It feels like a new conspiracy theory is popping up every day. Just look at the social media posts after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Doctors say the sudden hit to his chest caused a cardiac arrest, but within minutes, vaccine skeptics blamed the COVID-19 vaccine.
Author: Sissel McCarthy
We’ve all heard the saying, “There are two sides to every story.” And sometimes, that’s true in journalism–and life. But balance is not an element of journalism and certainly not its goal. While reporters investigate both—or many—points of view to arrive at what Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel call “the most complete understanding of the facts,” giving equal time to both sides may not always be fair to the truth.
Representation is a huge challenge for newsrooms, and you’re right– they need to do better. When news outlets consult the same people, again and again, the audience is deprived of a full range of voices, perspectives and even facts. A lack of diversity and representation can also breed audience disengagement and mistrust.
That depends on whom you ask, but a lot of U.S. adults and lawmakers in Texas and Florida think so, setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court.
Research has shown that fact-checking is effective, but there are drawbacks to this approach. So instead of relying exclusively on debunking false claims, researchers recommend prebunking. Prebunking is a preemptive strike—a kind of inoculation against misinformation.
America’s partisan divide is becoming more pronounced, and cable news is stoking these divisions even more than social media, according to a new study that tracked the news consumption of tens of thousands of people over four years.
Journalists get this question—or lament—all the time from people who think the news offers too much opinion and not enough fact. More than two-thirds of Americans say they see too much opinion and bias in news. Hence the plea, “just stick to the facts.” Here’s the problem: Serving up just the facts can misrepresent the news or even create a false narrative.
The personalization of news is a permanent feature of our information ecosystem that comes with some benefits and many challenges. News consumers are often overwhelmed by the amount of news they’re exposed to on a daily basis, and news personalization definitely helps by filtering that content. But algorithms that allow news outlets to curate information can lead to a filter bubble, polarization and extreme views.
Public trust in facts has been on the decline for about two decades, and it’s taken a toll. Americans no longer agree on a common set of facts. Many can’t tell the difference between a fact and an opinion, and a growing number no longer trust experts or institutions that used to be the source of basic information. These trends together have led to an epistemic crisis known as truth decay.
Press freedom is under attack by a thousand cuts – and not just in the usual countries known for their media censorship.
