✍️ New Journalism Jobs and Will TikTok Be Banned? ✍️ — March 27
Will TikTok be banned and why? Plus hundreds of new journalism jobs in the U.S., UK, Canada and Europe
Hello folks, happy Monday and welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, home of the world's largest curated journalism jobs board. We handpick every single job, so you don’t have to. If you’re a paid subscriber and don’t have access to the job board, email me at daniellevitt32@gmail.com and I’ll send you the link.
Last week TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In what ended up being a mammoth five-hour cross-party grilling, everything from TikTok’s ties to China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party to the app’s effects on mental health was fiercely scrutinized.
Today we’ll do a deep dive on the background of Chew and TikTok, why an increasing number of countries are banning TikTok from government devices, and the chances of the app being blanket-banned across entire nations.
One thing I’m surprised about after digging into the weeds of TikTok’s data mining efforts is how most newsrooms still have accounts on the platform and allow their staff to use it. Especially when the company last December denied spying on journalists, but then later fired two of its employees for doing so. In many ways TikTok is no different to any other social media platform, so are we right to scapegoat TikTok without seriously evaluating how our personal data is used by all of big tech? How do you feel about the issue? Leave a comment below…
And if you haven’t yet watched the hearing, or don’t have five hours to spare, have a watch of the key moments below.
Before we dive deep, some quick housekeeping…
If you want access to 2,000+ journalism jobs in the U.S., UK, Canada and Europe, click on any of the buttons below. Each option comes with a free seven-day trial. 👍
If your organization is hiring, fill out this form and we’ll help promote your openings. And if you’re one of our paid subscribers, join our Candidate Board to have employers come to you directly.
Check out Friday’s newsletter, which featured 30 journalism awards, conferences, events and fellowship deadlines. And lastly below are our featured roles by RadioFreeEurope and Politico Europe, and a selection of the new jobs you can find on our job board, with this week’s theme being audio, design, photo and video roles.
Okay, let’s do this thing…
Job Corner
✍️ Want to have a job featured? Fill out this form and we’ll help you out ✍️
🚨 Featured Postings 🚨
🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺
RadioFreeEurope
Location: Prague, Czechia
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: Ideally 5+ years’ experience in digital journalism and 3+ years in audience development, engagement and measurement; Expertise in best practices, rules, and industry standards in data analytics; Experience with data visualization tools; Familiarity with either conducting user research and market research, or acting on such insights; Strong management, project management, communication, and presentation skills; Proficiency in English (other relevant languages preferred).
Deadline: Rolling
Location: Prague, Czechia
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: Ideally 7+ years’ experience in digital journalism and 3+ years of product management experience; Familiarity with best practices, rules, and industry standards in agile product management, iterative development processes and design thinking; Proven ability to launch and develop news products, strong knowledge of digital news production and distribution; Strong knowledge of editorial SEO and how to use data to make informed publishing decisions; Proficiency in English (other relevant target region languages preferred).
Deadline: Rolling
Politico Europe
Location: London, UK
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 3+ years’ experience working in an audio team producing podcasts or some other broadcast equivalent; Skilled audio editor (Adobe audition or equivalent); Experience recording and setting up technical equipment; Strong communication written and oral; Ability to work under pressure and on deadline; A keen interest and knowledge in politics — UK but also Europe and the US
Deadline: Rolling
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 5+ years’ experience working in an audio team; Skilled audio editor (Adobe audition or equivalent); Experience recording and setting up technical equipment; Strong communication written and oral; Ability to work under pressure and on deadline; A keen interest and knowledge of European politics
Deadline: Rolling
Journalist, Politics and Influence
Location: Paris, France
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 5-10 years’ experience on political, public action, economics/finance or related subjects; Good knowledge of political ecosystem and public affairs; Ability to develop network of sources and reveal proprietary information; Autonomy and sense of initiative; strong team spirit and taste for entrepreneurial adventure; The journalist will be required to collaborate with teams around Europe; French-speaking with conversational English to interact with international editorial staff.
Deadline: Rolling
Preview of New Postings on the Job Board
Who Are Shou Zi Chew and TikTok?
Forty-year-old Singaporean Shou Zi Chew became TikTok’s CEO in May 2021. Chew is well-traveled having received a bachelor's degree in economics from University College London, before heading to Harvard Business School where he earned an MBA. He’s worked for investment firms DST Global and Goldman Sachs, was the Chief Financial Officer of Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi, and even did an internship at Facebook.
While Chew has the mountainous task of convincing the world that the Chinese Communist Party has no access to TikTok’s data nor any influence on its algorithms, multiple reports question just how much power he actually has. The New York Times reported that “Mr. Chew’s decision-making power over TikTok is limited, according to 12 former TikTok and ByteDance employees and executives.”
Among Chew’s many objectives at the hearing was to distance TikTok from it’s parent company, ByteDance, and the CCP. As long as high-level executives at ByteDance and TikTok have links to the Chinese government, the question about who really controls the company will continue. It’s important to note that the entire story entered the mainstream when former U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to ban the app nationwide in 2020. Joe Biden is also considering a nationwide ban unless TikTok’s Chinese investors seek their stakes — the Wall Street Journal reports that 60% of TikTok is owned by global investors.
In the hearing, Chairwoman Cathy Rodgers said the U.S. must prevent “another TikTok”, despite the app operating in the U.S. since 2017. My personal opinion is that very little has been done since then, by both the Republicans and the Democrats, and we should have had this hearing years ago.
Why Is TikTok Being Banned And By Who?
The concerns over TikTok center around privacy and trust. The app operates one of the most sophisticated and innovative algorithms ever created, which has captivated more than one billion active monthly users. TikTok itself has headquarters in several countries around the world, but parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing, which makes TikTok vulnerable to the CCP’s National Intelligence Law.
In 2017, the CCP passed the NIL which states all organizations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. Thus, if the CCP requested data from ByteDance, and by extension TikTok, they would theoretically have to share it. TikTok, however, has said that it has never received a request from the CCP for its data and would not oblige if it did.
This isn’t the first time Chinese companies have been at the center of controversy. It was only four years ago that Chinese telecommunications company Huawei was banned in many countries over very similar reasons, except that was over whether it was using its 5G network and mobile phones to spy on other nations. Huawei remains banned in several countries including the U.S. and UK.
Despite previously saying that nobody outside of the U.S. can access U.S. user data, leaked audio of more than 80 internal TikTok meetings proved otherwise. To try and assuage fears over who can access its data, Chew told the House that TikTok was in the process of launching Project Texas. Its plans involve deleting all historical U.S. user data and creating a “firewall” for future U.S. user data on Oracle-operated servers in Austin, by the end of this year. While quite the commitment, questions remain over whether ByteDance and the CCP will still have access to any data.
So far the U.S., UK, Canada, New Zealand, Taiwan, the EU’s institutions and several EU countries have banned the app from being used and downloaded on government devices. India and Afghanistan have gone further and banned the app for all of its citizens — yes, even the Taliban have banned TikTok, although it cited the app as being a bad influence for younger people as the reason as opposed to national security.
What TikTok is doing to combat its negative impact on mental health is of course also a huge issue and was raised several times in the hearing. However I don’t believe it to be the driving force behind the aforementioned bans. Mental health is a problem shared by all social media firms, and not limited to TikTok. Similarly, data and privacy is an issue for all of big tech, which we’ll discuss next.
How Is TikTok Different From Other Social Media Platforms?
The quick answer is that it is and isn’t. The differences primarily lie in the involvement of an authoritarian regime that is the enemy of many western nations, and also TikTok’s industry-changing algorithm behind its “For You Page”. Platforms built on short viral videos aren’t new — the likes of Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Vine (RIP) have all been immensely popular. TikTok, however, has taken personalized content to another level, and many of the other platforms have followed suit.
The point of this section, however, is to highlight how similar and incestuous the social media industry is in its standards and practices, and absent morality toward harvesting and selling user data for large profits. France is one country that agrees, having just banned the “recreational” use of not only TikTok, but also Twitter and Instagram.
The likes of Meta (owners of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Alphabet (owners of Google and YouTube), Twitter and any other big tech firm will be watching what happens next in the case of TikTok. They will all know all too well what does or doesn’t happen could directly impact them as well.
Remember, it was only in 2015 that Facebook became embroiled in one if its largest ever data breaches, after it allowed data firm Cambridge Analytica to sell the data of 50 million profiles to the Trump and Brexit campaigns to target them with specific posts and messaging in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. President Election and Brexit referendum, respectively. In December, Meta agreed to pay $725m (£600m) to settle the class action lawsuit against it for “losing control” of user data.
And in August of last year Google was fined $60m for “misleading some local users into thinking the company was not collecting personal data about their location via mobile devices with Android operating systems.”
The reality is that the financial penalties are minuscule compared to how much these firms make of these immoral practices, and until there is stiffer punishment, we’ll be having this same conversation again and again.
So What Happens Next?
The prospect of nationwide bans is real. However, it could take years for anything in the U.S. to actually happen due to legal and societal complexities regarding freedom of speech. Anything that does happen will implicate the entire industry, and I don’t believe any government wants to take on that responsibility. For more information on this, read Tangle’s take on what the right and left are saying.
There’s also the hypocrisy waiting for most governments, due to their own spying programs. It was only nine years ago that Edward Snowden blew the lid off the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance program on its own citizens and 193 other foreign governments. Multiple reports state the NSA’s program is still in operation today. In the UK, GCHQ — the UK’s equivalent to the NSA — tapped and stored vast amounts of communication without public acknowledgement or debate. In 2020, Amnesty International sued the UK government for illegally accessing its information, and a year later Europe’s top court ruled it violated Amnesty’s human rights.
So whatever the U.S., UK and others want to do to limit foreign states from potentially spying, they know it could lay bare their own skeletons from the past and present.
Do I believe the U.S. or any other Western country will outright ban TikTok for all of its citizens? No. While the disapproval of TikTok is widely bipartisan, I know how slow these things move and how rhetoric can often be more powerful than actual action.
What would I like done? The folks running these gigantic social media firms have proven countless times that they’re incapable of and unwilling to police themselves in a way that legitimately protects the interests of their users that fuel them. The idea of self-regulation has been in the public domain for years, and very little has been done by both the companies themselves and those the public elects and funds to protect us. Similar to the financial industry, we need an independent regulatory watchdog with legitimate powers to make sure social a’ data privacy crisis doesn’t spiral out of control any further. While not perfect, it will mark a step in the right direction toward the end goal of online safety and privacy protection I think the vast majority of the public want to achieve.
That’s all for today. If you liked today’s issue, give us a like at the top, and share us with your network.