GSAN: Police raid Kansas newspaper | AI-generated books

Top reads

A roundup of the latest topics in news literacy and misinformation.

“A police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom” (Danielle Kaye and Bill Chappell, NPR).
“People share misinformation because of social media’s incentives — but those can be changed” (Ian Anderson, Gizem Ceylan and Wendy Wood, Nieman Lab).
Opinion: “The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve” (Steven Waldman, The Atlantic).
“The 4 Stages of Conspiracy Theory Escalation on Social Media” (Christine Abdalla Mikhaeil, Scientific American).
“News firms seek transparency, collective negotiation over content use by AI makers - letter” (Yuvraj Malik, Reuters).
“Sweden Is Not Staying Neutral in Russia’s Information War” (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times).
“Amazon removes books ‘generated by AI’ for sale under author’s name” (Ella Creamer, The Guardian).
- Related: “How well do you understand AI? Here are 7 terms to know” (Loreben Tuquero, Poynter).
“Two days in the death, then life, of teen influencer Lil Tay” (Angela Yang, NBC News).
“The year-long fight of a Filipino news site against red-tagging and state censorship” (Raksha Kumar, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism).

Is that a fact? Season 3. New podcast episode! Coming August 17. The lure of health and wellness misinformation.

Featured video

Have you ever noticed how rumors circulate online after a public figure or someone close to them dies? Learn more about this conspiratorial trope in this NLP TikTok video:

A still of a TikTok video features the News Literacy Project’s Dan Evon in front of a notebook with fill-in-the-blank text and a label that reads “Conspiracy Mad Libs.”

Anonymous sources aren’t anonymous
Did you know that anonymous sources aren’t anonymous to the journalists and editors involved in the story? Reputable news organizations have strict policies that govern the use of unnamed sources, which are relatively rare and typically need to meet a high standard.

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Your weekly issue of Get Smart About News is created by Susan Minichiello (@susanmini), Dan Evon (@danieljevon), Peter Adams (@PeterD_Adams), Hannah Covington (@HannahCov) and Pamela Brunskill (@PamelaBrunskill). It is edited by Mary Kane (@marykkane) and Lourdes Venard (@lourdesvenard).

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