Three out of every four American adults are fooled by fake news headlines. That was the finding of a survey authorized by BuzzFeed. I found that too when I started BD Fact Check, Bangladesh’s first fact-checking organization. I was looking for a model to identify fake news. Fake news stories have more engagement than real…
The headline on a recent article in The Palmer Report suggested that its writer had landed a scoop. “Turns out Donald Trump directly sabotaged the U.S. military mission against Baghdadi,” it read. The subsequent analysis piece written by the blog’s founder, Bill Palmer, a self-described political journalist, went on to accuse President Trump of nearly…
Monica Seals didn’t waste time. Within 24 hours after the nonprofit ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune published an investigation revealing the widespread practice of putting children into solitary confinement in school districts in Illinois, the Centralia radio reporter pressed local officials for answers. Seals, news director at the Withers Broadcasting station in the Southern…
Too easy. That’s how fast the anger and confusion came from those who reacted negatively to the apology offered recently by the editor and staffers of The Daily Northwestern for their coverage of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ campus appearance. But the extreme measure of removing well- and fairly sourced photos, removing a protester’s name…
Today’s college journalists are caught in the vortex of an important national debate that threatens the vibrancy of free speech and free press on campus. Limiting the vigor of speech and the press damages society’s capacity to hear the voices of protesters and undermines the university’s role as a forum for open thought. Here are…