M. Night Shyamalan's chilling superhero trilogy
TRIPLE J
The king of creepy thrillers and plot twists talks about Glass, his ambitious sequel to Unbreakable and Split.
All day Tapas at Vintagecafe.com
The Truth Behind The Genesis Of Monty Python’s ‘Spamalot’ (An Oral History)
It all started years before, when Eric Idle told Mel Brooks he wanted to do a musical version of The Producers. Brooks rejected the idea — then. When he changed his mind later and made gobs of money, Idle decided he could do the same thing. (Well, that’s how Idle tells it …) — Vulture
Is Your Company Ready to Protect Its Reputation from Deep Fakes?
How your Board can better oversee cyber risk
The New York Times: “On the 12th day of the federal government shutdown, the 45th president of the United States of America posted a meme on his Instagram account: an image of his half-glowering, half-smirking visage, hovering gigantically above the Southwestern desert, dwarfing the picture’s centerpiece — a rendering of his signature campaign promise — and, in a familiar font, some explanatory text: “The Wall Is Coming.” It’s an image that makes you think, That’s from HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” — sort of, and then makes you think about the unique privileges and burdens of living in this moment in history. There are so many unusual aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency that his willingness to communicate with the public through internet memes is often overshadowed
Is Your Company Ready to Protect Its Reputation from Deep Fakes?
How your Board can better oversee cyber risk
The New York Times: “On the 12th day of the federal government shutdown, the 45th president of the United States of America posted a meme on his Instagram account: an image of his half-glowering, half-smirking visage, hovering gigantically above the Southwestern desert, dwarfing the picture’s centerpiece — a rendering of his signature campaign promise — and, in a familiar font, some explanatory text: “The Wall Is Coming.” It’s an image that makes you think, That’s from HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” — sort of, and then makes you think about the unique privileges and burdens of living in this moment in history. There are so many unusual aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency that his willingness to communicate with the public through internet memes is often overshadowed
An American fact-checking fracas
United
States Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interview
Sunday with Anderson Cooper on CBS’s “60 Minutes” was notable for a number
of reasons. For one, not many first-year members of Congress get that kind of
platform.
But
one comment in particular touched a nerve for the fact-checking community. When
Ocasio-Cortez was asked about a
Washington Post fact check awarding her four Pinocchios for an inaccurate
tweet about Pentagon accounting, she
responded: "If people want to really blow up one figure here or one
word there, I would argue that they're missing the forest for the trees. I
think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely,
factually and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
For
some, that comment echoed the much-quoted 2016 argument, first made in an
Atlantic article and later
amplified by tech investor Peter Thiel, that the media had missed the
larger phenomenon of Donald Trump because they were taking him literally but
not seriously, while his supporters were taking him seriously but not
literally. A number of
columnists
reminded Ocasio-Cortez that precision and morality are
not mutually exclusive. Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum
suggested “she’d be well-advised to slow down and study up just a little
bit.”
Beyond
the fracas, though, the episode touched off a larger — and public —
back-and-forth about fact-checking, how claims are chosen and the standards
used in checking them. That’s because Ocasio-Cortez,
in a Twitter thread, asked how fact-checkers do their work, their rules and
whether she is being treated fairly compared to other high-profile officials,
like White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The fact-checkers
answered, tweeted out their
rules of engagement and
explained how she was not being held to a standard different than anyone
else.
And
from there, the congresswoman pivoted
away from conflict. She called fact-checking “critically important,” said it’s
important for everyone to know the rules and thanked fact checkers for their
work. Responded
the Post’s Sal Rizzo: “This is classy and I appreciate it.”
As
confrontations over fact-checking go, the outcome was as close to a win-win as
can be had in this hyper-polarized environment. Ocasio-Cortez’s cordial exit
let her reclaim some high ground, even if the
original tweet is still there. And fact-checkers got a high-profile
opportunity to explain what they do, how they do it — and why.
(Carlos
Barria/Pool Photo via AP)This is new
- PolitiFact to major U.S. TV networks: We’re ready to do live fact-checking of political speeches.
- Poynter’s MediaWise launched its Teen Fact-Checking Network, which is native to social media platforms like Instagram. Here’s a write-up from Digiday.
- Nieman Lab rounded up its 2019 predictions about misinformation — and the future is either bleak or unclear, depending on who you ask.
The Bad Place
- The far right has tried to co-opt France’s Yellow Vest protests by linking them to conspiracy theories.
- A fake news story about the new U.S. Speaker of the House got nearly 20,000 more engagements on Facebook than a Snopes debunk.
- Trolls posing as gay men on Twitter are trying to falsely link LGBTQ acceptance with pedophilia.
(AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu)A closer look
- A document ordering French citizens with certain categories of weapons to give them to authorities to prevent violence during the Yellow Vest protests made the rounds on social media — but it’s fake. The interior minister even debunked it himself on Twitter.
- Fact-checking was front and center leading up to and after Trump’s immigration speech. Here’s a sample of the coverage.
- Daniel updated his ongoing guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world. At least 39 governments have either moved to outlaw fakery — or to scapegoat it in an attempt to regulate the media.
Welcome, Susan!
This
newsletter has a new co-author! Join us in welcoming Susan
Benkelman, the new director of accountability journalism at API.
(AP
Photo/Greg Baker)If you read one more thing
In
a book excerpt published
by CJR, Meedan’s An Xiao Mena explained how memes became a tool to cut through
government misinformation about pollution in Beijing.
10 quick fact-checking links
- Want to attend the world’s premier fact-checking conference? Apply by Jan. 14.
- Motherboard: A Fake Nude of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Debunked By Foot Fetishists.
- The Orlando Sentinel has launched an in-house fact-checking project run by … its editorial board.
- Esquire: In 2019, The Media Has to Do Better in Calling Out Trump's Shit.
- A new study on how fact checks can reduce misperceptions but have minimal effects on vote choice was accepted into the journal Political Behavior.
- The Financial Times: Why there is no need to panic about fake news.
- The Verge: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds.
- Last year, fact-checkers around the world were threatened for doing their jobs. Now, there's a legal defense fund specifically for them.
- Bloomberg: Smart People May Be More Likely to Fall for Fake News (or Not).
- Fact check of the week: BuzzFeed News’ story about puppy scams on the internet. Yep, that’s a thing now.
