Men were dying. Homeless, indigent, alone, often asleep on city streets or in subway cars. No one knew when the next death might occur. The locations were adding up, too: Washington, then New York. Was […]

This is an excellent question and a tough one to answer. According to the Pew Research Center, newsrooms are 77 percent white, which seems disproportionate at first glance. But according to 2020 census […]

Humans are storytellers. We like narratives that take the random chaos of life and put it into a coherent structure. The alternative is too difficult to live with: a world where nothing adds up to […]

For better or for worse, by being really good at it. As with just about everything else, popularity is profitable. And because the media industry is, ultimately, an industry, profits rule.

Perhaps a […]

In many ways, this question gets to the very core of what this course, News Literacy in a Digital Age, is all about. These days, news and information are virtually synonymous with social media for the […]

It depends entirely on what we mean by “information” and how we use that information. Following outlets known to be overtly biased or propagandistic can be essential for understanding the current debate on […]

People are, by definition, subjective. Each of us has our own lens on the world, filtering experience and information through our own individual psyches. That’s what makes us human, rather than robots. But […]

Studying journalism in school can expedite your career, allowing you to acquire certain skills in the classroom that others who didn’t study journalism have to learn on the job. It can also give you access […]

To start, the word “appease” may be too strong in this context. But that doesn’t mean that, sometimes, in the real world, the wall between corporate interests and journalistic independence can be […]

If you can control what people know, then you can control what they think. And if people think only what the government wants them to think, then the government can maintain the order it wants. The problem, […]

Interviewing people is both a science and an art. On the one hand, you want to maintain professional decorum and journalistic best practices by never misleading or lying to your sources to get the story, as […]

Basically, if there’s violence, conflict or death involved, it gets top billing. Nowhere is this more true than in television news, which coined the expression, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

That’s mainly […]

Simple: by maintaining journalistic integrity. But, that’s easier said than done. First, let’s discuss what journalistic integrity even means.

Integrity is often used as a synonym for “good” or “upright” […]

Sure, if all we’re talking about is making stuff up. As we all know, fake news abounds. But Glass was writing for some of the most prominent magazines in the country, including The New Republic, […]

Certainly — after all, that’s how we lived before the web. But it’s a fairly antiquated way of consuming information these days. Nevertheless, the question offers an opportunity to think about the […]

Not if it’s done right. Selecting only a phrase or even a single word from what a source said to use in a verbatim quote doesn’t mean the reporter is fundamentally misrepresenting what the source said. […]

Look, a lot of media outlets are just a little extra. They rush to publish, pile on the sensationalism, don’t bother with verification. They’re like that friend you wish you didn’t have who just can’t […]

Yes, and it gets messy. The most famous example in recent memory of this happening is when Judith Miller of the New York Times reported that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) […]

As the saying goes, to err is human; to forgive, divine. Let’s just focus on the first part: We all make mistakes, and the best any of us can do is to acknowledge them and do our best to do better next […]

One of my personal mantras, as a writer and a teacher of writing, is that there are no boring stories, just boring writers. If a given news item is universally uninteresting, it’s likely that whoever […]

This is a great question, not least because each of us is part of the answer—simply by participating in this news literacy course. While it’s become routine to hear elected officials — not just Pre […]

The reason lies largely in the question itself: speed and accuracy are critical in the news business. Unfortunately, they are often in conflict with one another, and accuracy is sometimes sacrificed in the […]

Yes and no. While the Yes Men have often faced the threat of legal consequences for the work they do, they have thus far emerged relatively unscathed on account of three key factors: They have a powerful […]