investigating the nature of fact in the digital age

Archive for the ‘Journalism practice’ Category

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Issues of fact and the new US President

In Facts and opinion, Journalism practice, Misinformation, Quotes, Uncategorized on January 27, 2017 at 12:34 pm

abcnews.com’s This Week discussion re Trump and fact

Highlights from abcnews.com’s This Week discussion of the Trump Administration’s approach to “facts”(see link to video, above)

3:01: “[We need to ask:] what’s the larger truth here?  We miss that a lot.” (Alex Castellanos, Republican strategist)

3:48: “[Traditionally,] the three ‘sisters of spin’ are: misrepresent, mislead, mis-state. We now see Mr Lie, Mr Lying…” (Matthew Dowd, ABC news analyst)

4:09: “[Donald Trump and media spokesman Shaun Spicer say:] “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” (Matthew Dowd, ABC news analyst)

4:50: When questioned, [Trump] says the people questioning him are not telling the truth and everything that is a question is fake news.” (George Stephanopoulos, ABC commentator and news host)

6:09: “[Trump] seems to be betting on the idea that he can define reality by denying it.” (George Stephanopoulos, ABC commentator and news host)

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I, robot reporter

In Facts and opinion, Journalism practice on March 29, 2014 at 2:22 pm

robo_reporter

The BBC reported recently that the LA Times became the first newspaper to use a robot to write an article.

The piece, about an earthquake in California, was a report generated by an automated algorithm that collated data from the US Geological Survey and inserted it into a template.

This is a good development for journalism. Algorithms might be able to pull together information from trusted sources and spit out simple reports. But until it can  understand the context and background of an issue, identify and interview the key voices in a debate, weigh competing claims and tell the difference between fact-based claims and opinion, robo reporting won’t replace journalists. If anything, automated reporting will free journalists to concentrate on producing more long-form quality journalism with deeper, more valuable insights.

In a world awash with information and attitude masquerading as fact, that has to be a good thing.

 

Robo journalism is not as new as the BBC report suggests. For more on this subject:

The Media Report (ABC Radio National podcast plus transcript)

The Washington Post (opens to video)

Wired  (article)

The Guardian (article plus video)

Slate (article)

Knight Lab (article)

Jounalism.co.uk (article)

 

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We care whether it’s true

In Facts and opinion, Journalism practice, Misinformation on March 24, 2014 at 9:53 am

The “old media” mantra of “if in doubt, leave it out” has been replaced in the online journalism age by “if it’s wrong, it won’t be for long”.

But despite the promise that the internet delivers a kind of self-correcting crowd-sourced “truth” that can match the efforts of traditional media, even some pop culture newsrooms such as BuzzFeed are finding that it makes business sense to get your facts right.

This piece, from the Columbia Journalism Review, suggests that authority, credibility and the trustworthiness of information still have currency. The question “Who cares if it’s true?” has been answered. We all care.

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Journalists still decide what matters

In Facts and opinion, Journalism practice, Misinformation on March 18, 2014 at 2:26 pm

Social media and citizen journalism might mean that the public gets there first with “the news” but trained journalists are increasingly crucial as gatekeepers of what is worth knowing and what is accurate, and to highlight issues that might otherwise evade scrutiny. Time, judgement and the skills to report accurately will never go out of fashion.

Vincent Hendricks from the University of Copenhagen put it well in a recent piece for The Conversation:

True information and false information travel at the same speed online. That means there is still a vital role to be played by the more traditional press and media even if they stand to lose the race for breaking and short-lived spectacular news tsunamis and #infostorms, like when a giraffe named #marius is killed at a Danish zoo.

Read the original article by Vincent F Hendricks at The Conversation.

 

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Social media – the Johnny-on-the-spot of news reporting

In Journalism practice on March 11, 2014 at 4:27 pm

More and more, social media is reporting from the frontline of news events, taking us faster and closer to what’s happening around us, often before traditional media has realised there’s something going on. How trustworthy is such a scattergun approach to reporting?

The Guardian‘s Ellie Mae O’Hagan has some thoughts on the matter, here.

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Facts: dead and buried?

In Facts and opinion, Interesting research, Journalism practice, Misinformation on March 10, 2014 at 5:01 pm

In April 2012, Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune wrote an obituary for Facts prompted by a US Republican’s claim that 81 of his fellow members of the House of Representatives were Communists. The piece was a novel way to air the thoughts of Mary Poovey (A History of the Modern Fact) about how, in the internet age, opinion is given the same – if not greater – weight as fact:

“Opinion has become the new truth,” Poovey told Huppke. “And many people who already have opinions see in the ‘news’ an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that confirms their opinion as fact.”

Huppke’s piece is worth revisiting.

For more of Poovey expounding on the same issues, see the transcript of (or listen to) this episode of Radio National’s Future Tense program: Fact and Fiction. (Fact aficionados Brendan Nyhan, Bill Adair and Ullrich Ecker also get a look-in.)

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Bad grammar? Sorry, don’t believe you.

In Journalism practice on March 10, 2014 at 9:16 am

For some people the misuse of apostrophes by a business affects how they think about that business. (See here.)
Maybe I’m old school, but badly edited content – poorly written copy, copy with obvious mistakes in it – affects how much I trust a news source.
The screen grab below comes from the iPad edition of The Age‘s report on the series-deciding Third Test between Australia and South Africa. The game ended just before 3am Australian Eastern Standard Time (and what a thrilling finish it was), so the paper did well to get the report out to local readers in time for breakfast. Unfortunately, the need for speed overran attention to detail.
This is an extreme example, but errors like these have become common even in reputable news outlets. Addiction to speed, cost-cutting production processes and a lack of care factor mean readers see mistakes made every day by organisations that want us to believe that their content can be trusted.
Do readers care? I do.

Speed of news should not come at the cost of accuracy or clarity.
Speed of news should not come at the cost of accuracy or clarity.

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The Diplomat’s Cocktail Party

In Journalism practice, Previously published on August 19, 2013 at 9:29 am

In Marius Foley’s Globalized Communication and Culture course (Comm 1107) last semester at RMIT we were given an exercise called The Diplomat’s Cocktail Party in which we had to tell two fellow students about an incident – preferably true – that would reveal something about ourselves. The story we chose was to be relevant to our interest in media and communications.

I recalled a stoush I had with the 911 conspiracy movement after writing a damning TV review for The Age of a program called In Plane Site (see here).

For days after the review was published I was bombarded by conspiracy theorists from around the world, including Dave vonKleist, the producer of the program I had bagged.

The emails were abusive and generally unreasoned. I was described, among many things, as corrupt, ignorant, spawn of The Devil, a resident of the Dark Side and on the pay of the CIA and all the others involved in the global media conspiracy to deceive the world about the “truth” behind September 11.

When Dave vonKleist emailed me himself I decided to engage him and his arguments. In a series of long emails we debated the issue. I tried to get him to stand back and understand that conspiracies are not based on rational, evidence-based thinking. He countered with an avalanche of unconnected “facts” that he believed proved the involvement of the US government and existence of a subsequent cover-up.

(Some of this debate – regrettably not all of it – was post on the website of Dave vonKleist’s radio program, “The Power Hour”: http://www.thepowerhour.com/articles/daves_response_2.htm)

The article and my contact details had been posted on conspiracy sites around the world and readers were encouraged to contact me. My debate with vonKleist was also posted on skeptic websites whose aim was to debunk conspiracy theories and the irrational thinking that fuels them.

I was struck by how quickly news spread to the producer of the program (Dave vonKleist responded with his long email within 36 hours) and how quickly conspiracy sites from around the world picked up the issue and launched into their assault. I was also impressed that those on the other side of the debate had rallied, using the same technology, to join battle.

My “debate” with Dave vonKleist and the virulence of the response to my review sparked a continuing interest in how people form beliefs and why they find it so difficult to change those beliefs, even in the face of directly contradictory evidence. I also found the ability of the internet to rapidly spread misinformation and to connect likeminded people, whom I regarded as delusional, as a bit of a worry (if impressive).

I’m still intrigued by these issues.

Additional stuff:

> Part of the jousting with Dave vonKleist:

http://www.thepowerhour.com/articles/daves_response_2.htm

> A follow-up column about conspiracy theories:

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/blogs/untangling-the-web/dont-get-caught-in-the-web-of-conspiracy-theory-truthiness-20101105-17gq1.html

> The original article:

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