The deputy director of MediaWise, the Poynter Institute’s media literacy program, will be one of the keynote speakers at Media Party Buenos Aires 2026. Her work focuses on a question that the era of agents makes urgent: how to prepare the public to distinguish the real from the generated.
Until very recently, looking closely at the content we consumed was enough. An unblinking person or blurry teeth were enough for an image or video created with artificial intelligence to give itself away. Nowadays, it is necessary to sharpen our critical eye, since these clues no longer work. Brittani Kollar spoke about this issue in a column published in February, where she added a warning: the technology to generate content advances faster than the tools to detect it.
If the machines don’t give themselves away, the question shifts. It is no longer enough for the media to use AI well: the public also needs tools to read what circulates. Kollar is dedicated to this task as deputy director of MediaWise. With this background, she becomes a fundamental part of this new edition of the Media Party.
From CNN’s international desk to teaching verification
Before Poynter, Kollar spent 13 years at CNN. For seven years, she worked on the international affiliates desk, coordinating daily and breaking news coverage with the network’s partners in different countries.
Since 2014, she dedicated herself to a new focus: training journalists. She managed the CNN Fellowship and the CNN Bootcamp, programs designed for professionals from international affiliates and students from partner universities. More than 1,000 journalists went through the Fellowship, receiving training in ethics, reporting, and writing.
This shift defines her career path: rather than producing news, teaching others to work with it. At the Poynter Institute, she oversees global strategic partnerships, programming, and operations for MediaWise. This includes projects with partners in different countries, studies with universities, and an international network of media literacy specialists that meets monthly.
AI literacy for non-experts
MediaWise was born in 2018 with a specific goal: teaching one million Generation Z youth in the United States how to find reliable sources. It achieved this in one year. Since then, it has expanded its audience to all ages and, according to Poynter, has reached more than 151 million people, with partnerships in 30 countries.
Latin America is part of that map. In 2023, MediaWise expanded to the Spanish-speaking region with a free course in Guatemala, adapted in collaboration with the Guatevisión channel. It was a launch that Kollar announced from Poynter.
With the arrival of generative AI, the focus expanded. MediaWise launched alt+Ignite, an AI literacy initiative designed for educators, students, librarians, journalists, and, according to Kollar, anyone who encounters AI in their daily lives. It includes a toolkit, classroom resources, and a certificate course. One of its exercises proposes that each participant create their own guidelines for using AI. It is not about memorizing tricks, but about building judgment.
The work also looks toward newsrooms. Together with The Associated Press and supported by Microsoft, MediaWise developed a toolkit for journalists and media outlets to explain to their audiences how they use AI, using accessible language and transparent practices.
Judgment is also trained on the audience’s side
Media Party Buenos Aires 2026 is organized under the theme “Storytelling in the era of agents” and places cognitive sovereignty at its center: the ability to think, editorialize, and decide without delegating judgment to a machine.
The other keynotes address this idea from the newsroom, like Caspar Llewellyn Smith, or from an investigative perspective, like Marina Walker Guevara. Kollar adds the question that completes the picture: what happens to those who receive the information?
If agents summarize, recommend, and narrate, journalism’s credibility also depends on a public capable of asking where what they read comes from. That sovereignty is not declared: it is trained.
For journalists and editors, her presence is an opportunity to think about how to speak to their audience about AI without losing their trust. For educators, audience teams, developers, and entrepreneurs, it is an invitation to design tools that help people decide for themselves. MediaWise is also supporting this edition as a partner.
From October 29 to 31, the question of who knows how to read machines also has a place at Media Party Buenos Aires 2026. Ciudad Cultural Konex.
Register here to be a part of it.
