I use the term “fake news” to refer to doctored social media posts that were never written by the purported authors, or real photos taken out of context and given new captions. Sharing such posts because they flatter your pre-conceived notions of the targets contributes to the devaluing of the truth. Politicians have put spins…
Trump senior adviser’s son, who used a transition team email but had, according to Pence, “no involvement in the transition whatsoever,” is now, according to a transition team spokesman, no longer part of the transition team. According to two other transition officials, the reason this person with a transition team email address who was never…
Facebook’s Patrick Walker assured a room full of journalists that Zuck’s strategy to combat fake news will work. The plan (released previously by FB): stronger detection, easy reporting, third party verification, warnings, related articles quality, disrupting the economy of fake news, and listening. Also speaking at the conference was Espin Egil Hansen, who in September…
I think and post about fake news a lot. Just the other day, I came across a Tweet that seemed to show evidence that a very public figure had flip-flopped on a divisive cultural issue. First I had an emotional reaction, then I checked who shared the post I was reacting to. I didn’t recognize…
The Times played it right…. Off-the-record was a mistake for the TV people, and it would have been a mistake for the Times. The paper successfully called Trump’s bluff. As much as he professes to despise the Times, he remains in some ways the Queens boy who lusted after Manhattan success and acceptance. In many…
Facebook is designed to keep your attention, not inform you with an unbiased view of the truth. If you follow people who think like you, that will affect your social media feed. If you block people who infuriate you, that will also affect your social media feed. I hope FB develops a way that lets responsible…
More on how their desire to control the narrative led journalists to ignore alternative voices: That’s the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them racist enough, they’ll eventually shut up and get in line. It’s similar to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the proper framing…
If we were surprised Tuesday night, it was because journalism failed us. As reported in the NY Times, every major source forecasted the Clinton win for which the establishment desperately hoped. No one predicted a night like this — that Donald J. Trump would pull off a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and win the presidency.…
My journos are out there, gathering news. I’m asking them to submit whatever they’ve gathered by the end of our 75-minute class, and then polish the story before midnight. Similar:Bar Association #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 16) Rom Inspires Quark's Employe…Rewatching ST:DS9 As The Defiant return…MediaWhat Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-GeeksI’ve…
Jurors awarded a University of Virginia administrator $3 million Monday for her portrayal in a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about the school’s handling of a brutal gang rape a fraternity house. The 10-member jury’s decision came after they concluded Friday that the magazine, its publisher and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely were responsible for defamation,…
World Series: Chicago Tribune & the Sun-Times. Staff Photographers v No Staff Photographers. Any questions? #photojournalism @briancassella pic.twitter.com/LHLQ1VFl1o — Jim Colton (@JimmyColton) November 3, 2016 Similar:Facebook shrinks fake news after warnings backfireIn its efforts to combat the spread of f…BusinessWhat the police really believe: Inside the distinctive, largely unknown ideology of Americ…“That whole thing about…
Similar:Scratchy "Cloak of Darkness" on Scratch”Scratchy Cloak of Darkness” is based on…AestheticsLearning the hard way, by making mistakes and starting over. The fore section of the fanta… AestheticsShould the AP Really Have Fired This Pulitzer-Prize War Photographer?The original shot caught a Syrian rebel …AestheticsFreedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is…
Blogging the latest developments in a story I use in my journalism classes. “When I got off the phone, I felt like the ground had shifted from under my feet,” Erdely said. “The person I had talked to was not the person I was familiar with from my story. I felt that she didn’t have…
This sounds a lot like wishful thinking, but there’s plenty to learn from well-articulated alternate opinions. What if, in the mad dash two decades ago to repurpose and extend editorial content onto the Web, editors and publishers made a colossal business blunder that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars? What if the industry should have…
The invention of the telegraph and the syndication of news brought national and even international news to local readers. This didn’t just change how newspapers worked. It changed what newspapers meant. | In the late-1800s, there were papers for every “class, sect, and political group,” Gallup said. Local journalism in that time was easy to do.…
I am revamping an existing “News Writing” course so that it becomes “News, Arts and Sports Reporting,” and am thus trying to educate myself about sports writing. Good writing is engaging no matter what the subject is. This is a great example. The headline is written for an international audience. Without assuming that the reader…
For the first time since Rolling Stone magazine’s shocking story about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia hit shelves two years ago, the public may hear from the young woman at the center of the now discredited article “A Rape on Campus.” | A defamation trial against the magazine is set to begin…
In an experiment conducted over several weeks following Facebook’s promotion of the fake Megyn Kelly story, the Post recorded which topics were trending for it every day, on the hour, across four accounts. | That turned up five trending stories that were “indisputably fake” and three that were “profoundly inaccurate,” Caitlyn Dewey reported. | There’s no…
Don’t count on viral social media posts or TV talkshow monologues to form your world view. It’s a moral obligation for people in a free society to have access to credible, unbiased information. All evidence shows that people of all ages want and consume more news than ever. We need to focus on new ways…
When my students refer in passing to “the media,” I know what they mean, but I ask them to be more specific, noting that handwritten notes, carvings on stone tablets, and papier mâché are all examples of “media.” So I agree with this WashPo observation that the term is so general it is meaningless. Not…