Seeking the under 35 reader: A Reuters Institute report finds young people prefer social media and news aggregators over traditional broadcast or print media.
They use news to fulfill social and personal needs. They don’t seek news; it comes to them.
Hurricane hoaxes: “Hurricanes, just like floods or earthquakes, are commonly surrounded by hoaxes and might trigger the sharing of false information,” writes Cristina Tardaguila.
Make sure you know where to find official information.
Sharing content without thinking: “A complex web of societal shifts is making people more susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy,” writes Claire Wardle.
“Most of this content is designed not to persuade people in any particular direction but to cause confusion, to overwhelm and to undermine trust in democratic institutions from the electoral system to journalism. Users become “unwitting agents of disinformation.”
News bums people out: “Basically, we are bumming — and burning — people out,” writes Christine Schmidt about a worldwide Reuters Digital News report. People avoid it.
Solutions journalism points the way to solving depressing problems, like details putting solutions into action.
Recognizing satire: “People have long mistaken satire for real news,” write R. Kelly Garrett, Robert Bond and Shannon Poulsen.
Satirical newspapers found to be quoted as factual. Democrats and republicans fooled. Americans think made-up news is a significant problem.
Detecting deepfake videos: Fake videos pose a grave threat to the 2020 elections, writes Olivia Beavers, unless media adopt policies to tell real videos from forgeries.
“In the internet age, newsrooms have scrutinized images and videos to determine whether they are authentic or fake,” she writes. “But deepfakes will be a more difficult challenge, particularly because artificial intelligence makes the authenticity of such videos indistinguishable to the human eye and forgeries harder to detect.”
Reporting hate speech, violence and terrorism: The Public Media Alliance of journalists in South East Asia adopts guidelines for covering hate speech, violence and terrorism.
An action plan workshop developed policies beginning with definitions leading to “how journalists and media professionals should respond to such situations.”
Mass shootings spawn misinformation: Fact-checking the El Paso and Dayton shootings revealed three findings, write Daniel Funke, Susan Benkelman and Cristina Tardaguila.
Conspiracy mongering, rumors via messaging apps and hoaxes abound.
Why journalism matters: “Why journalism matters should be one of the most important questions of our age, writes Glynn Greensmith. It’s the path to becoming informed.
“When journalists are targeted, arrested, beaten and murdered all over the world, it’s because the people doing it know how important journalism is,” Greensmith writes. Decline of journalism coincides with the decline in democracy.
Newsroom diversity failing: We must put the responsibility on the cultural institution we call journalism, not just its individuals or organizations, writes Kathleen McElroy.
“Like all white patriarchal institutions in America, journalism has seen itself outside of and superior to race — and also by extension, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion and able-bodiedness,” she writes.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 