Elections and Media

Lawmakers are concerned that advances in video manipulation technology could set off a new era of fake news. Now legislators say they want to start working on fixes to the problem before it’s too late. 

[Commentary]  President Donald Trump’s derision hasn’t just seeped into the public consciousness; it’s worked its way into journalists’ bloodstreams, too. Take bad economics, mix in the devaluing of journalism as a profession—both from within and without—and the downgrading of truth in American culture, and you have a recipe for despair. There’s a growing impetus for our best journalists, now and in the future, to write off the profession entirely and opt for a life that’s relatively sane.

The special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations owith illegally using social media platforms to sow political discord, including actions that supported the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and disparaged his opponent, Hillary Clinton. In a 37-page indictment filed in United States District Court, Mueller said that the 13 individuals have conspired since 2014 to violate laws that prohibit foreigners from spending money to inf

In the wake of Feb 14's Parkland (FL) school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. As of morning, shooting-related terms dominated the site’s trending hashtags and topics, including Parkland, guncontrolnow, Florida, guncontrol, and Nikolas Cruz, the name of the alleged shooter.

Russia’s disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election relied heavily on stories produced by major American news sources to shape the online political debate.  The analysis by Columbia University social media researcher Jonathan Albright of more than 36,000 tweets sent by Russian accounts showed that obscure or foreign news sources played a comparatively minor role, suggesting that the discussion of “fake news” during the campaign has been somewhat miscast.

The aftermath of the 2016 election has been dominated by two questions. How did Donald Trump win? And did the Democratic Party tilt too much toward Hillary Clinton, choking Bernie Sanders’s candidacy and condemning America to a Trump presidency? Lurking in these questions is a very modern vision of electoral politics. Today, we see elections, and even party primaries, as open platforms; to imagine anything else is unnatural. But primary elections didn’t exist in American politics until the beginning of the 20th century, and they did not decide presidential nominees until the 1970s.

The vice president for news for Sinclair Broadcast Group, Scott Livingston, said that he understands why some people may be concerned that the company asked top managers to contribute to the company's Political Action Committee, but he says he does not believe it is a journalistic conflict of interest.  "I do understand the concern but I don’t believe this compromises our journalistic integrity. Our local stations don’t cover the ins and outs of the broadcast regulatory reform." And, Livingston said, the political action committee is "working to save local broadcasting."

The nation’s top intelligence chiefs testified Feb 13 that they fully expect Russia to seek to disrupt the 2018 midterm elections. Appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said that Russia will continue using propaganda, false personas and social media to undermine the upcoming elections.

Hundreds of federal political ads — including those from major players such as the Democratic National Committee and the Donald Trump 2020 campaign — are running on Facebook without adequate disclaimer language, likely violating Federal Election Commission rules. An FEC opinion in December clarified that the requirement for political ads to say who paid for and approved them, which has long applied to print and broadcast outlets, extends to ads on Facebook.

[Commentary] How easy is it to change people’s votes in an election? The answer, a growing number of studies conclude, is that most forms of political persuasion seem to have little effect at all. This conclusion may sound jarring at a time when people are concerned about the effects of the false news articles that flooded Facebook and other online outlets during the 2016 election. Observers speculated that these so-called fake news articles swung the election to Donald J. Trump.