
Director, Journalism and Media Ethics
408-551-7070
svincent
Subramaniam (Subbu) Vincent is director for the Journalism and Media Ethics program. Subbu's focus is on developing tools and frameworks to help advance new norms in journalism practice, ethical news product design and new vocabulary and signals to help the public process and demand ethical media. During 2017-18, Subbu was Tech Lead for The Trust Project at the Markkula Center. Prior to working for the Center, he was a 2016 John S Knight fellow at Stanford University. In 2022 he received the Distiguished Service to Journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. READ FULL BIO
Recent Publications
Reorienting Journalism to Favor Democratic Agency. Subramaniam Vincent. Chapter in Reinventing Journalism to Strengthen Democracy Kettering Foundation. (April 2023)
Political bias indicators and perceptions of news. Kathryn Bruchmann, Subramaniam Vincent, and Alexandra Folks. Frontiers in Psychology. (April 2023)
Could Quoting Data Patterns Help in Identifying Journalistic Behavior Online? International Symposium of Journalism, #ISOJ. Subramaniam Vincent, Xuyang Wu, Maxwell Huang, and Yi Fang. (April 2023)
Combating Misinformation/Disinformation in Online Social Media: A Multidisciplinary View Authors: Mauro Barni, Yi Fang, Yuhong Liu, Laura Robinson, Kazutoshi Sasahara, Subramaniam Vincent, Xinchao Wang, Zhizheng Wu. APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing. (2022)
Challenges and Opportunities for Local Journalism in Reinventing Political Coverage, Subramaniam Vincent and Don Heider. Journalism & Communication Monographs. (Dec 2022)
"DIANES: A DEI Audit Toolkit for News Sources," April, 2022. Our technical paper documenting SCU-Markkula's DEI News Article auditing system accepted at the 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. Authors: Xiaoxiao Shang, Zhiyuan Peng, Qiming Yuan, Sabiq Khan, Lauren Xie, Yi Fang, Subramaniam Vincent.
“Our Opinion: Recommendations for Publishing Opinion Journalism on Digital Platforms”, NewsQ technical recommendations paper co-authored with Patricia Lopez, Opinions Editor, Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Inputs from David Agraz, Leona Allen Ford, Jon Allsop, Rochelle Riley, and Rebecca Traister.)
"Understanding the Demand-side of Misinformation and Analyzing Solutions", chapter in "Fake News: Real Issues in Modern Communication", book published by Peter Lang in 2020. Editors: Susan Drucker, Russell Chun.
"Ethics-Driven Product Management for News, contribution with Don Heider" in "Product Management in Journalism and Academia" forum series published in Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, June 2020.
Subbu Vincent, director, journalism and media ethics, published in Forbes.
Subramaniam Vincent, director of journalism and media ethics, and newest Forbes monthly columnist, published by Forbes.
How might news platforms and products ensure that ethical journalism on chronic issues is not drowned out by the noise of runaway political news cycles?
Why do people disagree so passionately about what is right and how can journalists unpack political speech and reframe their questions to get past those disagreements?
Should the news media industry should use Generative AI for journalistic writing.
Subramaniam "Subbu" Vincent was honored with SPJ NORCAL's Distinguished Service to Journalism award.
A new application helps journalists track the diversity of the expert quotes used in article drafts, providing real-time updates and helping reporters ensue equitable representation of the communities the cover.
In a comparison of the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots and the January 6, 2021 protests and insurrection, there are important similarities and distinct differences.
Subramaniam Vincent and Courtney Davis ’21 of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics provide comment to Facebook’s oversite board on the ethical considerations of Donald Trump’s deplatforming.
The news media has historically oversimplified and stereotyped coverage of people of color in general and Asian-American communities in particular.
By their very design, social media platforms have offered equal opportunity to sellers of “Big Lies,” conspiracy theories, and political disinformation.
In January 2021, the Journalism and Media Ethics Program at the Ethics Center is set launch a new and timely prototype project with funding from the Google News Initiative (GNI).
Before reconciliation can be achieved in our country, we need to understand the actual problem, including who needs to be brought together and on what they’re divided.
Should the media “cover” Kellyanne Conway’s daughter and her posts on TikTok?
A three-step process and a framework of questions to make ethical reporting decisions, with recent convalescent plasma reporting as an example.
An opinion article that ran in Newsweek included ethically questionable assumptions by the author about Kamala Harris’ citizenship.
The George Floyd protests highlight differences between White and Black America’s dual narratives.
To accurately interpret our media today, it’s important we understand a few basic concepts, or “literacies” as Subbu Vincent refers to them.
In today’s politicized society, trust in media is a common refrain, however values need to be addressed first.
Both traditional journalism and social media are unwilling to reconsider their newsworthiness exemptions for politicians. This is particularly problematic in the midst of a global public health crisis because it drives unethical behavior in society.
Despite Twitter’s, Google’s and Facebook’s varying guidelines for handling political ads, the largest platforms still require additional guardrails to protect our democracy.
With political advertising, a convened American public, where speech and counter-speech are offered in context, does not have a seat at the table.
Will Facebook's imminent News Tab feature help the public more seamlessly access credible local and national journalism without stumbling on junk along the way? This is the demand-side question.
New Facebook policy grants wide berth to politicians’ speech in newsfeed.
The president’s interest in nuking hurricanes got into the news cycle last month, but one CNN reporter’s news article is an example of thoughtful work under deadline.
Ethical journalism practices require that presidential Tweets not serve as the story.
The news media is making progress on how to responsibly and ethically report on mass shootings.
A short guide to where Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube disagree on content moderation.
How do the U.S. DOJ’s espionage-linked charges against Julian Assange bear press freedom?