Journalism

How can news outlets improve their standing in the eyes of the public? If a study published by Northwestern University in Qatar is any indication, then the key to a higher level of trust might be a lower level of free speech.

Northwestern surveyed seven Middle Eastern countries and found that citizens in six of them ascribe more credibility to their press than Americans do to theirs — by wide margins, in some cases. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, 85 percent of citizens say the media is credible; the rates are 62 percent in Qatar and 59 percent in Saudi Arabia. Only 32 percent of Americans trust the media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately, according to Gallup. While these Middle Eastern credibility ratings sound great, they are attended by brutal restrictions on journalists. Reporters Without Borders rates countries' press freedoms, using such criteria as access to public records, censorship and safety. Out of 180 countries, the United Arab Emirates ranks 119, Qatar ranks 123 and Saudi Arabia ranks 168.

Current and former Sinclair employees, union representatives, and media experts have been speaking out in investigative reports about the damage Sinclair is doing to the public’s trust in local news, from Baltimore to Seattle and most recently in Providence.

A representative of the union representing employees at Sinclair-owned WJAR station in Providence, RI, recently told The Providence Journal that must-runs have “rattled viewers and WJAR’s own news reporters.” The September report also noted that WJAR appears to have made efforts to limit Sinclair’s editorial influence on its newscasts, airing a recent “Bottom Line with Boris” segment after anchors has signed off from the station’s 11 p.m. news broadcast. Media expert Paola Prado warned readers, though, that the length and placement of broadcasts matter far less than the content shown, directly challenging Sinclair’s frequent defense that its must-run segments account for a small fraction of total news time.

In a report published recently in Psychological Science, a team of academics reviewed two decades of research to better understand how to effectively debunk misinformation. In the end, they found eight worthwhile studies, with more than 6,800 participants. Based on the findings of those experiments, the authors offer these broad recommendations for how to expose misinformation:
Limit arguments supporting misinformation
Encourage scrutiny
Present new information
Bonus: Video may work better than text

The Trump administration, the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and greedy companies are attacking people’s rights to connect and communicate so relentlessly that staying on top of everything that’s happening can feel like an impossible task. That’s why we’ve put together this handy list of five of the biggest threats people are facing:

1) The FCC’s scheme to kill Net Neutrality
2) Anti-Net Neutrality legislation
3) Mega media mergers
4) Local news crisis
5) Lies, lies and more lies: The proliferation of fake news — which Trump embraces — is making it hard to get the truth out about these attacks on our rights to connect and communicate, what’s at stake and what we can do about it.

[Commentary] During her news briefings the week of Sept 11, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has repeatedly suggested that former FBI director James B. Comey may have broken the law and should be investigated. To be clear, this “prosecution from the lectern” is not illegal. It’s probably a sign of the times that it doesn’t even seem particularly surprising. But it should be deeply disturbing.

The president, of course, is the head of the executive branch and the attorney general’s boss. But when it comes to criminal prosecution, there is a long-standing norm of Justice Department independence. Presidents typically don’t interfere with or comment on criminal investigations. This norm is central to our commitment to the rule of law. It reduces the danger that criminal prosecution may be used for political ends. Presidents typically avoid even the appearance of using the justice system to punish political foes or help political allies. That’s banana-republic stuff — it’s not supposed to happen here. Sanders’s accusations from the lectern are simply one symptom of a much larger problem. Anyone who cares about the integrity of the criminal justice system has reason to be concerned by the behavior of this administration.

[Randall D. Eliason teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School.]

The White House on Sept 15 hammered ESPN, calling the network “hypocritical” for what it says is a double-standard in the way it treats conservative and liberal employees. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted the network suspended longtime anchor Linda Cohn, who said earlier this year in a radio interview that left-wing bias at the network had contributed to a loss of subscribers. The latest political controversy at ESPN involves Jemele Hill, who this week called President Trump a white supremacist. The network distanced itself from the anchor but did not fire or suspend her.

Hundreds of TV viewers are taking up President Trump's war with CNN by filing Federal Communications Commission complaints calling for the news network to be punished and taken off the tube, records show — even though the agency has zero authority over cable television.

Since late June, viewers have filed more than 1,100 FCC complaints about news coverage of President Donald Trump. No other topic has consumed them as overwhelmingly as CNN, the news channel President Trump has trashed more than any other. Out of the complaints, about 750 call for CNN to be taken off the air or lose its [non-existent] broadcasting license. Nearly a dozen accuse CNN of broadcasting "illegal" content and committing "treason" or "crimes against America." One says the channel should face a $100 million government fine. In hundreds of other complaints, viewers call the news channel "disgusting," "fake," "bogus," "fictitious," "communistic," and a "danger" to the President. Nearly all of these complaints are misplaced, because cable news is not regulated by any government agency and the FCC has no ability to police it. Several viewers even complained about The New York Times and Washington Post, two newspapers that are in no way regulated by the government.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding $3.3 million to five regional journalism collaborations to promote local news coverage and newsgathering efficiency. The grants will help a total of 23 public media stations coordinate news services as well as produce more community-based, multiplatform coverage of local and regional issues. The collaborations will increase local news coverage at a time when the full-time newspaper jobs that drive local reporting have dramatically declined, as documented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics (OES). In addition to news from underreported rural areas, small towns and urban centers, public media stations play a vital role serving as the backbone of the Emergency Alert System.

The collaboration grants include:

1. Kansas Regional Journalism Collaboration, $502,327. Lead station KCUR (Kansas City) will collaborate with KMUW (Wichita), Kansas Public Radio (Lawrence) and High Plains Public Radio (Garden City) on a statewide news service focusing on statehouse politics, health, education, natural resources, rural life, and agriculture.
2. Collaboration in the Mountain West, $475,000. Lead station Boise State Public Radio (Boise, Idaho) will collaborate with KUNC (Greeley, Colo.), Yellowstone Public Radio (Billings, Mont.), Wyoming Public Media (Laramie), KRCC (Colorado Springs) and KUER (Salt Lake City) on a news service focusing on land and water resource management, regional growth, issues in the rural West, and Western culture.
3. StateImpact Pennsylvania, $652,902. Lead station WITF (Harrisburg) will work with WHYY (Philadelphia), WESA (Pittsburgh) and the public radio program Allegheny Front on a statewide news service focusing on the energy industry, the economic and environmental impact of energy choices, and how energy production affects the health of citizens and communities.
4. California Counts, $994,909. Lead station Southern California Public Radio (KPCC) will work with KQED (San Francisco), KPBS (San Diego), Capital Public Radio (Sacramento) and the non-profit Sacramento-based newsroom CALmatters.org on a statewide, multi-platform news service focusing on statehouse issues, economic opportunity, safety and quality of life, and the next California Dream.
5. Sustainability Regional Journalism Collaboration, $699,847. Lead station Arizona PBS, at the Arizona State Cronkite School of Journalism, will collaborate with KJZZ (Phoenix), Rocky Mountain PBS, KPCC (Los Angeles) and PBS SoCal on a news service focusing on emerging solutions to water resources, renewable energy, climate change and urbanization.

An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has instructed employees not to speak directly with members of the press. Several health journalists quickly condemned the CDC move, calling it “really disturbing” and a “gag order." A late August e-mail by a CDC public affairs officer directs staff to route any correspondence with journalists—“everything from formal interview requests to the most basic of data requests”—through the communication office at its Atlanta headquarters.

Facebook touts its partnership with outside fact-checkers as a key prong in its fight against fake news, but a major new Yale University study finds that fact-checking and then tagging inaccurate news stories on social media doesn’t work. The study found that tagging false news stories as “disputed by third party fact-checkers” has only a small impact on whether readers perceive their headlines as true.

Overall, the existence of “disputed” tags made participants just 3.7 percentage points more likely to correctly judge headlines as false, the study said. The researchers also found that, for some groups—particularly, Trump supporters and adults under 26—flagging bogus stories could actually end up increasing the likelihood that users will believe fake news.