Insights, tools and research to advance journalism
Susan Benkelman joined the American Press Institute in November to lead its project to improve and expand accountability journalism. Before joining API, Susan worked for five years as a news editor in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal. Previously she was the editorial director at CQ-Roll Call, holding the top newsroom job at the company formed by the merger of Roll Call and Congressional Quarterly, where she spent 15 years as an editor. Previously, Susan was been a reporter at Newsday in Washington, New York and Moscow, and before that was in the Washington and Lansing bureaus for the Detroit News. Originally from Michigan, she holds a degree in Journalism from Michigan State University.
By now, most people who operate in the world of misinformation are well aware of the conspiracy theories associated with the fire at Paris’ Cathedral of Notre Dame this week. The hoaxes came swiftly and unabashedly: assertions the fire was deliberately started, that there were chants of “Allahu Akbar” outside the church and that a […]
Published
Facebook tackles election misinformation This month, elections kick off in at least five countries around the world. As a result, Facebook and other tech platforms have been doing some last-minute preparation to try to protect their platforms from misinformation. In India, where voters have been stricken with misinformation in the lead-up to the start of the general […]
Published
More misinformation-related attacks This week, France became the latest country to be stricken with misinformation-related violence. On Monday, French police arrested 20 people accused of attacking Roma people in the suburbs of Paris. In one attack, about 50 people armed with sticks and knives attacked Roma living in a slum and set fire to their cars. […]
Published
Can tech companies help fight U.S. Census misinformation? The U.S. election isn’t the only 2020 event threatened to be disrupted by misinformation. Reuters reported Wednesday that the U.S. Census Bureau has asked Google, Facebook and Twitter to “help it fend off fake news campaigns it fears could disrupt the upcoming 2020 count,” citing Census officials and others […]
Published
Fact-checkers gear up for elections in Europe A big development in fact-checking this week came in Europe, where 19 news organizations are collaborating on a project called FactCheckEU. They’ll fact-check politicians’ rhetoric and misinformation ahead of the May parliamentary elections. (Full disclosure: The platform is being helped with an innovation grant from the IFCN, and the participants […]
Published
Two new health fact-checkers When HealthNewsReview.org announced it was shutting down in December, it went mostly unnoticed. Almost nobody tweeted about the closure of the outlet, which had been debunking bogus health claims for 13 years. An email to the IFCN listserv highlighting HealthNewsReview’s demise got no responses. And the move went uncovered by most major media […]
Published
Anti-vaccine posts draw scrutiny Social media platforms’ role in fueling anti-vaccination sentiment is drawing continued scrutiny in light of a surge in measles outbreaks around the world. It is a particular concern in the United States, where lawmakers have been holding hearings on the issue, including one Tuesday in which Ethan Lindenberger, an 18-year-old son of an […]
Published
Facebook crowdsourcing, one year later When Mark Zuckerberg revealed last week that he was considering crowdsourcing as a way to combat misinformation on Facebook, journalists went on the defensive. “You can’t apply an open-source model to fact-checking and journalism,” former Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski told The Guardian. “You have to have experts.” “Some obvious problems […]
Published
A barrage of fake images in Kashmir Jency Jacob had never seen anything like it. “We have been fact checking since November 2016,” the Boom Live managing editor tweeted on Monday. “Never before has one incident taught us so many things about new forms of #fakeimages.” The incident Jacob referred to was a Feb. 14 terrorist attack […]
Published
So long, fact-checkers Friday is Alexios Mantzarlis’ last day as IFCN Director, so we’ll let him have the top of the newsletter this week. (He also got cake.) Alexios will be succeeded by Baybars Örsek, formerly the director of Turkish fact-checking site Doğruluk Payı. Cristina Tardáguila, the director of Brazilian fact-checking wire Agência Lupa, will also be […]
Published
