Media Literacy

Lies Win Over Actual Facts

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Article in the Washington Post by Dan Diamond, 1/13/25

Headline:  ” ‘I can’t go toe to toe with social media.’ Top U.S. health official reflects, regrets.”

Subhead:  “Xavier Becerra, who has led the Department of Health and Human Services, says federal agencies are outmatched in a world of “instantaneous information and disinformation.”

“. . .Sitting in his office at HHS headquarters, America’s top health official identified a culprit: a media climate that he says drowns out reliable information. False claims about vaccines run rampant online; government health experts at news conferences barely make a dent compared with influencers who have huge followings.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/01/12/xavier-becerra-hhs-secretary/

 

Using Disaster for Media

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Article in Media Matters by Allison Fisher, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media push Trump’s false claim that California water policies are hurting efforts to suppress LA fires”

Subhead:  “Casting blame on environmental policies in an attempt to distract from increasingly deadly climate impacts is core to right-wing media’s extreme weather playboo”

“Right-wing media are falsely blaming the reports of low water pressure or dry hydrants in Los Angeles on state and local mismanagement – including suggesting that local authorities refused to fill the reservoirs – and conflating the hydrant issue with the false claim that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water policies are to blame.

“On January 8, the Los Angeles Times reported that “as wildfires raged across Los Angeles on Tuesday, crews battling the Palisades blaze faced an additional burden: Scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out.” Later that day, President-elect Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social falsely claimed that Newsom had deprived Southern California of water in order to protect the smelt fish.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-push-trumps-false-claim-california-water-policies-are-hurting-

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Article in Huff Post by Lee Moran, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Donald Trump’s Disaster-Hijacking Playbook Exposed By Expert On Right-Wing Media”

Subhead:  “Nicole Hemmer also explored the potent cocktail — involving the president-elect — that means ‘everything just feels worse all the time.’ “

“Nicole Hemmer — an expert on conservative and right-wing media, and the effect they have had on American politics — this week explained Donald Trump’s penchant for whipping up anger and causing division amid tragedies and disasters.

“ ‘It definitely is the case that this is something Trump does, right?’ Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, asked The New Republic’s Greg Sargent in the latest episode of his podcast, ‘The Daily Blast,’ which was released Thursday.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nicole-hemmer-donald-trump-talent_n_6780e6cde4b01ffef2482ddd

Fact Checking? Blame Liberal Media

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Article in Mediaite by Phillip Nieto, 10/1//25

Headline:  ” ‘I Was Ill-Prepared’: Zuckerberg Blames Anti-Trump Media For Facebook Fact-Checking Measures in Marathon Joe Rogan Interview”

“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed he was “ill-prepared” to face anti-Trump media pressuring him to fact-check misinformation on social media.

“During a nearly three-hour-long podcast interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said he received pressure over the last decade to start censoring material on Facebook based on political ideology. He cited Trump’s 2016 victory and BREXIT for the increase in political censorship.”

https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/i-was-ill-prepared-zuckerberg-blames-anti-trump-media-for-facebook-fact-checking-measures-in-marathon-joe-rogan-interview/

News Mis-informer Award

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Steve Mesler photo

Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 12/23/24

Headline:  “Misinformer of the year: Anti-media intimidation”

“The role of the free press, enshrined by the Constitution’s First Amendment, is an essential element of our democracy. The public cannot become informed about the problems facing our country and the efforts to improve or worsen them without robust protections for journalism.

“But powerful people hate the light journalism shines on them and the dissent it can spur. A coalition of right-wing billionaires, Republican law enforcement officials, and an authoritarian once and future president are using wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence the press and carry out their political agenda unimpeded. And they are perilously close to succeeding.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/misinformer-year/misinformer-year-anti-media-intimidation

Who Checks the Media?

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Article in the Washington Post by Erik Wemple, 12/9/24

Headline:  “Will anyone hold the media to account? I answered your questions.”

Q by guest – “. . . Why don’t reporters ask real follow-up questions?
As a former newspaper reporter/editor, my heart remains in the field and with the reporters trying to cover some of the strangest times in our history.

“I am frustrated that reporters rarely ask sufficient follow–up questions when a politician, like a president-elect, lies. Kristen Welker’s interview with Donald Trump is an example.

A – : “. . . Welker then challenges Trump by saying that the figure he cited goes back 40 years; Trump then plows ahead with his narrative, which a subsequent NBC News fact check calls false. Your critique is a good one: This point is significant enough to essentially halt the flow of the interview and say something like, “Please cite your source.” Because even though NBC News later fact-checked it (as did other outlets), there’s value in standing firm on principle in real time, when possible.. . ”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/09/erik-wemple-media-live-chat/

What ?! – Chinese Media News Sites Are Fake?

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Article in Forbes by Emma Woolacott, 11/25/24

Headline:  “Hundreds Of Fake News Sites Pulled From Google Search”

“Google has blocked hundreds of fake news services and websites from its search results on the grounds that they were serving up Chinese propaganda.

The firm’s Threat Analysis Group said that an umbrella group of four companies, dubbed Glassbridge, has been creating and operating hundreds of domains that pose as independent news websites from dozens of countries.

In fact, though, the content involves narratives aligned to the political interests of the People’s Republic of China — and the company has now blocked more than a thousand Glassbridge-operated websites from appearing in Google News features and Google Discover.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2024/11/25/hundreds-of-fake-news-sites-pulled-from-google-search/

Actual facts and Social Media Don’t Mix

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Alronso Bedoya in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”

Article in The Guardian by Dan Milmo 11/26/24

Headline:  “Online influencers need ‘urgent’ fact-checking training, warns Unesco”

Subhead:  “Research shows six in 10 social media content creators do not verify accuracy of information before posting it”

“According to a report by the UN’s educational, scientific and cultural organisation, two-thirds of content creators fail to check the accuracy of their material, making them and their followers vulnerable to misinformation.

“A smartphone user’s finger hovers over icons for various social media apps Social media owners top global survey of misinformation concerns.

“Unesco said its findings, which come from a survey of influencers, underlined the need for media and literacy teaching to help shape their work.

“ ‘The low prevalence of factchecking highlights their vulnerability to misinformation, which can have far-reaching consequences for public discourse and trust in media,’ the report said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/26/online-influencers-need-urgent-fact-checking-training-warns-unesco

Media Never Exaggerate, Right?

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Article in Daily Kos by Chitown Kev, 11/24/24

Headline:  “Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Media Illusions”

“It’s hard to blame them: Even as the counting progressed, Trump’s victory was described as “resounding” by news organizations ranging from the Associated Press to the The Washington Post to the The New York Times to POLITICO. Others offered “commanding win,” “runaway win” and “dominant victory.”

“Say what?

“To coin a phrase, we’ve defined dominance down. After years as a 50-50 country, it seems, even a small win gets talked about like a shellacking. Wriggling into office with a puny plurality and less than half the vote in an essentially two-way race used to be considered pretty weak sauce. ”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/24/2288338/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Media-Illusions?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

No Progressive Media Machine?

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Article in the Raw Story by John Stoehr, 11/21/24

Headline:  “Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America”

“. . . critics are missing the real lesson from the 2024 election – that her policies were not the determining factor in her defeat. It was the ear-splitting volume of the accusations against her and the absence of equal and opposite accusations against him.”

“. . . It didn’t matter because what she said, the substance of her message wasn’t as important to the outcome of the election as the volume of it, which is to say, the substance of what she said could not be heard through the din of the rightwing media apparatus. As media expert Matthew Sheffield said today, nothing was going to get through that, not even the shared reality of the economy. “Through seven TV channels, more than 1,500 talk-radio stations, and millions of social media posts. . .”

“. . . Trump’s attack ads worked in tandem with thousands of media sites, including the one formerly known as Twitter, that have been operating around the clock since 2020, often in parallel with the Washington press corps. They were able to take one small thing Harris said years ago and turn it into a caricature so ridiculous that a convicted felon like Donald Trump could look like a viable candidate by comparison. . . ”

“. . . The volume of the rightwing media apparatus, especially when it’s in sync with the Washington press corps, is so loud that it can feel like the ultimate arbiter of our political reality. As one CNN anchor put it this morning, this is Donald Trump’s America. We’re just living in it. Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, one that can meet bad info with good info, the Democrats will continue living in Trump’s America, too.

https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/liberal-media/

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Josh Hersh, 11/20/24

Headline:  “Why Traditional Media Can’t Have Its Own Joe Rogan”

Subhead:  “Vulture’s Nicholas Quah on the lessons from Donald Trump’s foray into podcast-land.”

” . . . sometimes when people say that these platforms are not journalistic, there is a very specific and very narrow idea of journalism they are referring to, according to the old rules. Whereas we now live in a world where there’s an increasing number of people who are just not familiar with, or maybe aren’t even exposed to the value of, the old rules. . . ”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/why-the-media-cant-have-its-own-joe-rogan.php

Economic Reporting in Conservative Media

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Article in FAIR by Conor Smyth, 11/20/21

Headline:  “It’s the Economic Reporting, Stupid”

“Conservative media, unsurprisingly, appears to be a major culprit in the miseducation of the American public, with people whose primary media source is conservative media registering lower familiarity with reality than those who stuck mainly to other media sources. (Reliance on social media, too, was associated with less knowledge of basic facts.)

“But even among those who primarily get their news from the more general category of cable/national newspapers, a third didn’t realize that inflation had declined over the past year. Voters’ lack of knowledge, therefore, cannot simply be laid at the feet of the conservative press. Corporate outlets more broadly must share the blame.”

https://fair.org/home/its-the-economic-reporting-stupid/