CNN vs Trump, The Correspondent’s launch in the U.S., and how Russian disinformation works
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Stay up to date by following our Telegram channel or by subscribing to our Newsletter, and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Published in
4 min readNov 16, 2018
edited by Marco Nurra
- CNN filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. The White House, the lawsuit states, has violated CNN and Acosta’s First Amendment rights of freedom of the press and Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
- CNN suit is an important and necessary defense of press freedom. “If this kind of retaliation were allowed to go unchallenged, the White House would feel emboldened to use the threat of similar revocations as a means of discouraging critical news coverage.”
- 25 newsrooms have attempted to bridge divisions — in person. Here’s what they’ve learned.
- Can The Correspondent “unbreak news” in the United States? The reader-centric Dutch journalism organization De Correspondent launches the membership campaign for its English-language version The Correspondent.
- Five lessons from the Guardian’s membership strategy, three years on. Amanda Michel, the Guardian’s global contributions director and project manager, explains how the publisher has been successful in asking people to support its journalism.
- How The Wall Street Journal is preparing its journalists to detect deepfakes. Artificial intelligence is fueling the next phase of misinformation. The new type of synthetic media known as deepfakes poses major challenges for newsrooms when it comes to verification.
- BBC launches global Beyond Fake News project with season of programming to ‘fight back’ against disinformation. The BBC will “fight back” against disinformation globally with a special season of programming aiming to increase media literacy.
- “Operation InfeKtion” is a three-part film series that reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies.
- Facebook’s instinct to deny, then apologize is baked into its DNA, writes Mathew Ingram. “A new feature from The New York Times takes an in-depth look at Facebook’s response — or rather, lack of response — to criticism about Russian trolls using its platform to spread disinformation both before and during the 2016 election. The piece points fingers at a number of senior staff, including the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, as well as VP of public policy Joel Kaplan, who allegedly advised Sandberg to downplay the potential threat from Russian agents because he was afraid of angering conservatives (something that has become a common theme ever since the Trending Topics fiasco of 2016).”
- Here’s Facebook’s reply to the New York Times investigation. “The New York Times is wrong to suggest that we ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf — or to spread misinformation. Our relationship with Definers was well known by the media — not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf. Definers did encourage members of the press to look into the funding of ‘Freedom from Facebook’, an anti-Facebook organization. The intention was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known critic of our company. To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue.”
- Financial Times tool warns if articles quote too many men. The Financial Times is automatically warning its journalists if their articles quote too many men, in an attempt to force writers to look for expert women to include in their pieces. The media organisation found that only 21% of people quoted in the FT were women, prompting the development of a bot that uses pronouns and analysis of first names to determine whether a source is male or a female. Section editors will then be alerted if they are not doing enough to feature women in their stories.
- Craig Newmark Philanthropies gives $200k to American Press Institute to support research and convening on journalism ethics. “A trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy, and it requires a demanding, evolving ethical code,” said Newmark.
- Can nonprofit news help save the media industry? “Among nonprofits, clicks tend to be less important than content. Most of them see themselves as delivering the news that needs to be reported, even if it doesn’t go viral. Readers tend to respond favorably to this new old-style approach.”
Did you miss any #ijf18 sessions? No problem! Our video platform provides videos of all 2018 festival sessions. Plus an archive of all sessions from previous festivals back to 2013. Here you can find some recommendations.
