Spotting Fake Facebook Posts

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Spotting fake Facebook posts: Keith Collins and Sheera Frenkel report that Facebook discovered hundreds of fake pages and user accounts this summer.

The New York Times reporters show real and deceptive posts, asking if you can tell which is fake. It isn’t easy.

The latest influence campaigns imitated post by legitimate pages and groups on Facebook that advocate political beliefs, they report, “amking it difficult to tell what was a genuine post and what was not.” Such campaigns also are known as online disinformation.

Taxing Tech Giants To Save Journalism

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Taxing tech giants to save journalism: Aiden White writes about a British proposal to fund public interest journalism.

In the end, journalism must rely on combination therapy, he writes, including traditional advertising, public subscription, charitable donations and philanthropic largess and new funds.

 

Stress Management Training For Reporters

Media, Minimizing Harm, Online News, Weighing Benefits and Harm, ,

Stress management training for reporters: Tiffany Stevens writes that reporters covering tragic events might suffer depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder or greater risk of substance abuse.

“Even journalists who don’t experience secondary trauma may lose enthusiasm for their profession or undergo burnout, leading to less productivity and a decreased sense of well-being at work,” she writes.

Interviewing Dishonest People

Accountability, Accuracy, Media, Minimizing Harm, Transparency, Using Deception, ,

Interviewing dishonest people: Jason Schwartz says a pressing question in the Trump era is how journalists should handle powerful news makers who are known to be dishonest.

The issue is complicated “and there are distinctions to be found between interviewing sources with checkered histories off-camera, grilling them on-air on a newsworthy subject and bringing them on simply as a talking head,” he writes.

 

Guarding Against Online Trolls

Accountability, Accuracy, Media, Online News, Social Media, Transparency, Using Deception, ,

Guarding against online trolls: James Ball reports that journalistic thoughtfulness often “goes out the door when it comes to reporting events that begin on social media.”

Online celebrities and people on the internet often are manipulators with agendas, Ball writes.

“And journalists fall into their trap, time and time again; something about online messaging turns off our reporting instincts.”

 

Images And False Portrayals

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Images and false portrayals: Rick Paulas reports that KTVU apologized for using an image from a murder victim’s Facebook account.

The news media often treat subjects differently according to race, writes Paulas, portraying black families as living in poverty and being involved in crime. This has “real-life consequences” and sways attitudes.

 

Public Reaction On A Heavy News Day

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Public reaction on a heavy news day: Ariel Edwards-Levy reports Huffpost survey results during a day of presidential setbacks.

“Some were raptly following the latest political setbacks,” writes Edwards-Levy. “Others were burned out, overwhelmed or uninterested or just didn’t trust the media.”

To journalists, it was “all-consuming.”

 

Good News On Media Trust

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Good news on media trust: Indira Lakshmanan and Rick Edmonds report that trust in media scored higher since last year and “the great majority of Americans trust their local news sources.”

A Poynter Media Trust survey finds “that the president’s attempts to discredit the news may be having less effect a year and a half into his presidency.”

Media Audiences Drop, Except Radio

Accountability, Media, Online News, , ,

Media audiences drop, except radio: Michael Barthel reports Pew Research Center findings for every major sector of the U.S. news media for 2017.

“Radio was the only sector studied that did not show an audience decline, by several measures,” writes Barthel. Newspapers, cable TV, network TV, local TV and digital-native news were all down by five to 15 percent.

 

Seven Steps For A Free Press

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Seven steps for a free press: “Let’s help people imagine, just for a second, a world without their regular news sources,” write Melody Kramer and Betsy O’Donovan, who propose news blackouts.

Rebuild a national belief that journalism is a public service, they write, not public enemy number one. News organizations must work together to do that.