misinformation

Executives from Tegna, Fox Owned Stations and Graham Media Group share best practices from the front lines for coping with the daily flood of disinformation and misinformation that besieges newsrooms and their social channels at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum, held in-person and virtually on Dec. 14. Register here.

The new set of policies will cover not just the COVID-19 vaccines or long-approved vaccines against diseases like measles and hepatitis B, but also general claims about vaccines, YouTube said.

Researchers have identified YouTube as playing a major role in misinformation campaigns, including the effort to discredit the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Yet it has repeatedly ducked the brunt of backlashes that Facebook and Twitter have absorbed head-on.

Coronavirus misinformation has spiked online in recent weeks after a decline in the spring, misinformation experts say, as people who peddle in falsehoods have seized on the surge of cases from the Delta variant to spread new and recycled unsubstantiated narratives.

Brown communities are among those who have been disproportionately targeted with misinformation and disinformation, especially in regard to political and health information. In response, Voto Latino, the largest Latinx voter registration organization in the nation, and Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog, have partnered to launch the Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab, which will work to better understand and combat misinformation at all stages and channels.

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology is continuing its series of hearings on how misinformation and disinformation — the lies of the 21st century — have impacted recent events in our nation. As lawmakers explore this issue, they should be mindful of the vital role radio and television broadcasters play in our communities by exposing lies, uncovering the truth and reporting the facts.

In an effort to combat misinformation, Twitter says it hopes to build a community of “Birdwatchers” that can eventually help moderate and label tweets in its main product.

Eager to look neutral — and worried about being accused of lefty partisanship — mainstream news organizations across the political spectrum have bent over backward to aid and abet Trump’s disinformation campaign about voting by mail by blasting his false claims out in headlines, tweets and news alerts, according to the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Looking ahead to November, Facebook says it is “actively speaking with election officials about the potential of misinformation around election results as an emerging threat.” It’s the social network’s latest step to to combat election-related misinformation on its platform as the Nov. 3 election nears — one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time.

The post in question featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus. Facebook said Wednesday that the “video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”

What local journalists need to know, and do, to combat misinformation. The threat is not only a barrage of misinformation — false reports, images, and videos — directly aimed at journalists. Even more alarming, today’s organized misinformation campaigns use journalism’s own strengths, like fact-checking and community reputation, and turn them against the news media.

The station group will work with First Draft to train its journalists to identify and verify false information online and help audiences spot misinformation. It will also expand its news fact-checking initiative Verify.

In a new study conducted by the Institute for the Future, a California-based nonprofit think tank, researchers found more than 80% of journalists admitted to falling for false information online. The data was based on a survey of 1,018 journalists at regional and national publications in the United States.

In a nearly 2,000-word blog post sent to Poynter on Wednesday, Facebook announced a slew of new things it’s doing to combat false news stories, images and videos.