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Wednesday, May 16, 2018
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This program made people better at identifying disinformation. (They still weren’t great at knowing what to trust.)“Skill for analyzing objective news needs to be developed on its own…it likely needs to be coordinated with the skill for analyzing disinformation-based news.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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What is innovation in local TV news? Andrew Heyward’s new mission is to find out“It's a great question because I don't think we're suddenly going to come up with some great gimmick and Millennials are going to flock to their TV to watch traditional newscasts.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
TechCrunch / Devin Coldewey
The Senate considers rolling back the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality →
“Until today, many senators will have been able to largely stay silent on the issue, and a vote to support this highly unpopular rule may come back to bite them come midterms. Net neutrality may very well be an issue constituencies care about, or at least that's what Democratic challengers are hoping for.”
Recode / Kurt Wagner
Mark Zuckerberg will go to Europe to answer regulators’ questions — in private →
The Facebook CEO is headed overseas "as soon as possible."
BuzzFeed / Charlie Warzel
Thirty minutes and a little bitcoin can buy you an army of believable Facebook users →
“A Russian site called AccsMarket offers interested buyers the opportunity to purchase accounts registered as early as 2004 (the year Facebook launched) with 5,000 allegedly real, non-bot friends for $150 apiece. When BuzzFeed News inquired to see if an account was preregistered and left dormant or acquired from a real person, the company said only that the account was ‘abandoned.'”
Journalist's Resource / Chloe Reichel
Covering rural America: What reporters get wrong and how to get it right →
"Barely a majority of the eligible voting population ends up at the polls, and then somewhere around under half of people vote for the candidate who wins that state, and then the whole square is colored red on a cable news graphic …The underlying poison of this whole discussion is that it renders enormous swaths of this country invisible: people of color in rural areas; moderate or left leaning people in rural areas; and, for that matter, conservative people in urban areas, of which there are many. One of them is now the president of our country."
Reuters
Kenya’s president signs cybercrimes law opposed by media rights groups →
“Violations to be penalized under the law include cyber-espionage, false publications, child pornography, computer-borne forgery, cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying among others, the statement said, without spelling out the penalties. Offenders convicted for sharing ‘false’ or ‘fictitious’ information and propagating hate speech will be liable to a fine of 5 million shillings ($49,776.01) or sentenced to two years in jail, or both.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Nicholas Diakopoulos
Deepfakes, misinformation, and what journalists can do about them →
“Dire as the case may be, it could offer a great comeback opportunity for mainstream media. As the public learns that it can no longer trust what it sees online, few intermediaries are better placed to function as trusted validators and assessors of mediated reality than professionally trained journalists with access to advanced forensics tools. To capture this opportunity, journalists and news organizations should pursue strategies like forensics training, technical tool development, and process standardization and transparency.”
Talking Biz News / Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic are collaborating on a magazine →
“This magazine is about what to do when your meetings are over,” writes Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker in a statement.
The Verge / Nick Statt
The new AI-powered Google News app is now available on iOS →
“The new Google News on iOS is similar to the one you'll find on Android. It centers around using machine learning to train algorithms to comb through complex, fast-breaking news stories and break them down in easy-to-understand formats like chronological timelines, local news aggregation, and stories presented in a developing and evolving sequence.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Anna Clark
In an era of disinvestment, how should local news push back? →
“What is the model we should be advocating for? And what are journalists and their audiences supposed to do about it? While answers to those questions aren't clear, many staffers and audiences are no longer going to silently watch as journalism is ‘strip-mined.’ Those pushing back have a variety of tactics, but they collectively demonstrate that the fate of local news isn't sealed. We have choices.”