The hidden links between slavery and Wall Street
John Oliver on Corporates Governance and the Mantra of “ Swimming Between the Flags”
Randstad US survey finds casual dress is (almost) always in fashion in today’s workplace. 33 percent of employees prefer an informal dress code to an extra $5K in salary – “Randstad US today released results of a survey exploring American employees’ attitudes regarding workplace fashion. The findings not only revealed casual dress appears to be the new norm in most workplaces, but a third of respondents are completely resistant to formal workwear altogether.
The toxic mix of breaking news and misinformation
It’s
now a given in today’s information environment that major natural disasters,
acts of violence or other big news events will spawn a flood of misinformation.
It’s spread by nefarious actors seeking to sow chaos as well as those who just
don’t know better and are looking to amplify their agendas at a time when
people are paying attention.
Whatever
the motive, unfolding tragedies give misinformers a moment to break through,
putting fact-checkers and other journalists on alert to either debunk the false
information or, at the very least, avoid repeating it.
The
Amazon forest fires provide a solid case study.
As Cristina
reported for Poynter, Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cristiano Ronaldo were
among the celebrities who posted old photos or out-of-context images on Twitter
or Instagram to pressure the Brazilian government to take action against the
fire. Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer star, posted a
photo on Instagram that was actually taken in Rio Grande do Sul, in the
southern part of Brazil, in 2013.
Brazilan
President Jair Bolsonaro, in a nationally televised speech
defending his handling of the fire, called out those who would post “unproven”
data or messages, saying it wouldn’t help solve the problem. Later, though, he tweeted
an image that had been taken in 2014 to show how the Brazilian air forces were
combating the fires.
Similarly,
false rumors were spread widely after shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton,
Ohio. And those rumors continue.
In a
piece for (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact, Daniel explains how misinformation is
gaining a foothold in private messaging apps like Apple iMessage and Snapchat.
Messages on these platforms, Daniel wrote, are obscured from the public eye,
making it harder for journalists to debunk them, though some are screenshotted
and posted to more public social media platforms.
In
breaking news situations, the sheer number of social media posts creates a rich
environment for hoaxers, who hijack popular hashtags and keywords to amplify
their views.
The
spread of fires in the Amazon region, for example, was the topic of 10.2
million tweets posted between Aug. 18 and 23, with 4.3 million of those just on
Friday. According to data
scientists at the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo in the southeastern
part of Brazil, the online activity related to the environmental devastation
was similar to levels usually seen after terrorist attacks.
Some
journalists like BuzzFeed’s
Jane Lytvynenko have made it their specialty to jump into debunking mode
when there is a breaking news event to identify such misinformation in real
time.
Such
work helps not only the public, but other journalists as well, so they can
spend less time disproving things and more time reporting on actual
developments and explaining the underlying issues.
Natália
Leal, director of content for the Brazilian fact-checker Agência
Lupa, expressed that exact concern in her conversation with Cristina this
week.
“Instead
of debating about solutions for the fires in the Amazon, which are pretty
serious, people might spend time and effort pointing out what is true and what
is not,” she said. “We don’t need that. We don’t need to use old photos or
out-of-context pictures to show how serious the situation is.”
. . . technology
·
Following
Twitter’s decision to ban sponsored content from state-backed media outlets, YouTube
is being pressured to do the same. And in Washington, lawmakers are
starting to ring the alarm over Chinese disinformation campaigns.
·
In
April, Facebook
announced the winners of a research grant from Social Science One and
Social Science Research Council, in which they would be given access to some of
the platform’s data. But Craig
Silverman reported for BuzzFeed News that those academics are still waiting
for Facebook to give them the data.
- An old privacy hoax recently made the rounds on Instagram, where several celebrities fell for it. Writing for Wired, Paris Martineau explains that people don’t fall for these recurring hoaxes because they’re stupid — they fall for them because they support their existing worldviews.
. . . politics
·
Facebook
is tightening
its rules for political advertisements, it announced Wednesday, requiring
organizations that purchase the ads to take steps to verify their identities.
One expert told
The New York Times that the move represented “incremental baby steps
forward.”
·
Police
in Singapore are
investigating rumors being spread via video and text messages about gang
activity. It’s the
latest action the government has taken against the spread of online
misinformation, which is outlawed in Singapore.
·
A
campaign to boycott Olive Garden emerged on Twitter after a professor falsely
tweeted that the restaurant donated to Donald Trump’s campaign. Newsweek
noticed that it was just the latest in a boycott
trend, or what Reason magazine called “conspicuous
non-consumption.”
. . . the future of news
·
Being
a fact-checker in Kashmir demands on-the-ground verification. Read the interview
Cristina did with The Quint and AFP in India, as well as a
first-person account from a fact-checker at Boom Live. Meanwhile, Boom has
also uncovered several fake Twitter accounts impersonating army officials.
·
Remember
that too-dangerous-to-publish research about an artificial intelligence news
writer? Now a new version has been released. The
BBC tried it out.
·
A
new study
from the Association for Psychological Science found
that reading fake news stories could lead to the creation of false memories.
When
Axios reported
this week that President Donald Trump questioned whether nuclear bombs
could be used to prevent hurricanes from hitting the United States, journalists
came out in force to defuse the idea.
Trump,
in
a tweet, called the story ridiculous, and “just more FAKE NEWS!”
The
Axios reporter, Jonathan Swan, stood
by the piece.
Because
the Axios report was based on anonymous sources, it was hard to check the story
itself. But for fact-checkers, the question of whether hurricanes could be
nuked was like candy to a toddler. We are choosing their collective work to
highlight this week.
In his original report, Swan did a good job of explaining the history of this idea, and its implausibility.
In his original report, Swan did a good job of explaining the history of this idea, and its implausibility.
Fact-checkers
took it further.
“Bombs
won’t stop hurricanes,” PolitiFact
wrote in a piece that explained the history and science of the idea. The
Washington Post also
contextualized the story. National Geographic did
a step-back piece on how scientists have looked to stop hurricanes, as did Vox and
Wired.
CNN
asked a scientist about it. He wrote that he was less interested in debunking
the idea than in explaining why
it keeps coming up. BBC
and other networks went to the U.S. government agency that studies the
atmosphere.
What we liked: The range of angles this story generated
was impressive. If the nuke-hurricanes idea isn’t dead by now, it never will
be.
1.
The
Arab Weekly reported
that a Tunisian news outlet is the first from the country to join the IFCN.
That was news to us! Baybars Orsek, IFCN’s director, and his predecessor,
Alexios Mantzarlis, both raised questions about the report and denied the news
on Twitter.
2.
The
New York Times ran
a lengthy profile of The Western Journal, a website with a long track
record of publishing misinformation on social media.
3.
PolitiFact
turned
12 years old last week. And editor Angiel
Holan pointed out what she considers its biggest strength.
4.
The
Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon has been unable or unwilling to
police thousands of mislabeled products on its site.
5.
The
feud between Snopes and Christian satire site The Babylon Bee continues, this
time with an
editorial from the Bee’s editor in chief in the Wall Street Journal.
6.
Trump
lawyer Rudy Giuliani promoted
a
long-discredited conspiracy theory about Seth Rich, a Democratic National
Committee staffer who was murdered in July 2016.
7.
The
use of social media by the Chinese government has drawn heightened scrutiny.
Now The
New York Times reports that LinkedIn is a prime hunting ground for foreign
agents trying to recruit assets.
8.
Also
in the Times, Carolyn
Kylstra explained in an op-ed how the news media’s reporting on
celebrities’ opinions on vaccines could amplify false medical information.
9.
Students
at Budapest’s Central European University (whom Daniel taught earlier this
year) have published several projects related to fact-checking and
misinformation, both in Hungary and around the world. Check
them out.
10. Did you see this year’s IFCN’s
fellows?
That’s
it for this week! Feel free to send feedback and suggestions to factually@poynter.org.
Daniel, Susan and Cristina