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Category: Journalism/Media

How do audiences decide what news to trust? Fairness and accuracy aren’t the only things that matter

How do audiences decide what news to trust? Fairness and accuracy aren’t the only things that matter

Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila Mont’Alverne, and Amy Ross Arguedas write: What do people really mean when they say they do not trust the news media? And what can news organizations do to restore trust where it is deserved? This week, our team of researchers at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published a new report that offers somewhat different answers than those most often focused on by journalists and other researchers (much of which we reviewed in…

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What Substack is really doing to the media

What Substack is really doing to the media

Will Oremus writes: This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg granted a rare, live, hourlong interview to a tech journalist, where he revealed the company’s plans for a slew of new audio products. Normally, such a scoopy, wide-ranging interview would be a coup for the media company that landed it. But in this case, there was no traditional media company: The interviewer was Casey Newton, who writes a Substack newsletter called Platformer, and the setting was a new Discord server that…

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How Substack revealed the real value of writers’ unfiltered thoughts

How Substack revealed the real value of writers’ unfiltered thoughts

Jack Shafer writes: What sort of journalist who has been filing brilliant, scoopy copy about technology, privacy and politics for the past two years on the New York Times editorial page would leave that main-course for the side-dish of a newsletter? Charlie Warzel made that leap this week, resigning from the paper to take up residence at the newsletter publisher Substack, where he intends to expand the coverage of his beat with a newsletter titled “Galaxy Brain.” Warzel commented on…

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Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values. But there’s hope

Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values. But there’s hope

Margaret Sullivan writes: Ask almost any group of journalists to name the core values of their profession, and they’ll probably deliver a list like this: Oversight. We’re the watchdogs keeping an eye on government officials and other powerful people and institutions. Transparency. We believe it’s best to put information out in the open, not keep it hidden. Factuality. It’s crucial to provide as much accurate information as possible to get to the truth. Spotlighting wrongdoing. We think society’s problems are…

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We are living in a climate emergency, and we’re going to say so

We are living in a climate emergency, and we’re going to say so

Mark Fischetti writes: An emergency is a serious situation that requires immediate action. When someone calls 911 because they can’t breathe, that’s an emergency. When someone stumbles on the sidewalk because their chest is pounding and their lips are turning blue, that’s an emergency. Both people require help right away. Multiply those individuals by millions of people who have similar symptoms, and it constitutes the biggest global health emergency in a century: the COVID-19 pandemic. Now consider the following scenarios:…

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The pandemic’s wrongest man: Alex Berenson

The pandemic’s wrongest man: Alex Berenson

Derek Thompson writes: The pandemic has made fools of many forecasters. Just about all of the predictions whiffed. Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks. California was wrong about the outdoors. New York was wrong about the subways. I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief. And the Trump White House was wrong about almost everything else. In this crowded field of wrongness, one voice stands out. The voice of Alex Berenson: the former New York Times reporter, Yale-educated…

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He worked in Russian media. He recognizes the same tactics at Fox News

He worked in Russian media. He recognizes the same tactics at Fox News

Brian Klaas writes: In a newly released report, U.S. intelligence agencies outline how Russia yet again sought to subvert American democracy. The findings confirm that the Kremlin tried to plant damaging disinformation about Joe Biden among associates of then-President Donald Trump. That report and others that preceded it are important, because the foreign threat to American democracy is real and growing. But they should not distract us from a disturbing reality: The most serious danger to the United States from…

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Trump predicted news ratings would ‘tank if I’m not there.’ He wasn’t wrong

Trump predicted news ratings would ‘tank if I’m not there.’ He wasn’t wrong

The Washington Post reports: Of all Donald Trump’s prophecies and predictions — that Mexico would pay for a border wall, that the coronavirus would spontaneously disappear, that he would be easily reelected — at least one wasn’t entirely wrong. “Newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there,” he augured in 2017, “because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.” Barely two months into the post-Trump era, news outlets are indeed losing much of the…

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Des Moines Register reporter acquitted in trial stemming from arrest as she covered George Floyd protest

Des Moines Register reporter acquitted in trial stemming from arrest as she covered George Floyd protest

Des Moines Register reports: Andrea Sahouri says her acquittal Wednesday on two criminal charges sends an important message about recognizing the rights of journalists to do their jobs. “The jury made the right decision,” said Sahouri, a reporter for the Des Moines Register. “They made the decision to uphold democracy, a just democracy, the freedom of the press, First Amendment rights, the list goes on.” Sahouri was arrested while covering the George Floyd protests in May 2020, and charged with…

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In ‘exceedingly rare’ case, Iowa journalist faces charges from reporting on summer protests

In ‘exceedingly rare’ case, Iowa journalist faces charges from reporting on summer protests

USA Today reports: The trial of a Des Moines Register reporter who was arrested covering racial justice protests last summer is slated to begin next week in what experts said is a rare criminal prosecution of a journalist on assignment in the USA. Andrea Sahouri faces charges of failure to disperse and interference with official acts and is set to stand trial starting Monday. At least 126 journalists were arrested or detained in 2020, but only 13 still face charges,…

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American cynicism has reached a breaking point

American cynicism has reached a breaking point

Megan Garber writes: On Tuesday evening, at the start of his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson shared the results of an investigation that he and his staff had conducted into a well-known agent of American disinformation. “We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon,” Carlson said, “which, in the end, we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it.” They kept looking, though, checking Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed and “the…

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46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime

46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime

Joshua Darr, Jeremy Padgett, and Johanna Dunaway, write: Committee assignments are normally a blessing for new House members. But some of today’s newer members, like freshmen Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, seem to be more interested in punditry than policy. When Greene was stripped of her committee assignments on Feb. 4 for a series of past statements that included threats directed against her Democratic colleagues, she replied by tweeting that she woke up “literally laughing” that “a…

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The Capitol riot killed ‘both sides’ journalism

The Capitol riot killed ‘both sides’ journalism

Meredith Shiner writes: On January 6, terrorists—encouraged by former President Donald Trump and enabled by his Republican supporters in Congress—attacked the United States Capitol. And as they came for the republic, they also came for something else: Beltway journalists. This is true in the literal sense, as rioters etched “Murder the Media” into a Capitol door. But it is also true in a more challenging philosophical sense, as this violence imploded at the very altar of political journalism: the shrine…

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For Donald Trump, Sarah Palin’s fall shows the limits of media obsession

For Donald Trump, Sarah Palin’s fall shows the limits of media obsession

Peter Hamby writes: Palin’s stardom continued unabated all the way through late 2011, a full three years after her arrival on the national scene. Her flirtation with running for the 2012 Republican nomination—never ruling out a bid and allowing supporters to build an operation for her in Iowa—kept her in the headlines. While dancing around a bid of her own, Palin threw carefree darts at declared candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Her newest adviser, a filmmaker named Steve Bannon,…

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Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit poses a real threat to Fox News

Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit poses a real threat to Fox News

CNN reports: “This is the definition of defamation.” That’s what CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates told Erin Burnett Thursday night when discussing Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, three of the network’s hosts (Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro), Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. “When you are making statements that are knowingly false, and you make them with malice, and you actually tarnish reputations and it has a financial consequence — that’s why you have defamation…

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Fox News is sued by election tech company, Smartmatic, for over $2.7 billion

Fox News is sued by election tech company, Smartmatic, for over $2.7 billion

The New York Times reports: Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and three of its popular anchors are the targets of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed on Thursday by a company that became a prominent subject of discredited theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed the suit in New York State Supreme Court against the Fox Corporation, Fox News, and the anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. As part of the…

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