The Agenda podcast chats crypto, media and ethics with Molly Jane Zuckerman

2022 was quite a challenging year for the crypto sector, and the proliferation of Ponzi schemes, decentralized finance scams, non-fungible token blankets, and questionable centralized exchange ledgers put the question of ethics in space to the fore.

Of course, last year’s negative news wasn’t an aberration or a one-off – generally speaking, “good” ethics has been an issue in crypto for years, and it’s probably safe to assume that the challenges will continue to dot the landscape for the foreseeable future.

Within the media context, it is important to recognize that unbiased, unbiased news reporting and transparency are essential if the industry is to gain the trust of the wider public and, as a result, change the negative perspectives people often have about it.

In the latest episode of Cointelegraph’s podcast The agendahosts Ray Salmond and Jonathan DeYoung sat down with crypto media vet Molly Jane Zuckerman to discuss her experience with ethical challenges in the industry and her ideas on how to integrate best practices into the sector.

When asked by Salmond about the most important things to fix in crypto media and the potential for journalists to experience a “kind of shadowy pressure to do what’s in the best interest of the company,” Zuckerman suggested that drastic improvements in transparency are needed. She mentioned that the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers, an organization she co-founded, has been working on a standard guidebook to help both reporters and news agencies:

“It’s something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, even outside of my day job, is how do we make sure that people who work in crypto have some kind of rulebook to follow beyond just what their newsroom can tell you maybe them.”

Zuckerman elaborated:

“I think the problem is that if you have access to do something that’s that easy for really big money, it can really tempt a lot of people. So I think that even people with very, very high moral standards and very clear ethical boundaries — in at least I’ve seen this in a few companies I’ve worked for, [they] will intentionally not give them access to parts of the site that would tempt them.”

Does the ethical responsibility lie primarily with journalists or protocol makers?

Asked whether crypto’s ethics crisis stems primarily from companies and their profit targets or from journalists’ ability to be compromised, Zuckerman suggested it could be a mix of both. She also takes issue with the fact that many crypto media and journalists see their mission as helping catalyze mass adoption, saying:

“I do not think so [crypto media] should help catalyze mass adoption in person. I think crypto media should only reveal the facts of what is happening in the space. And I think, unfortunately, right now, if crypto media did a neutral job with it, then most people would probably leave the space because there would just be articles about bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy.

According to Zuckerman, the true purpose of crypto media is to educate readers:

“I don’t think that any media should ever have a goal of, for example, getting more people to use cryptocurrency. I think it should be, let’s get more people to understand how it works. But if they understand how it works and hate it, that’s the same positive outcome to me as understanding how it works based on an article you read and liking it.”

To hear more from Zuckerberg, listen to the full episode of The agenda on the Cointelegraph Podcasts page, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – and be sure to check out Cointelegraph’s other programs as well.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.