Fake-news

[http://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumer-handbook-fake-news-edition/

LINK: DISCUSSION AGENDA

Center for Worker Education--CUNY / 25 Broadway / New York N.Y.
Sponsored by the M.S. program in Media Studies at Brooklyn College

(This page also linked from: http://tinyurl.com/ccsu-fake-news

This is a update of a page (SEE ORIGINAL) first created for a breakout session of the Northeast Media Literacy Conference: The Past, Present and Future of Media Literacy Education held on Sat., Feb. 4, 2017 at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn. You can listen to AUDIO of Fake News plenary on Feb. 4. You can also view Notes of plenary-session discussion as well as Notes of subsequent breakout sessions. The session in Connecticut was called: Defining the Fake News Moment: Fiction, Fad, Fatal or Media Lit Opportunity?. Participants were Katherine Fry, Allison Butler, Mellisa Zimdars and Bill Densmore.

The situation

In the last seven months, our political discourse has been infected by a new term: “Fake News.” In a 70-minute, circle-round session, we’ll probe the limits of what the term might mean, and how it might be an opportunity to mainstream media-literacy education. We’ll drive toward a consensus statement, addressing such questions as: How do current concepts of “fake” news differ from what was published by 18th-century pamphleteers, or 1960s supermarket tabloids? Is news “fake” based on point of view only, or because it reports as facts things that are demonstrably untrue? Is it only “fake” if its intention is to mislead? Who defines “mislead?” In an age when all of us can be reporters via our Facebook feed, do we all need tutoring on how to create — and consume — trustworthy reporting and information? In social media, is news now anything more than verified gossip? Who is the trusted verifier? Our “conversation catalysts” will start the discussion, then we’ll invite all to to participate.

Three types of fake news?

VIEW SLIDES

Three types of Fake News according to Renee Hobbs (March 10, 2017):

• Disinformation propaganda [for the purpose of controlling knowledge, attitudes and Values]
• Hoax/Parody/Satire [for the purpose of cultural criticism or creative expression]
• Errors in Journalism/Partisanship [for the purpose of informing and engaging the public]
• Part of challenge is accepting that we need "thought leaders"

Craig Silverman (Media Editor for BuzzFeed News) described Fake News (February 16, 2017 at CCSU) (WATCH VIDEO):

• Primarily financially-driven
• Lots of smaller sites run by single owners. Some networks run by small teams
• Earns money from display ads and/or content recommendation units
• At its core, a cynical form of attention harvesting Silverman also lectured at the University of Chicago a week later.

Here is a link to another lecture of Craig a week later at the University of Chicago.





Other updates since Feb. 4

• REPORT: "Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action" | Harvard Univ., May 2017
• As Europe Heads to the Polls, Tech Tackles Fake News | NYTimes, May 2, 2017
• Has Donald Trump killed the term 'fake news'? (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Tech should launch counter-attack on fake news, Apple's CEO says
• Origins and definitions of 'fake news' | The Telegraph, London
• You are the New Gatekeeper of the News | Aly Colon, Washington & Lee Univ.
• Techniques of 19th-century fake news reporter teach us why we fall for it today
• Google is now highlighting fact checks in search
• Fake news not new but cam be combatted: Panel
• VIDEO: Understanding and Combating Fake News (National Press Foundation)
• How Youth Navigate the News Landscape -- (Knight foundation report)
• Memo to publishers: News consumers really do want to talk to you about trust
  
  

What do we mean by 'fake news'?"

• "Yellow", fabricated, made up facts
• Or ... news you don't agree with? (Trump)
• NYTIMES: Media's next challenge -- overcoming the thread of fake news
  EXCERPT: “It’s the biggest crisis facing our democracy, the failing business model of real journalism,” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri and a longtime critic of fake news, told me on Saturday. Ms. McCaskill said that “journalism is partly to blame” for being slow to adjust as the internet turned its business model upside down and social media opened the competitive floodgates. “Fake news got way out ahead of them,” she said.
  



"Fake news" -- A metaphor for all that ails our media ecosystem?

• Lack of facts / alternate facts
• "Yellow journalism"? / made up facts
• A partisan intent to mislead through hoaxes
• Comedy, satire masquerading as real
• Undisclosed/obfuscated point of view -- an opportunity for media-literacy educators?




THE RESULTS:


• A robust, liberating cacaphony of voices -- but who are they and what motivates them?
• The decline of trusted "gatekeepers" (See: RJI report)
• Do we need a new paradigm for trusted information? (See: infotrust.org)
  



POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

• Requires media-literacy education
• Focus ln reception as much or more than transmission
• A key is how you define trust
• Time to redefine journalism?
• Value the influence of human editors/curators, collaborators
• FRAMING: Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post: "It's time to (just) retire the tainted term "fake news" | Jan. 8, 2017
• FACK CHECKING: FirstDraft News: "Navigating the digital information ecosystem" | includes CrossCheckNewsroom
• TECHNOLOGY: Fake News Challenge: Exploring how artificial intelligence might combat fake news
• COMMUNITY COLLABORATION: WikiTribune: A new initiative by WikiPedia founder Jimmy Wales to combine community/professional journalism
• RE-DEFINING JOURNALISM: the 21st Century Journalism Code project
• TRUST ARBITRATION: Integrity Initiative | CraigsList founder has a plan to save journalism | CRAIG NEWMARK: I'm joining the fight against fake news" -- Inside Philanthropy
• LIBRARIES: How libraries can lead the way | American Libraries Magazine
• EDUCATORS: Helping Youth Think Critically in an Age of Fake News | Youth Today (online)

Also see: Frank Romano (RIT emeritus) published, 1990 in TypeWorld: "We are the Press"



CONVENING QUESTIONS:

What consensus statement can we reach about news, trust, community and citizenship in a media-literate society?

• DEFINITION: (Bill Densmore) What do we mean by fake news?
• PURPOSE& OUTCOMES: (Renee Hobbs) More literate, participatory communities and democracy?
• RESPONSIBILITY & TARGET AUDIENCE: (Katherine Fry) Why is it media educators’ responsibility to address it? What roles might others play (such as: librarians, journalists, administrators, public)?
• PRACTICE & SUPPORT: (Allison Butler) Who is in charge of "the truth"? How can youth make sense of it? How to bring subject of "truth" into classroom?
• RESOURCES & CALL FOR ACTION: (Yonty Friesem) Where can I find resources? What can I do?
  
  


Frey's key points?

• News is now a verb
• Participatory nature of news now most important part of conversation
• How is news shaped?
• Little distinction between audience and creators?
  
  

  RESOURCES

  • Shaun King a New York Daily News social-justice writer, and former civics teacher (photo): "Get to know your personal news sources"/ (at Williams College) / on twitter
  • AUDIO: On the Media: Breaking News Consumers Handbook -- How to detect untrustworthy news / PRINT IMAGE
  • NIEMAN LAB: Journalism in a Post-Truth Era: A Harvard Event \ LAUNCH VIDEO
  • CURRICULUM RESOURCE: Fake news and the spread of misinformation -- Shorenstein Center at Harvard
  • CURRICULUM RESOURCE: Mellisa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College is working with a team of librarians and computer programmers to create tools for navigating “news” websites through an OpenSources project called Melissa's List
  • CURRICULUM RESOURCE: Univ. of Oregon: Tips for how to spot fake news
  • CURRICULUM RESOURCE: [http://eugene.libguides.com/fake-news How to tell credible news from "fake news" (Eugene Public Library)
  • CURRICULUM RESOURCE: One-hundred ideas for getting involved in news literacy for kids (Nieman Lab)
  • Seeking Truth Among Alternative Facts
    
    

  Our “conversation catalysts” include:

  • Allison Butler, who runs the media-literacy certificate program and teaches at UMass-Amherst
  • Yonty (Jonathan) Friesem, assistant professor, Central Connecticut State University
  • Katherine Fry, a journalism scholar and co-founder of a media literacy organization who teaches graduate media-literacy education at CUNY-Brooklyn
  • Renee Hobbs, professor, Univ. of Rhode Island and founding diector, URI Media Education Lab
  • Bill Densmore, a director of Journalism That Matters and a research fellow of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.
    
    

  ACCESS BACKGROUND MATERIALS

  BELOW FROM: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/opinion/online-and-scared.html
  
  EXCERPT FROM A COLUMN BY THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
  
  It’s a huge legal, moral and strategic problem, and it will require . . . “a new social compact” to defuse.
  Work on that compact has to start with every school teaching children digital civics. And that begins with teaching them that the internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information, where they need to bring skepticism and critical thinking to everything they read and basic civic decency to everything they write.
  A Stanford Graduate School of Education study published in November found “a dismaying inability by students to reason about information they see on the internet. Students, for example, had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles or identifying where information came from. … One assessment required middle schoolers to explain why they might not trust an article on financial planning that was written by a bank executive and sponsored by a bank. The researchers found that many students did not cite authorship or article sponsorship as key reasons for not believing the article.”
  Prof. Sam Wineburg, the lead author of the report, said: “Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite to be true.”

  
  

  OTHER RELATED LINKS

• STANFORD STUDY: Most students can't tell fake news from real news
• WIRED MAGAZINE: Journalism Fights for Surviva in a Post-Truth Era
• THE GUARDIAN: If newspapers won't check viral stories, who will listen to them about 'fake news'?
• YOUTHTODAY.ORG: Help Youth Think Critically in Age of 'Fake News'
• MICHAEL ORESKES/NPR: "Audiences, Citizens and the Future of Journalism" -- Speech Oct. 19, 2007 at ONA Toronto
• MICHAEL COPPS / FCC: Getting Media Right: A call to Action -- Speech, Dec. 2, 2010, NYC
• HOWARD DEAN: On the failure of American media to call out Donald Trump's campaign untruths -- Jan. 12/Williams College
• DIGIDAY: Internet's underbelling: How digital advertising feeds fake news
• MARKETINGLAND: Why Google may not be able to stop fake news
• Shorenstein Center's academic resources and reports on 'fake news'
• Digiday: How content ad networks fund fake news
• AP story summarizes Trump-CNN dispute over Russian report
• NYTimes, Amanda Taub: "The Real Story about Fake News is Partisanship"
• TECH: How Facebook and Google technologies make lies as pretty as truth | The Verge
• TECH: Why Google may not be able to stop fake news | MarketingLand
• The BBC is setting up a team to detect and debunk so-called 'fake news'
• Craig Newmark gives $1M to Poynter Institute to help with ethics and 'fake news' challenge | SECOND STORY/Inside Philanthropy
  
• What does a news organization optimized for trust look like?
• VANITY FAIR: Preparing for 2016 -- an environment of even more-scary fake news?
• NYTIMES: In race against fake news, Google and Facebook stroll to the starting line
• COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW: Is fake news a fake problem?
• TECHCRUNCH: Facebook changes algorithms to avoid posts that are fake, promotional or spam
• THE VERGE: How Facebook and Google content technologies make lies as pretty as truth
• THE GUARDIAN: The real crisis in journalism is geographic
  
  

  THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM? -- SELECTED RESOURCES

• Walter Williams: The Journalist's Creed
• American Society of News Editors: Statement of Principles
• BOOK: New Ethics of Journalism by Kelly McBride and Tom Rosenstiel
• Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics
• The 21st Century Journalism Code project