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Driving through Alabama on Presidents Day, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg swung by the newsroom of The Selma Times-Journal. In a post to his 86 million followers Monday night, he thanked journalists for their efforts to surface the truth and keep their communities informed.

Zuckerbergs post comes on the heels of his nearly 6,000-word manifesto that offered an ambitious vision for Facebooks global role. Its an important declaration of principles that can help restore trust in news and information delivered on digital platforms. The statement implies a responsibility to share benefits with producers of content, acknowledges the importance of accurate information and seeks to engage communities in civil discourse. This welcome change of direction couldnt come at a more critical time.

As Zuckerberg knows, democracy requires an informed electorate, able to separate fact from fiction. But thats never been more difficult.

TV, the web and social media have combined to give citizens information to support any position and confirm any bias, facts be damned. But information is not journalism, and data begs to be organized and interpreted. The common foundation of everyday facts, the starting place from which we discuss differences, is eroding. By chasing clicks and taking the presidential bait, journalists have and will continue to lose ground. And so will democracy.

We need to deal with both short-term attacks on journalism and the longer-term consequences for our democracy.

The short-term answer is plain to see, but hard to achieve: Do the job.

Journalism 101 requires the full, accurate, contextual search for truth, regardless of how its packaged or on what platform its presented. That hasnt changed.

But much else has. Recent attacks on journalism couldnt have caught it in a weaker state. The transition to digital has decimated many newsrooms and given rise to new kinds of information companies with, until now, a different set of values.

Google, Facebook and others have supplanted the power of newsrooms by repackaging their journalismalong the way mixing it with other web content branded as news but not subject to the same ethical standards and traditionsand giving voice and access to hundreds of millions of users.

Technological disruption of the news industry is not a new phenomenon, of course. In the middle of the last century, Jack Knight built a successful newspaper empire against a backdrop of familiar forces: technological change, a shifting social order at home and unrest abroad. He knew that troubled times demanded a publishers steady, principled hand.

While a majority of Americans are spending more time consuming news on social media platforms, the leaders of these companies have, until recently, declined to accept their role as the most important publishers of our time. They have shown scant interest in judging wheat from chaff while chasing market share.

The good news is thats changing, and Zuckerberg is leading the way. He and others in Silicon Valley would be well served by turning to Jack Knights core values for guidance. In our digital age, it may seem counterintuitive to look to a man who had ink in his veins for advice. But the basic principles about the role of information and the media in our democracy that Knight embraced remain critically important.

First: Get the business model right. Knight believed in profitability and its achievement through a quality product and innovation. Facebooks statement last week suggests a way forward for platforms and publishers. Profit and purpose should be mutually reinforcing, not antithetical.

Second:The product has to be demonstrably true to be believed. Knight wrote, simply, get the truth and print it. There is objective truth, and it matters, even if it wont sit well with everyone. But a popular information platform that lacks standards will lack credibility and if you lack credibility, youll lose business. Facebook, as I read Zuckerbergs manifesto, understands this.

Third: Use technology to engage the reader. Knight was an early adopter. It was the telephone, after all, that allowed him to reach beyond his hometown of Akron and become an editor of multiple newspapers at once. He later embraced the fax and early internet, always searching for new ways to engage readers and get the news out.

The reluctant publishers of Silicon Valley know that technological innovation can drive progress. Its not enough to use technology to amass clicks and shares; use it also to get accurate information to people as conveniently and seamlessly as possible. Technology has shrunk our world in remarkable ways, but if speed and connectivity displace substance and meaning, we lose civic value.

To preserve civic value, and restore faith in the free press, todays new publishers should heed yesterdays values. It would be good for businessand for democracy.

Alberto Ibargen is president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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Can Zuckerberg Save Journalism Or Democracy? - Huffington Post

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What's Left of Communism New York Times Soon, popular views of 1917 changed entirely: Unfettered markets seemed natural and inevitable, while Communism appeared to have always been doomed to Leon Trotsky's dustbin of history. There might be challenges to the globalized liberal order, but ...

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Recently a letter on this page called the Affordable Care Act socialism because it transfers wealth, in the form of insurance subsidies, from rich to poor.

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The Citizen-Times 6:22 a.m. ET Feb. 24, 2017

Recently a letter on this page called the Affordable Care Act socialism because it transfers wealth, in the form of insurance subsidies, from rich to poor. Even worse, many ACA critics whine, is that Obamacare puts the government in charge of health care. And its a job killer. And too expensive. None of thats true, but hey it was passed without a single GOP vote. Because Congressional Republicans agreed to oppose Obamas every move. Let the country go to hell, but no son of a black Kenyan would succeed.

But lets return to socialism. I pay more property taxes than renters. Roads are built with taxes. The poor use public roads as much or more as I do. Thats socialism.

Is giving enormous government subsidies to rich oil companies socialism? How about billions to huge agribusiness companies? Still more billions to mining concerns by selling them public land for a pittance? What about huge tax breaks to billionaire hedge fund managers? Or using governments eminent domain power to transfer valuable real estate to developers, including the one in the White House?

Or does transferring wealth from poor to rich not count as socialism?

Marvin J Wolf, Asheville

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Letter: Definition of 'socialism' is misunderstood - Asheville Citizen-Times

Claude Wilson | Published 10 hours ago

Socialism one of the greatest Bogeymen in the minds of the American Republic throughout the last century. From newspaper cartoons at the turn of the 20th century, hyping up fears of bearded, bomb-throwing foreign anarchists, to Sen. Joseph McCarthys spearheading a witch hunt in search of Soviet spies and fellow travelers in Washington and Hollywood, to modern depictions of neoliberal former President Barack Obama as some sort of fanatical communist whos going to put your life in the hands of a sinister death panel.

Socialism tends to be depicted as a monstrous other intent on destroying the American way of life. What you may not expect, however, is that socialism very much exists within our community, and you might have participated in its success, and even benefited from it, without ever realizing. With three locations and 200employees, Weaver Street Market is socialism in action.

Weaver Street is a worker cooperative, standing in stark contrast to the traditional capitalist business model. While most stores are owned by a small number of private individuals, whom we might call capitalists, worker cooperatives are owned collectively by the workers themselves, functioning as a form of market socialism: workers collectively own and sell locally-sourced and fair-trade produce, baked goods, and more in a market setting.

Weaver Street Market itself is not just owned by its workers, but also by its customers. Weaver Street is owned collectively by 200 workers and 18,000 consumer households and managed by a board of directors made up of workers and consumers. Customers gain access to store discounts, while workers receive a share of the stores profits and involvement in the stores decision-making committees, while both are given the ability to vote on and run for the cooperatives board of directors. Essentially, Weaver Street is an economic democracy.

The advantages of a worker cooperative are numerous when compared to a traditional business model, especially for its workers. For one, it helps fight against the vast disparities in income inequality. In the United States, the average CEO makes three hundred times as much as the average worker.

Workers cooperatives are instead directed by democratically elected councils who receive the same pay as usual, meaning that the workers are better compensated for their work and have more of a say in the direction of their business, which has a number of advantages for local economies. Workers in a cooperative arent going to vote to send their own jobs overseas, after all.

This model of decision-making doesnt hurt business longevity either, as worker cooperatives are twice as likely to survive their first year as traditional businesses.

Weaver Street isnt an isolated example of a successful worker cooperative. For example, the Mondragon Corporation, a federation of worker cooperatives involved in banking, manufacturing, retail and education, is the 10th largest company in all of Spain, employing over 74,000 people.

Suma is a food wholesaler in the United Kingdom that made a 40 million pound revenue in 2015 and it is only the 49th largest cooperative in the UK. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, the libertarian socialist Zapatistas have managed to organize hundreds of coffee producers into a solidarity network that has vastly improved quality of life in the otherwise poverty-stricken territory, all without government involvement.

Worker cooperatives are a viable, moral alternative to traditional corporations and businesses. Workers are entitled to the full fruits of their labor, and they deserve a say in the way their workplace functions. Whatever your work, be it manufacturingor retail, white or blue collar, if you can, you should reject selling your labor to others, and instead form or join a cooperative you have nothing to lose but your chains.

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Column: A socialist on Weaver Street - The Daily Tar Heel

Jay Ambrose, Columnist 8:16 a.m. CT Feb. 24, 2017

One day, President Donald Trump is at a prayer meeting talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger being lousy on TV, and on another, he is naming the brilliant Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security advisor. I will hereby be an unsolicited national hope advisor. Do the second kind of thing much more and wholly eradicate the first kind of thing, Mr. President, and save us from a grave public enemy.

That would be the kind of socialistically inspired future represented by Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. She wanted more freebies but less freedom, more spending, more regulations, a marketplace coerced into failures, identity-group divisiveness, contemptuous elitist supremacy and judicial power usurping democracy along with constitutionalism.

President Barack Obama was also a champ at all of this, and while the public mostly liked him, many did not like what was doing. Thus, after his eight years in office, Democrats had lost a net of 62 seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, 12 governorships, more than 900 state legislature seats and the presidency, according to a Fox News report. Republicans took charge, and there is now an extraordinary opportunity to reverse a big-government trend threatening to encapsulate us for eons.

The thing is, we may be cheated out of that chance if Trump does not give up on his stupidities and instead provides his enemies the wherewithal to stymie the best in him and turn the country back over to their contrary dreams. If he loves America, therefore, he should please, please quit obnoxious tweeting for starters. It is absurd and makes him look like a misbehaving child with a misused toy.

Then he should quit holding zany press conferences in which he overstates everything, insults everyone and further institutes enmity. He should in fact avoid adlibbing as much as possible. He is a non-linear, now-you-see-it, now-you-dont speaker who treats us to unconnected, unexplained phrases that can mean just about anything and are advantageously interpreted by critics as saying he favors hell over heaven.

Still more advice. He should quit substituting glances at a TV set for actual study. He should quit having reckless phone calls with heads of state. He should quit putting together policy plots with minimal trustworthy advice. He should quit the small-mindedness that puts claims of crowd size above real issues.

Yes, it is absolutely the case that his critics are often far worse than he is. Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Sen. Chuck Schumer? There is nothing polite to say. The reputable press is not so reputable when its commentators, for instance, issue baseless growls about anti-Semitism.

It is also despicable that protestors carry signs referring to Trump as anti-gay when there is absolutely nothing to back them up. It is simple-minded and worse for anyone to insist Trumps criticism of someone who is black is ipso facto racism, and yet we have seen it. In terms of evidence at this point, the Russian collusion theory is right up there with the birther theory. Vandalizing college students should be required to clean up after themselves before packing their bags and going home, and the leakers in the intelligence community should be worried about criminal prosecution.

There is lots of good in Trump, as seen in his executive orders on pipelines and absolutely smothering regulations, his choice for the Supreme Court, most of his Cabinet picks and, as mentioned earlier, his choice of McMaster as a top advisor.

He may very well do something about a crime rise the left uncaringly dismisses as nothing much. Watch for an improved world order. Some of his tax ideas are excellent, if not the one on imports, and we should replace Obamacare with something better, although prudence is needed. The wonders already happening in the economy are signs of how he actually could do splendid things.

But if Trump does not cut out the bad, there are those waiting in the bushes with a ruinous future in mind.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at speaktojay@aol.com.

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How Trump could lead us to socialism yet - Times Record News