News Goggles: Climate coverage | Fake ‘mews’ | False fainting rumor

December 6, 2021

Teach news literacy this week
News Goggles: Climate coverage | Fake 'mews' | False fainting rumor

Dig deeper: Don’t miss this week’s classroom-ready resource.

Hannah Covington of the News Literacy Project talks with journalist Miguel Otárola of Colorado Public Radio over Zoom about his role covering climate and the environment. A hyperlinked play button on the image leads to a video of their conversation.

Newsworthiness is a key concept in news literacy. With so many stories competing for attention, journalists must determine which events and issues to cover, and how prominently. This week, we talk to Miguel Otárola of Colorado Public Radio about how he decides which story ideas to pursue in his role covering climate and the environment.

Otárola offers insights for his story on restoring forests after wildfires — which also recently aired on the NPR and WBUR show Here & Now — as we discuss news judgment, how journalists select quotes for news reports and the importance of presenting information in context. Grab your news goggles!

Note: News Goggles will be back Feb. 7. You can find previous News Goggles annotations and activities in this guide, or in NLP’s Resource Library under “Classroom Activities.”

Resources: “Practicing Quality Journalism” (NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom) and “Quotes in news reports” (NLP’s News Goggles activity with classroom-ready slides).

Dig deeper: Use this viewing guide for the featured News Goggles video as students consider what makes a topic newsworthy and why information should be presented in context.

Top picks

Reflect on the decline of local news in this special issue of The Washington Post Magazine and consider what communities lose when the news organizations that serve them shutter. Stories in this issue come from news deserts — areas where there is little or no local news coverage — and underscore what’s “in danger of being lost” as newsrooms shrink and news outlets fold. “It’s not just watchdog journalism that suffers,” Margaret Sullivan writes in the issue’s introduction. “The decline affects civic engagement and political polarization, too.”

Related: “Local News Outlets Could Reap $1.7 Billion in Build Back Better Aid” (Marc Tracy, The New York Times).
Idea: Ask students to read one of the stories featured in this issue. What makes the story newsworthy (timely, important, interesting and unique)? How might communities suffer when stories like these go untold?
Another idea: Connect with a local journalist using NLP’s Newsroom to Classroom volunteer directory and discuss changes they’ve seen in the local news industry. How have these changes impacted news coverage? What subjects and news stories go uncovered when a newsroom’s resources shrink? How do journalists decide which stories to prioritize? How does original reporting on local matters of public interest benefit communities?
Resource: “Democracy’s Watchdog” (Checkology virtual classroom).

News consumers often make negative assumptions about how news organizations decide what stories to cover — in part because the public lacks access to details about how these decisions are made. Trusting News, a research and training project aimed at helping journalists demonstrate credibility and earn trust, worked with WCPO-TV, an ABC affiliate in Cincinnati, to invite people who mistrust “the media” to attend a news meeting — and witness how news judgments are actually made. It found that more than half of participants had “a more favorable and trustworthy view” of the news organization after the experience.

Idea: Contact a local newsroom — or use the Newsroom to Classroom program — and connect with a journalist to discuss how news judgments are made in their newsroom. In advance of the conversation, have students journal about how they think these decisions are made, then ask them to reflect on what they learned afterward.
Resources: “What Is News?” and “Be the Editor” (Checkology virtual classroom).

Cat videos may seem like the epitome of harmless online content, but a recent New York Times report shows how some purveyors of misleading and harmful content — including the COVID-19 misinformation superspreader Joseph Mercola — are using cute animal videos and other heartwarming “engagement bait” to draw people to their websites and other channels.

Discuss: How do the groups cited in this report use cute animal videos and other types of innocuous, heartwarming content to “redirect” people to misinformation? Why might this tactic be effective? Can social media platforms do anything to prevent this technique from being used to amplify harmful falsehoods?

Viral rumor rundown

Misleading viral claim about Merriam-Webster changing its definition of ‘vaccine’

A screenshot of an Instagram post from the verified account of musician David Banner. The post contains a text-based meme that says, “Vaccine used to be defined as a substances [sic] that provides 'immunity' to a specific disease. Now, Merriam Webster has literally changed the definition of 'vaccine' and removed the 'immunity' portion in order to possibly cover for the fact that the Covid 'vaccines' don't actually provide immunity from Covid.” The News Literacy Project has added a label that says “MISLEADING.”

NO: Merriam-Webster did not change the definition of the word “vaccine” as a strategic cover-up for the less-than-perfect efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. YES: Merriam-Webster revised its definition of “vaccine” in 2021 to be more scientifically accurate and account for mRNA technology. NO: The edits did not simply remove references to immunity. YES: The updates resulted in a significantly more extensive and detailed definition (see graphic below).

A graphic showing screenshots of three versions of the definition for “vaccine” in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary in 2021 from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The old definition that included a reference to increased “immunity” appears in the archive until Jan. 26, 2021. The current definition (as of Dec. 3, 2021) was online by June 1, 2021. Click on the graphic to view a larger version of this image.

NewsLit takeaway: Misleading claims about changed definitions have circulated before, including about the pandemic, and often contain ambiguous conspiratorial overtones. In May 2021, the Russian state propaganda “news” outlet RT (Russia Today) falsely claimed that Merriam-Webster had changed its definition of “anti-vaxxer” in a strategic attempt “to fit a narrative” concerning vaccine mandates. This recent rumor about the definition of “vaccine” falsely suggests that there are powerful entities interested in covering up information about the efficacy (which is demonstrated) of COVID-19 vaccines.

Related:

“‘Vaccine’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year 2021, Here’s How They Updated Their Definition” (Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes).
“Misinformation fuelled by ‘tsunami’ of poor research, says science prize winner” (Hannah Devlin, The Guardian).

Viral photo does not show 2021 COVID-19 mandate protest in Austria

A Facebook post of a photo showing a large crowd with the words “We will not comply. The revolution will not be televised! (Austria). You are not alone. #welcome2therevolution.” The News Literacy Project has added a label to this post that says “Moscow 1991.”

NO: This is not a photo of November 2021 protests against new COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates in Austria. YES: It is a 1991 photo of a much larger estimated crowd of 500,000 protesters outside the Kremlin in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, demanding that then-President Mikhail Gorbachev and his Communist government step down. YES: As many as 40,000 people marched through Vienna on Nov. 20 in opposition to a new COVID-19 lockdown measure and a vaccine mandate for adults. NO: This isn’t the first time this photo has been used out of context to exaggerate the size of protest crowds.

NewsLit takeaway: Photos of large crowds are often used out of context (see here, here, here and here) to exaggerate the public’s response to a given news event or cause. In fact, this is such a common tactic that it has become a satirical misinformation meme online. Similar to astroturfing campaigns, these tricks of context distort perceptions of public sentiment in an effort to manipulate others.

Related: “This video shows football fans marching through an Austrian town in 2019, not an anti-lockdown rally” (AFP Fact Check).

Video montage of athletes collapsing isn’t evidence of vaccine harm

A retweet of a video showing athletes collapsing that says, “Not normal. Boost at your own Pearl [peril].” The original tweet containing the video says, “We’re living in a sick, sick world. How is this deemed normal and even acceptable?” The News Literacy Project has added a label that says, “FALSE CONTEXT.”

NO: The athletes shown collapsing in this video montage are not experiencing side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. YES: The clips show players and referees in various sports collapsing for different reasons, including dehydration, heat exhaustion and, in one case, a soccer player (who was unvaccinated at the time) in cardiac arrest. YES: Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, is an extremely rare and treatable side effect of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines among young people. YES: Myocarditis also can be caused by COVID-19 itself.

NewsLit takeaway: Creating collections of out-of-context headlines, images and video clips, especially those that evoke a strong emotional response, is a common disinformation tactic. These “evidence collages” are often used to manipulate public sentiment about a subject. In this case, a selective montage of athletes collapsing is designed to mislead the viewer into falsely believing there has been a sharp increase in such incidents that coincides with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

Related:

“Fact Check: List Is NOT A Verified Accurate Account Of 108 Deaths Of FIFA Players And Coaches In Six Months Of 2021” (Sarah Thompson, Lead Stories).
“Pre-pandemic video shared in misleading posts about girl 'collapsing after Covid-19 vaccine'” (AFP Fact Check).
“Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines safe for children, not linked to deaths” (Daniel Funke, USA Today).
“Benefits Outweigh Risks of Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine, Contrary to Posts Misusing VAERS Data” (Lori Robertson and Jessica McDonald, FactCheck.org).

You can find this week's rumor examples to use with students in these slides.

NLP's FREE News Literacy Educator Network. Join NewsLit Nation

Kickers: Journalism slang. The ending of a story or nes report, often intended to leave a lasting impression.

	CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was fired by the network following ongoing revelations about the extent of his efforts to help his brother — former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — respond to allegations of sexual harassment, including by asking contacts at other news organizations “about yet-to-be-published” reporting. (For more on journalism ethics, see this News Goggles resource on previous conflict of interest concerns related to Chris Cuomo's news coverage of his brother.)
	Twitter announced on Nov. 30 an expansion of its policy on private information, saying that it “will not allow the sharing of … images or videos of private individuals without their consent.” Critics worry the policy could interfere with the freedom to document public spaces and impede the work of anti-extremism researchers.
	A new report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism examines how journalists increasingly walk a “Twitter tightrope” in their work and digs into newsroom social media policies and the risks that journalists — especially women and journalists of color — face in using these platforms.
	Demand for bags of “magic dirt” sold as part of a miracle cure multilevel marketing ploy skyrocketed during the pandemic before crackdowns from health regulators and criticism from online skeptics helped shut it down.
	Facebook recently allowed ads promoting anti-vaccine messages to run on its platform, including ads “comparing the US government’s response to Covid-19 to Nazi Germany.”
	Mark Hayes of the Atlanta Daily World — the city’s oldest Black newspaper — recently reflected on news coverage of the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial and said removing emotion from “our coverage almost does our community a disservice.”

Thanks for reading!

Your weekly issue of The Sift is created by Peter Adams (@PeterD_Adams), Hannah Covington (@HannahCov) and Pamela Brunskill (@PamelaBrunskill), and edited by Mary Kane (@marykkane).

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