Asking audiences to make a donation to support journalism may not have been something many local news organizations — apart from public media newsrooms, that is — had experience (or comfort) doing. The coronavirus pandemic helped change that. Thrown into severe financial distress at the onset of the pandemic, some news organizations started asking for […]

This is the fourth installment of a column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. It is published in partnership with the Poynter Institute. Read the previous column here. The numbers are hard for some to fathom. More than six in […]

The American Press Institute is beginning a new effort to support audience-centered accountability and government reporting, starting with a kickoff event June 17. Through discussion, peer learning and small project funds, the Local News Ideas-to-Action Series will help news organizations learn from journalists and newsrooms prioritizing the information needs of their communities to shape reporting; […]

More than a year after the global pandemic became official, local journalism still grapples with the fallout — not only from the coronavirus but also by an intense nationwide racial reckoning, regional disasters including fires and storms, and ever-present gun violence and mass shootings. The flood of news events over the past year also exacerbated […]

Worldwide, the lives of most journalists have been consumed over the past 12 months by cataclysmic events both anticipated and unexpected. But no media organization has been battered more than the local newsroom. Journalists in America’s towns and small cities were the first responders to massive COVID-19 outbreaks, police shootings, protests, violent demonstrations, fractious political […]

As the Trump era comes to a close, a big question for fact-checkers and other journalists covering the next administration is whether his mendacity has diluted the standard of truthfulness that we can expect from American leaders. Will fact-checkers call politicians on their falsehoods only to hear them repeated again and again? Has President Trump […]

Last week, Facebook announced it would be taking a more proactive role in fighting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in an effort to support public health efforts to address the global pandemic. However, in an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” First Draft co-founder and U.S. director Claire Wardle argued that much of the misinformation about the pandemic response may fly […]

One of the most revealing moments in American fact-checking in 2020 occurred in September when CNN’s Daniel Dale was asked about President Donald Trump’s claim on Fox News that Joe Biden’s campaign was run by people “in the dark shadows.” Dale just shook his head. “It’s almost too stupid to fact-check,” he told his CNN colleague […]

Fact-checking is a form of journalism, and journalism is, at heart, a competitive sport. But when faced with this year’s dual fire hoses of political and COVID-19 misinformation, fact-checkers have had little choice but to work together. The Paris Peace Forum, a yearly gathering of world leaders and nongovernmental organizations working to solve global problems, highlighted […]

Pfizer’s announcement this week that it had a 90% effective vaccine against COVID-19 provided a glimpse of the wave of mis- and disinformation that could engulf any effort to bring about broad distribution – and acceptance – of such a vaccine. The announcement itself was the subject of a conspiracy theory: that it came out […]