Media coverage of Muslims, Chelsea Manning, news diets and advertisers’ concerns

Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

edited by Marco Nurra

• Secret government report contradicts US position on Chelsea Manning leaks: they caused no real harm. In the seven years since WikiLeaks published the largest leak of classified documents in history, the federal government has said they caused enormous damage to national security. But a secret, 107-page report, prepared by a Department of Defense task force and newly obtained by BuzzFeed News, tells a starkly different story: It says the disclosures were largely insignificant and did not cause any real harm to US interests.
• Media coverage of Muslims and refugee policy contributes to negative public opinion of Muslims. In an analysis of the major newscasts of three outlets — CBS, Fox, and NBC — Meighan Stone, former president of the Malala Fund, finds that during a two-year period from 2015–2017, there was not a single month where positive stories about Muslims outnumbered negative stories. War and terrorist activities were the major focus of news reports, with ISIS serving as protagonist 75 percent of the time, while positive coverage, such as human interest stories or those depicting Muslims as productive members of society, were overlooked. In reports where Muslims were the focus, only 3 percent of the voices heard were those of Muslims, while Trump spoke on their behalf 21 percent of the time. Stories about refugees were also negative in tone.
• Monitoring online conversations in UK revealed a serious problem with the sharing of misleading campaign information. First Draft outlined five different types of problematic content: Misleading headlines in mainstream newspapers; Exaggeration and misinformation by the hyper-partisan press; Hyper-partisan websites attacking the mainstream media; Official political party pages bending the facts; False rumours that got traction before being flagged as false by us or others.

• The editor of the New Yorker on the rise of fake news and the ‘sins’ of old media. David Remnick was quick to note that social media and new platforms, while exacerbating the spread, were by no means the originators of the problem: “No one should romanticise the old media landscape. The sins of even the best outlets are well documented.”
• Social media users have a more politically diverse online news diet than those who do not use social media at all. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the 2017 Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that social media use is clearly associated with incidental exposure to additional sources of news that people otherwise wouldn’t use — and with more politically diverse news diets.
• How The Guardian lost America. Years after winning a Pulitzer for the Edward Snowden story, Guardian US has slashed costs, leaving employees stewing about mismanagement, infighting, a sexual harassment allegation, and unrealistic business expectations.
• The Economist is using Medium to give readers an inside look at its reporting and production. In December, the magazine’s social media team launched Inside The Economist, a Medium blog created to offer readers a behind-the-scenes look at its writing, reporting and production processes.
• In Sweden, Blankspot aims to cover underreported stories while promoting trust in journalism and media literacy. The organisation has story-specific Facebook groups where the public can contribute their knowledge or follow journalists on reporting trips.
• Advertisers will pull hundreds of millions of pounds in spending from Google and Facebook this year over concerns about ads running next to inappropriate content such as extremist sites and fake news.

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