Learn news literacy this week News Goggles: Breaking news | Fake Voltaire quote | Butterfly center falsehoods
Breaking news involves coverage of an event that has just happened or is still happening. Details can change quickly as more information emerges. This week, we talk to journalist Candice Norwood about her role as a breaking news reporter at The 19th*, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on gender, politics and policy.
Norwood sheds light on her recent coverage of President Joe Biden reaffirming his pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, following Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement. We discuss how The 19th* approaches breaking news with its mission in mind and examine how news organizations demonstrate credibility and transparency in their newsgathering for developing stories. Grab your news goggles!
Is the vaccination status of people who die of COVID-19 a relevant detail that should be included in news reports? Editors across the country are grappling with this question, according to The Poynter Institute’s Kelly McBride. There are a number of considerations involved in making this decision, including whether the victim publicly disparaged vaccine effectiveness; whether revealing this detail could result in harassment of family members; and whether it’s possible to present this fact in a compassionate, humanizing context.
An inaccurate — and promptly corrected — Reuters headline and story on research into using ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 highlight how quickly falsehoods can spread and underscore the importance of accurate framing, context and word choice in news reports.
NO: Voltaire, an 18th century French philosopher and writer, did not say or write the quote in this meme. YES: It paraphrases a statement made by Kevin Alfred Strom, the founder of the neo-Nazi group National Vanguard, who is an avowed white nationalist and Holocaust denier, during an antisemitic radio show in 1993. YES: Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie tweeted this meme on Jan. 30. NO: Massie is not the first person to share this fake Voltaire quote.
NewsLit takeaway: Fake quotes are notoriously common online and warrant correcting even if they seem benign. But, as Dan Evon at Snopes points out, this case also highlights a toxic disinformation tactic: An attempt to launder “discredited ideas and hateful rhetoric” through a more trustworthy source (in this case, Voltaire) to make them more acceptable and likely to spread online.
NO: More than 65% of Americans do not actually believe that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. YES: According to 14 public opinion surveys about the election reviewed by PolitiFact, the proportion of Americans who say that they don’t trust the integrity of the election “has hovered around 35% since November 2020.” YES: In at least three of these surveys, the share of Republicans who say they don’t trust the election results was around 65%.
NewsLit takeaway: Purveyors of disinformation often exaggeratepublicsentiment for or against key politicalfigures and issues to distort political discourse and influence political agendas. This particular rumor also seeks to use fabricated public opinion “data” to create the illusion of substance around baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. Cognitive biases — including our natural tendencies to confirm our existing beliefs and privilege our direct experiences over empirical data — play a major role in the acceptance of this kind of false evidence.
Critics of government policies aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 have seized on what many are inaccurately referring to as a “Johns Hopkins study” — but the paper doesn’t come from Johns Hopkins University itself, and some medical experts are critical of its findings.
Anti-vaccination groups have capitalized on the COVID-19 pandemic to raise their profiles … and a lot of money.
Misinformation reporter Davey Alba explains how she debunks falsehoods in the latest installment of “Annotated by the Author” from The New York Times Learning Network. (Bonus: There’s also an accompanying lesson plan!)
The National Butterfly Center, a butterfly conservatory along the Rio Grande River in Texas, has shut down as a safety precaution after conspiracy theory adherents started showing up to “investigate” baseless claims that it’s a cover for a child trafficking operation. The New York Times noted that the “recent trouble began in 2017” after the center refused to support construction of a new section of border wall through its property.
The ongoing debate over “critical race theory” has been marked by misinformation and a disconnect between what’s actually being taught in the classroom and the political rhetoric surrounding it, according to this ABC News report.
Check out this short video from USA Today for one expert's take on why Sarah Palin's libel case against The New York Times is worth watching and how “it could prove to be a landmark decision.” (The 1964 decision in The New York Times v. Sullivan case set the current standard for defamation claims by public officials.)
Though details of former CNN President Jeff Zucker’s sudden departure from the network are still emerging, at least one thing is clear, argues Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan: His legacy will be tied to “ill-advised decisions” that put ratings over sound news judgment and journalistic ethics — including, Sullivan notes, how he “created and burnished the Trump persona.”
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![A Facebook post that says “With an election for president 3 years away… he drew over 90,000 last night in Texas. Something big is obviously happening!” The post includes an image of a crowd with the text “Over 65% of the country believes that [the] 2020 election was fraudulent. That number was around 35% a year ago.” The News Literacy Project added a label that says, “FALSE.”](https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Over-65_-FALSE-claim-LARGE.jpg)
