, which is my role.

And so I wanted to know what you think from your professional perspective about what's happening, for example, with the Associated Press and some of the recent, things that have taken place?

>>Yeah, there's quite a lot I mean, in, in a world where everyone is polarizing, being in the center is sort of a rare and somewhat precarious place to be.

Over the last, I'd say, decade, the polarization has gotten really, really intense in society and culture.

And then the media is reflecting that.

It's not only reflecting, it sometimes also needs it.

So it becomes kind of like, a, a cycle, between the culture and the media.

Everyone wants to be at least known to be more in the center or more neutral.

Not everybody, though, has that brand.

Some people are comfortable in the fringes.

While, such as we know, for example, Fox News on one side and MSNBC on the other side.

They they understan where they are, where they are.

They understand their markets and they're comfortable in that market.

Now, when it comes to something like what happened with AP, that's, that's a little different.

That's has to do more wit a cultural war, a political war that we're we're facing right now.

Now, AP has filed claiming freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

But it's really, if you think of it, more like a lawyer, it's really more freedom of access because what they were denied was access to certain intimate area where the president is speaking.

Now, not everybody can be in this area.

We're talking in the Oval Room.

We're talking the Air Force One.

Not everybody can be in those spaces.

So who gets selected?

Well, you know, that's that that can be controversial.

But is it a a freedom of speech right to have access to Air Force One and the Oval Office?

Probably not.

From a legal perspective, it's more of an access issue.

Now, I'm sure that AP's is going to argue, I haven't seen their brief, but they're going to argue.

Well, if we don't have access, the some of our speech is limited.

It's limite in that they didn't have access, but very few people have access.

You how many people have access to Air Force One?

How many people can fit in the Oval Room?

So it really becomes an issue of access.

>>And the statement that says, well, if we don't file, if you don't follow this, then you don't have access.

Is that somethin that potentially is threatening to free press from a legal perspective?

>>I wouldn't see it as threatening, but I would see it as problematic.

If it becomes a trend that that the only people who are allowed in the Oval Office and Air Force One are an echo chamber, that that's problematic ultimately for for our culture, for for the state of media.

But let's be clear, the media still has access.

They just don't have access into these spaces.

They're still the white House correspondents, and they have access.

So you can stil they can still provide the news.

They're not being told what not to publish.

At least they're not - let me rephrase that.

While the president or the administration may have their preferences, they can't stop them from publishin whatever they want to publish.

So that is freedom of the press.

The question, though, is is, well, if you don't go along with what we're asking, the you don't have intimate access.

That I think is more of an optics issue than a hard rights issue.

And if it becomes mor of a trend and across the board, then I think we do have a problem.

>>When we talk about access to something new and speaking about the new administration, that is probably something I haven't heard of, in the past, is access to social media influencers and podcasters.

Tell me about that.

What that means now, from a perspective of access to different, influencers and content creators.

>>No you're talking about the access to the president or access to-- >>To the president and to the-- >>White House?

>>Press conferences.

It's a new thing.

>>Yeah, this is new.

And I from my perspective, I see it refreshing.

Of course, if you're seeing it from the perspective of, well, if it's only goin to be one side that's invited, then I think that could be problematic.

From again, from who has access, I hope, and I expec that you will see some balance in who's going to get access, especially in the center.

What we what you know, when you're looking at the media bias, hope that the people in the center are getting more access, not just the people who are on the on th polarized sides or the fringes, some of them which are legacy media and they are and they do have access.

So I would like to see I think it would be better for us as a country if we have a bit of a mix.

From my perspective.

If you look at the way the administration, especially this president, the way he handles media, he actually would benefit.

He does benefit from his detractors.

He does benefit from, people criticizing him, and attacking him, even though he may publicly not like it or publicly, counter it, it his ratings go up.

>>So you mentioned legacy media going back to something that you, you discussed a second ago.

Who are thos who is included in legacy media?

And what does it matte that we as the, you know, U.S. audience understand that?

>>I mean, legacy media is really just a it's a simple way of saying that the the medi that's been around for a while, this is corporate media.

They're well-organized, well-financed, although that's actually slowing down quite a bit.

Right.

They're contracting.

But if you look at i historically, you're looking at the the what I call the C networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox.

These were the original broadcast licenses for news.

Then you have the cable, CNN, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC, and then you have the wires.

AP and Reuters.

Last but no least, but the smallest players now are the old legacy newspapers New York Times, Washington Post, these kinds and they they're most of the people who are going to be, have getting access in places like the White House.

That's what we consider legacy media, highly vetted.

They'll have ethics, they'll have fact checking, they'll have legal.

They have very experienced producers, very experienced reporters in comparison of course, to the social media, which is more like a disorganized horde.

But but I wouldn't necessarily count them out as being just disinformation and misinformation.

That would be an inaccurate I think that's an inaccurate representation.

A lot of the people in independent media and social medi want to have good reputations, and you can't have a good reputation if you're not if you're producing bad content, inaccurate content misinformation, disinformation.

Flip it over.

Why is social media, why are independents ascending and legacy media descending?

Well it's it's a it's a confluence.

It's several things happening at the same time.

The economics of legacy media is crashing, partly due to the loss of trust and loss of credibility.

And that's that's their own that's of their own making, really.

And partly also because the economics has changed where, you know, the, the, the cable fee model, the advertising rev models are slowing down.

But also you have to think that if you are a network and you choose to take a particular stand in one area that's not dead and center and some of your content, whether you like it or not, some of your content would be considered controversial.

Well, that logically would lower your ad rate because you have less advertisers, or at least you would only have advertisers who want to address or target your demographics.

You put all of these things together.

Now on top of it you have to go ten times faster for digital.

You got to you got to go very quick.

The news cycle is super fast now.

Do you have time now to be vetting with lawyers, ethics, fact checking?

Those are some of the things that people lament is like, well, are we going to lose thi now if you're in legacy media, you think there's no other world but this.

And I get that perspective because I come from legacy media, I come from the networks, and we love the having that luxury of being able to have take our time.

You know, one of the networks we used to always say we don't necessarily always want to be first.

We want to be right.

We want to get it right.

That might be a good position from a from a purel journalistic point of view, but but really the business is moving too quickly.

Just look at social media.

I mean, if you jump into X, it's a, it's a, it's a firehose of information coming at you now that they get attacked has been a lot of misinformation.

Disinformation.

There's no doubt you're going to have a lot o misinformation, disinformation.

But who's going to rise to the top on that is the people who are getting it right and the people who are doing their own investigations, the people who are collaborating with each other.

They're the people who hav their own way of vetting things.

And guess what?

They're doing it on a shoestring budget.

Legacy media can't compete at that level, and eventually they'll have to compete at that level in some way.

In some way.

You can't you can't really.

I don't see a future for thes newsrooms with, 30 or 40 people in the production of a show.

It it' and then your anchors getting, an eight figure salary.

Oh.

I'm proud.

I'm happy for them.

But at the same time, the economics are starting to squeeze and squeeze the prices down.

You're seeing a lot of people leaving legacy media now.

So I, I, you know, ultimately I think if you were to ask me, I think they they would I always think that collaboration is better than competition.

Competition does bring something good to the table, but I think the social media and the legacy media will eventually be workin closer together in certain ways.

So you're seeing it with legacy media.

Maybe some of them will buy podcasts or they'll start their own.

The challenge they have is the culture of independent media is very different.

The way they speak.

The way.

Yeah.

Exactly right.

The way they analyze things, the way they speak first think second, sometimes that is necessary in a world that's moving that fast.

And I think another really big point for me is legacy media has always had a culture of, we want to tell you what's happening and why it's happening.

We want to explain to you things so they may not want necessarily to go with the story unless they can verify everything.

In social media and independent media, you got to go.

You got to go in.

And they do a better job of saying to the audience, well, we don't know.

This is what we know.

This is what we don't know.

>>Does that free them from liability?

>>No, no.

But but it does lower.

It does mitigate risk.

If you let the audience know this is what we know, you have a right to report what you think is happening.

And if you say, well, this is what we know.

For example these allegations just came out.

This is what we know.

You're not validating the allegation.

It's clear it's an allegation.

And if you let the audience know, we don't know if it's true.

We're trying to find out if it's true.

Now, you can't have a defamation claim because you're not saying this is true.

You're letting the audience know there is some doubt here.

We're asking the question, is this true?

Independen media does a great job of that, that you'll see a lot of them.

We'll say afterwards, this is what we know.

Well, we don't know this.

What do you think?

They'll say, what do you think?

Put in the comments below.

What do you think?

If you're in part they'r interacting with their audience.

>>This leads me to a very delicate question.

Many of our colleagues think of my colleagues think that our freedom of the press is being impacted, attacked, affected by all these changes, including by everything that's happening with legacy media lately.

You've worked with international media as well.

Do you think that we're at that stage where things are so dangerou here in the U.S that we have to be careful what we report that people will be endangered by being able to express, or to cover certain stories.

Pressure for answers.

>>From a - okay if we're looking at it from a First Amendment point of view, which is, which is really in relation to what the government is censoring, we're in a more open environment now.

In that sense, there's more freedom right now, freedom of speech right now than we had now, some people may not like that, but but we do have more.

Other countries will have more censorship as to what you can say abou other people and how you say it.

>>What things have you witnessed that would make it different when you do some comparison and you're saying, no, that we have more freedom here, what can you compare that to?

I know you can't discuss specific-- >>No, but-- >>You know.

>>Yeah, but look, just look at, for example, what's going on in Europe right now in certain countries in Europe, they have some laws.

And there's a cultural, historical reasons why they have some laws that restrict certain speech, hate speech, insulting people.

And so they're stricter and you can be criminally liable.

You can be civilly liable, you can be arrested.

You can be fine for certain things that you say that in this country are perfectly legal.

They may not be acceptabl to sections of the population.

They may be, either insulting, hurtful or antagonizing.

But it's freedom of speech.

I'll give you an example.

I grew up i I grew up in London, very near, very near Hyde Park o the northeast end of Hyde Park.

You have a place called Speaker's Corner.

I don't know if this is something that most people are aware of now in.

This is in the United Kingdom, in Speaker's Corner, all speech is acceptable.

All hate speech all racism all misogyny all religious speech.

Anything is acceptable and the police is there to protect the speaker.

From one perspective, that can be kind of controversial.

On a national level.

And but what I noticed I was a child when I used to see this.

This is why, for me, freedom of speech is so is so important.

What I noticed was that a couple of things.

One, when you have freedom of speech and people are allowed to be together heckling each other, number one is eventually hatred moves towards comedy becaus the way, the way you really you win people over is more through comedy, not hatred.

You'll see that evolution.

Some people will stay in hatred, but but in time it moves to comedy and people then when they're able to express themselves freely, they do.

You see a lot more connection, even if they absolutely disagree, even if they're insulting each other.

There's an element of connection in that process.

I'm not saying that this could, that this necessarily always works at a national level.

But if you see it from that, from that prism, you'll see also that even today, well, comedy works, right?

This is why when The Daily Show launched in 2000, they they started a whole new way of media, a whole new way of handling news.

You know, that you whic which, by the way, social media and the independents have grasped tightly.

There's a lot more comedy in that process.

>>We talked earlier about, truth, about balance and about fact checking in different ways.

You have some you have some identified some sources that you use yourself.

What types of sources do you use to kno where the truth is coming from, and what's your tak on that word truth these days?

>>Yeah I think truth is a loaded gun.

Today, it's in in, in an era of so much information, so much data, it's hard to really know 100% of truth.

Now, that doesn't mean we can't, but I think you have to separate the truth from, hey, this is like, these are facts, and those are things that you can see on video.

You can hear them on audio, you can witness them.

People, people will witness and say, hey, we saw this.

As long as you're not editing the video, but okay, there's oh, there's documentary evidence, emails.

This went here, this went there.

So that that's easier.

Then there are other truths which are more subjective.

That's a harder area to play.

And I play the as a lawyer, I'm working more on let's focus on these on facts.

What we can verify.

Now sometimes you don't have that luxury.

You're not - you're moving at 100 miles an hour.

So sometimes you have to rely on other sources.

But the other sources may have their own biases, their narratives, their own agendas.

And if you follow them, well, then you're following them to wherever they may end up.

If they get it wrong, you get it wrong.

And we've seen this, we've seen this, you've seen this.

When one network gets it wrong, a bunch of others follow, and then everybody ends up getting sued.

So that is a risk.

And you do your best with fact checking.

But let's say your fact checkers think, hey, I've got this based upon this investigative unit out of Europe, but what if they got it wrong?

And then now you're open to to liability.

So, the truth are the subjective areas I think is much harder.

I don't, you know, I don't I don't kno if media will ever succeed there unless they go into entertainment, which a lot of new media has become entertainment.

So a lot of the opinion shows are really more of entertainment.

Because it's just people sharing opinions.

You have the talking heads who are clashing live on, on television, but is is are you really getting facts there?

Maybe, but but how do you know?

Because no one's actually presenting you with evidence.

Some of the time there, right?

Unless they're - they're witness to something.

But you won't know.

It's really more of a clash of opinion, which I categorize is entertainment.

So a lot of media has moved into entertainment.

Now some media is trying to get back into the center.

And that's a really difficult thing to do today because society globally is polarized culturally, politically, socially, it's polarized.

>>We have only a few minutes left.

But I wanted to share with you an example that we talked about behind the scenes.

I had a student who said I found ten sources and they all have different numbers, and they're from different sides of the political spectrum.

What do I do?

How do I pick one?

And then you said to me... >>Yeah, so from a legac media perspective, from network perspectives, we're goin to want to get the right answer.

And that might slow down the process.

So what you'll do is you'll try and figure out who do you trust more.

You might have a relationship with this organization or this person in the government.

So you might go with that.

In the social media world, you might just tell them.

You might just say, hey, I have ten different answers for this.

I spoke to these, these four said this and these six said this.

And you let the audience know.

I think probably I'm speculating, but probably that's where we're going to be headed more where you're going to be more transparent, what you know, what you don't know.

So you can go quicker on air you can go quicker to publish, you can go quicker to post.

>>Which leaves more responsibility on the reader, on the listener and the viewer, right?

>>Yeah, I think I think that's really the future.

I think I think, you know, you can't it I think the age of sort of, you know, baskin in a narcotic haze of personal prejudices is kind of has is dying away, obviously still strong and alive at the fringes.

But I'm beginning to see more and more peopl wanting to come into the center.

And that means that they have to figure things out for themselves and that, you know, s you're you're responsible now.

It's the age of being individually responsible for figuring ou what's actually happening there.

Is it easy?

No, it's not easy.

Is there a lot of disinformation?

Yes.

Is it more comforting to bask in your own echo chamber?

Absolutely.

It is.

Absolutely.

Because you're not getting triggered.

You're not getting antagonized.

You're not feeling, anxiety.

So when you're in your bubble, you're feeling reinforced in your echo chamber, but and and there' nothing wrong with that per se, except you're not going to get a reality, a real picture of what's happening in the worl or why people are doing things that they do.

Again I go back to the model of a free for all in Speaker's Corner.

When people are able to connect at that level, even if they're not being kind to each other, they connect, they share, and they become more human to each other as opposed to just launching attack after attack in your own echo chamber.

It's it's, from a comedic point of view, I don't know if you've seen those reels where the dogs are barking at each other through a fence or a gate, and then if you remove the gate, the dogs stop barking.

But they were they felt safe barking when they were on one side of each side of the gate and the gates.

Oh, now we're done.

I have a much more optimistic view of humanity.

I think people naturally want to be in, in a more middle, in a more neutral area.

But we are being drawn out.

Now, the good news about being drawn out into polarity is that when those polarities collapse, which they inevitably will then you're going to see a lot more unity, a lot more cooperation.

I know right now if I tell that to people right now, they're like, it'll never happen, but it will, it will, it will eventually happen because the masses are there.

That's what people want to be.

They want more.

They want they want to know more what's going on.

The less of what people think is going on, which is the opinion.

>>Well, thank yo so much for this optimism under these very challengin and uncertain times, in media.

But I also remain hopeful and hopefully we'll have you on again soon.

Thank you so much.

>>Thank you.

>>And thank you for joining us here on Global Perspectives.

I'm Katie Coronado.

Until next time.