NewsTrust - Media - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

New Evidence of Scott Walker Lying to Congress

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By John Nichols - May. 27 (News Report) - there is new evidence to suggest that Walker’s testimony to Congress about when he began preparing his anti-labor legislation—which sparked mass demonstrations and a recall movement that will culminate with a June 5 vote on whether to recall the governor—was not truthful.

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This is Your Brain On Fox

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By David Frum - May. 22 (News Analysis) - when quizzed on current affairs, people who watched only Fox scored worse than people who watched no news at all.

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Bachmann’s Fundraising Whopper

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Robert Farley - May. 20 (Fact Check) - In several urgent fundraising appeals, Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claims that biased “liberal judges” redrew her congressional district “in retaliation for repeatedly standing up to President Obama.” The truth is that only two of the five judges were Democratic appointees, and Bachmann’s Minnesota district has become even more Republican than … More >>

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Twitter and Reddit as crowdsourced fact-checking engines

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 17 (News) - New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors.

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How the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - May. 13 (News Report) - Howard Rheingold isn’t too concerned about whether Google is making us stupid or if Facebook is making us lonely. Those kind of criticisms, Rheingold says, miscalculate the ability humans have to change their behavior, particularly when it comes to how we use social media and the Internet more broadly. “If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool,” Rheingold said Thursday. Rheingold was visiting the MIT Media Lab to talk about his new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, which examines how people can use the Internet not just to better themselves, but also society as a whole. Rheingold has a longer online history than most, going back to The WELL, one of the first online forums back in the 1980s. Ever since writing about that experience, Rheingold has developed a habit for dropping the kind of book that not just probes what it means to be online, but charts what that means for all of us.

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Google’s head of news: Newspapers are the new Yahoo

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 13 (News Report) - In an interview about the future of the media industry, Google's head of news products Richard Gingras said that newspapers are like old-fashioned internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo, and that unless they can adapt to the web instead of fighting it they are doomed.

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Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Andrew Sullivan - May. 12 (News Report) - Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, (he polled for George W. Bush in 2004), to various leading Republican operatives, candidates and insiders. It's on the fast-shifting poll data...

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Fox News Contributor: Women's Voting Rights 'One Of America's Greatest Mistakes'

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Gene Demby - May. 09 (News) - Jesse Lee Peterson, the controversial conservative preacher and regular guest of Sean Hannity, said in a recent video it was a mistake to allow women the right to vote.

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New Legislation Would Give Power to Keyboard Cops

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Naomi Wolf - May. 07 (Special Report) - The respected Internet technology site Techdirt has called the bill "insanity." It has written that "CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information ... for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as [it] can claim someone committed a ‘cybersecurity crime.'"

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The PolitiFact guide to Medicare attack lines

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson - May. 06 (Fact Check) - Barack Obama has slashed Medicare by $500 billion. Mitt Romney and House Republicans want to end Medicare. And a new board is going to ration care so Washington can waste more money. Believe any of that? You shouldn’t. But it’s what the political ads likely will be saying between now and Election Day in November. We have some advice for voters sorting out the claims: Believe nothing you hear in a 30-second TV ad. Here are a few facts about Medicare: • It’s the government-run health insurance for Americans over age 65. • It’s a Canada-style, single-payer system. Liberals love that; conservatives don’t. • It has approximately 50 million people on its rolls. • That 50 million will grow to 80 million as baby boomers retire. Paying for that will be a challenge. Those realities about Medicare have sparked a full-fledged political brawl for 2012.

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PBS Responds on Dow-Funded Series

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - May. 01 (News Report) - PBS ombud Michael Getler (4/27/12) agrees that the Dow Chemical Corporation's sponsorship of a PBS series violates PBS underwriting guidelines. PBS, unfortunately, stands by its show.

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Experimental Study of Informal Rewards in Peer Production

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Stony Brook University - By Michael Restivo, Arnout van de Rijt - Apr. 29 (Research) - We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.

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Is 'America Revealed'--or PBS?: Dow-sponsored public TV series tracks Dow's product lines

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - Apr. 23 (Special Report) - Action Alert 4/23/12 The four-part series , airing on PBS stations this month, looks at big-picture economic issues, from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing. The series underwriter? The Dow Chemical Company, whose commercial interests closely

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Bahrain: Tear Gas, Violence Surround F1 Grand Prix Race

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Salah Almhamdi - Apr. 22 (News Report) - Bahrain hosts the Bahrain Grand Prix on April 22 but the run-up to the event has seen huge protests. In clashes police have been firing tear gas and stun grenades at protesters, and one protestor, Salah Abbas Habib, was found dead.

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Corporate Media Hypocrisy: Ted Nugent's Death Wish for Obama v. Hilary Rosen's Work Jab at Ann Romney

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Adele M. Stan - Apr. 19 (News Analysis) - Ever since the election of the nation's first African-American president, the media seem to have become acclimated to a right-wing rhetorical landscape so fraught with racism and violence that words once unthinkable as public utterances by supporters of a Republican candidate barely register as such. Yet, cowed as they are by the right-wing message machine, media figures often feel that they dare not ignore even the most ridiculous of right-wing talking points.

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"Fox Mole," We Hardly Knew Ye! In One Day, Fox Finds Employee Hired by Gawker, Fires Him, Threatens Legal Action

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lauren Kelley - Apr. 12 (News Report) - The post neatly summed up everything that had been troubling me about my employer: Non sequitur, ad hominem attacks on the president; gleeful race baiting; a willful disregard for facts; and so on....

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What’s Happening in Syria?

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By William Blum - Apr. 08 (News Analysis) - It’s difficult to know what’s happening in Syria not only because of the confusing violence but because the Western news media has lost nearly all credibility when it comes to reporting on Muslim countries, at least those on America’s and Israel’s enemies lists.

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National Review Tries To Distance Itself From Derbyshire For Racist Column, But Silent On Calls For Firing Him

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Apr. 07 (News Analysis) - After the National Review’s John Derbyshire penned an unbelievably offensive and racist screed in Taki’s Magazine advising white Americans to stay away from black Americans, a firestorm has predictably erupted over whether his views will be sanctioned by the larger conservative movement. Derbyshire told ThinkProgress that his column urging the majority of Americans to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally” was not satire, but in fact a “social commentary.”

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Rupert Murdoch's American Media Immunity

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Michael Wolff - Apr. 04 (News Analysis) - Here's the thing: Murdoch's empire may be under siege in one of the most riveting business tales of our time – featuring wounded celebrities, a dynastic family drama, and toadying at the highest levels of government – but American journalism has been mostly absent from the story. At best, it has been a sidelined presence, late to the game, and generally confused about how to get ahead of events happening in another country. This is, arguably, the best thing Murdoch has going for him: in the US, the seat of his company and the main motor of his fortunes, he has been able to hide in plain sight.

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Where Are the Women Writers? (ASME Edition)

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Adam Weinstein - Apr. 04 (Special Report) - They called it the Count, and the concept was simple: Tally up how many women get published in some of the world's top literary magazines and journals, compare it with the number of men gracing those pages, and slap the results into a pie chart. Red for men, blue for women. The result was a lot of big red pie slices . First published in 2011, they conveyed a clear fact: From Harpers to The New Yorker to The Atlantic , it's still very much a man's world. Roughly 65 to 75 percent of the space in the prestigious magazines went to male writers. The Count is the brainchild of two accomplished poets, Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu. In 2009, the duo founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts , a nonprofit that acts as part online community, part advocate and agitator for women of letters. The idea, Belieu says, came in a "moment of loathing and terror and revolutionary spark." They intended the Count to be a conversation-starter, and it certainly has been : After they published the first round, some major ...

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Does Fact-Checking Work? False Statements are Wrong Metric

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Brendan Nyhan - Mar. 31 (News Analysis) - Politics today seemingly has more fact-checking than ever before. As a result, reporters are asking a new question: Does fact-checking work? At the national level, USA Today's Martha T. Moore described it as "an article of faith" among fact-checkers that "factually accurate information is something voters want and need, and they provide plenty of it." Unfortunately, she...

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General Motors Decides Climate Change Is Real, Pulls Support From Heartland Institute

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sharon Silke Carty - Mar. 30 (News Report) - After getting called out by an environmental group, General Motors has pulled support from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit well-known for attacking the science behind global warming and climate change. The automaker told the Heartland Institute last week that it won't be making further donations, spokesman Greg Martin said. At a speech earlier this month, GM CEO Dan Akerson said his company is running its business under the assumption that climate change is real. "We applaud GM's decision and the message it sends -- that it is no longer acceptable for corporations to promote the denial of climate change and that support for an organization like Heartland is not in line with GM's values," said Daniel Souweine, campaign director for Forecast the Facts, a group that urges meteorologists to talk more openly about climate change.

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Wall Street Journal Claims War on Women a "Myth"

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

care2.com - By Robin Marty - Mar. 27 (Fact Check) - in essence, what Eberstadt really wants to talk about is whether women are “happier” now than they were back when you only had sex while married and for the purpose of making babies. And, in case you didn’t know this, you aren’t.

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Helping readers improve Wikipedia

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wikimedia - By Fabrice Florin, Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung, Arron Halfaker, Oliver Keyes - Mar. 25 (Special Report) - The Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with editors of the English Wikipedia, is developing a tool to enable readers to contribute productively to building the encyclopedia. To that end, we started development of a new version of the Article Feedback Tool (known as AFTv5) in October 2011. The original version of the tool, which allows readers to rate articles based on a star system, launched in 2010. The new version invites readers to write comments that might help editors improve Wikipedia articles. We hope that this tool will contribute to the Wikimedia movement’s strategic goals of increasing participation and improving quality.

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The AP's Weak Coverage of Its New Boss

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - The Associated Press has a new CEO. So how does the AP cover it? Not very well. AP hired McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt to be its new CEO, which raises a couple of obvious questions. First: The AP hired an old-line newspaper executive to be their digital-age CEO? Second: They hired McClatchy's longtime CEO? If you're reporting on this,...

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