There are many kinds of journalism, but at the heart of their constitutional responsibilities, journalists are in the business of monitoring and keeping a check on people and institutions in power. Journalists, valuing this function, often refer to this job as “watchdog” journalism. Reporters keep an eye over their communities, especially the actions of government […]

People differ in how much understanding they feel they have of important issues they might see in the news, and in how much ability they have to improve the places they live. Two dividing lines we saw in our data cut across age and race. Older Americans are more likely to believe they have a […]

How to tap your niche communities, Facebook labels some media ‘state controlled’ and ‘bothsidesism’ pollutes impeachment coverage

Anticipate audience questions, collaboration across hundreds of news orgs, and fighting fake news starts locally

There is not enough investment in subscriber retention, Wikipedia’s role in local community information, and local news isn’t dying

In May, Instagram announced that it would block hashtags that promote “verifiably false” information about vaccines. The move came after similar efforts from other social media platforms to restrict vaccine misinformation. But anti-vaxxers have developed some clever workarounds to Instagram’s restrictions. Coda Story reported Dec. 6 that anti-vaxxers have started using coded hashtags to continue promoting the false belief that vaccines […]

Show how you cover big news, treat your audience like your board, and here come all the last-minute Pulitzer projects

How to handle misinformation and polarization, how social media contributed to the trust gap, and where to look for training

Once a news organization identifies something as false, the question becomes how to cover it, if at all. The instinct of most news people when they encounter a falsehood is to correct it. The underlying principle here, ingrained in newsroom professionals over time, is to dispel inaccurate information before it spreads too far, whether that […]

The public today must navigate a news ecosystem contaminated with false information. Some of it is spread without malicious intent, which is generally called misinformation. Some of it is designed to mislead or disrupt, which is known as disinformation. And some is aimed at swaying public opinion or beliefs by distorting the facts, which is […]