Futurity

How news can avoid boosting fake facts and dangerous views

Journalists face a conundrum when covering disinformation, propaganda, and hacked info. A new guide can help avoid amplifying junk.
A man in a suit reads a newspaper that's on fire

Researchers have created a guide to how newsrooms should write about propaganda, disinformation, or hacks in a responsible and timely way.

When confronted with these types of campaigns, journalists face a conundrum: How do they cover the newsworthiness of the story without amplifying extreme or dangerous views?

Coauthors Janine Zacharia, a journalist with over two decades of field experience and a lecturer in Stanford University’s communication department, and Andrew Grotto, a former senior director for cybersecurity policy at the White House who is now director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance and a fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, are part of the Center for International Security and Cooperation’s Information Warfare Working Group that discusses and provides recommendations for combatting disinformation. Their guide came out of this effort.

Here, the two explain strategies news organizations can take when writing their next story about false, misleading, or hacked information:

The post How news can avoid boosting fake facts and dangerous views appeared first on Futurity.

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