Anya Schiffrin (born December 6, 1962) is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications (TMaC) specialization at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and a senior lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Dr. Schiffrin is an American former business journalist. Previously, she freelanced and worked as an editor in Istanbul, a stringer for Reuters in Barcelona, a senior financial writer at The Industry Standard in New York, bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and a writer for many other publications. She was a former Knight-Bagehot academic fellow in business journalism at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Schiffrin is an alumna of Reed College, Columbia University School of Journalism, and University of Navarra, Spain where she achieved a Ph.D. with honors.
As well as her role in the School of International and Public Affairs, Dr. Schiffrin holds multiple influential roles across various organizations in international journalism and media governance. She is the Co-chair of the OSCE Working Group tasked with producing recommendations for governments on press freedom [1] [2] , a director on the U.S. Board of Directors of the Thomson Reuters Foundation [3] , and a member of the Working Group "Information as a Public Good in the Age of Datafication and Artificial Intelligence" for the International Panel on Social Progress (appointed September 2024).
She chairs the board of directors for The New Humanitarian and serves on boards of Reporters Without Borders USA, [4] , The GroundTruth Project [5] , Global Board and the advisory board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (formerly named Revenue Watch Institute). [6] , the Global Reporting Centre of the University of British Columbia [7] , and Ethosfera.org.
Dr. Schiffrin also advises the American Journalism Project and Columbia University Press, while contributing to the Forum on Information and Democracy’s Infodemics Working Group [8] . Additionally, she has contributed to the AI Charter in Media initiative by Reporters Without Borders as a committee member since 2023 [9] .
Previously, Dr. Schiffrin served on the Open Society Foundations' journalism program (2016–2023), the Center for Media, Data and Society of Central European University (2013-2019) [10] , the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forum Alpbach (2018–2023), the board of the American Assembly (2016–2019), and the Steering Committee of the Center on Global Energy Policy (2016–2018). She also served on the Advisory Board of Transparentem (2015–2017) and the board of the African journalism NGO, African Sentinel (2013–2015).
In addition, she has been a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford [11] and an expert witness on media freedom issues.
She writes extensively on topics including journalism and development, the impact of technology on journalism, platform regulations and remuneration, media in Africa, and the extractive sector, among other areas. In recent years, her research work with economist Haaris Mateen on why tech giants owe publishers billions of dollars [12] [13] garnered significant attention and recognition [14] .
She is a leading thinker and commentator on AI and publishing, media sustainability as well as mis/disinformation [15] and media impact. Her most recent work includes AI and the future of journalism: An issue brief for stakeholders , part of the UNESCO series World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, The role of journalism promoting democracy and political accountability and sustainable development , co-authored with Joseph E. Stiglitz and Dylan Groves, and Creating National Funds to Support Journalism and Public-Interest Media , co-authored with Brigitte Alfter.
She has edited several notable publications on journalism and media, including Women in the Digital World (Routledge, 2023), Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms, and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press, 2021), African Muckraking: 75 Years of Investigative Journalism from Africa (Jacana Press, 2017), In the Service of Power: Media Capture and the Threat to Democracy (Center for International Media Assistance, 2017), and Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press 2014).
She is the daughter of the author and publisher André Schiffrin and the sister-in-law of the lawyer Philippe Sands. She was married [16] on October 29, 2004, to Nobel Prize-winning economist and author Joseph E. Stiglitz, who also teaches at Columbia University in New York City.
In 2011, her Reuters columns about the gender balance at Davos attracted international attention. [17] [18]
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, political activist, and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank. He is also a former member and chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers. He is known for his support for the Georgist public finance theory and for his critical view of the management of globalization, of laissez-faire economists, and of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state; its preservation may be sought through a constitution or other legal protection and security. It is in opposition to paid press, where communities, police organizations, and governments are paid for their copyrights.
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, racial injustice, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting".
Agence France-Presse is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.
Reporters Without Borders is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, in line with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that recognises the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie.
André Schiffrin was a French-American author, publisher and socialist.
Isabel Nancy Hilton OBE is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster, based in London.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) was a U.S.-based organization operating from 1937 to 1942, composed of social scientists, opinion leaders, historians, educators, and journalists. Created by Kirtley Mather, Edward A. Filene, and Clyde R. Miller, because of the general concern that increased amounts of propaganda were decreasing the public's ability to think critically. The IPA's purpose was to spark rational thinking and provide a guide to help the public have well-informed discussions on current issues. "To teach people how to think rather than what to think." The IPA focused on domestic propaganda issues that might become possible threats to the democratic ways of life.
Daily Maverick is an independent, South African, English language, online news publication and weekly print newspaper, with offices in the country's two most populous cities: Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Maria Angelita Ressa is a Filipino and American journalist. She is the co-founder and CEO of Rappler. She previously spent nearly two decades working as a lead investigative reporter in Southeast Asia for CNN. She is a Professor of Professional Practice in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and has been a Distinguished Fellow at Columbia's new Institute of Global Politics since fall of 2023.
Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the Washington Post, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.
José Antonio Ocampo Gaviria is a Colombian writer, economist and academic who was the professor of professional practice in international and public affairs and director of the Economic and Political Development Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University from July 2007 to August 2022. Prior to his appointment, Ocampo served in a number of positions in the United Nations and the Government of Colombia, most notably in the United Nations as Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Executive Secretary for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Colombia as Minister of Finance and Public Credit and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The Conversation is a network of nonprofit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis. Articles are written by academics and researchers under a Creative Commons license, allowing reuse without modification. Copyright terms for images are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. Its model has been described as explanatory journalism. Except in "exceptional circumstances", it only publishes articles by "academics employed by, or otherwise formally connected to, accredited institutions, including universities and accredited research bodies".
Madhusree Mukerjee is an Indian-American physicist, writer, editor, and journalist. She is the author of The Land of Naked People: Encounters with Stone Age Islanders (2003) and Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (2010). She is a contributor to the People's Archive of Rural India and a senior editor with Scientific American.
Coda Media is a nonprofit news organization that produces journalism about the roots of major global crises. It was founded in 2016 by Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent, and Ilan Greenberg, a magazine and newspaper writer who was a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
Anton Harber is a South African journalist. He is executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression, director of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the co-editor or author of five books.
An infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about certain issues. The word is a portmanteau of information and epidemic and is used as a metaphor to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This term, originally coined in 2003 by David Rothkopf, rose to prominence in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sheila Kawamara-Mishambi is a Ugandan journalist and executive director of the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI) and former Legislator in the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). She originally became known for covering the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 and is now known for her feminist activism and work on human rights and conflict resolution.
Semafor is a news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and media columnist at The New York Times, and Justin B. Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group.
George Lugalambi is a media development specialist and researcher, and the executive director at the African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME). He was appointed to this position in July 2022, succeeding Peter Mwesige.
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