April 10, 2024

• Wall Street Journal has yet another round of layoffs (Daily Beast)

• NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust (NPR)

• Washington Post web traffic numbers keep sinking (Washington City Paper) 

• 'NewsGuard, which (quite fairly) rates news organizations for credibility and quality, has downgraded The New York Times for the first time' (Paul Farhi) 

• Google appears to have partnered with the company behind Sports Illustrated’s fake, AI-generated writers (Futurism) / Fired exec for former Sports Illustrated publisher seeks $2M in lost pay (Law360) 

• AI is already reshaping newsrooms, AP study finds (Poynter) / Getty Images CEO calls for industry standards around AI (The Hollywood Reporter) / Behind the scenes at a journalism and open source AI hackathon (Columbia Journalism Review)

• Journalists continue to wrestle with how to cover Donald Trump (American Press Institute) 

• How a case against Fox News tore apart a media-fighting law firm (New York Times) 

• Slate hires: Katie Krzaczek and Tony Ho Tran as senior editors of business and technology coverage (Slate) / New York Times names Matthew Rose as an editorial director in Opinion (Talking Biz News) / Bloomberg Opinion hires Los Angeles Times’s Erika Smith as a columnist (Talking Biz News)

• Forget a ban — why are journalists using TikTok in the first place? (The Intercept)

• AP to make select U.S. election data available to financial institutions through Google Cloud (Associated Press) 

• 'Fake news' legislation risks doing more harm than good amid a record number of elections in 2024 (Nieman Journalism Lab)

• BBC close to crowning first royal editor amid Kate Middleton & King Charles cancer battles (Variety) 

Press Freedom

• Colorado Sun journalist talks about being booted from a GOP event over her ‘unfair reporting’ (CNN)

• At least four Ukrainian journalists injured in consecutive attacks on Ukraine (Committee to Protect Journalists)  

• Under attack from so many quarters, press freedom in Brazil is now threatened by some judges too (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)

How journalists can respond to mis- and disinformation without amplifying it

“I think more journalists are starting to consider their role not as [mis- and disinformation] debunkers, but more as kind of a service provider ... What we're trying to do is lay the groundwork for audiences to understand what the motivations are … and the sorts of cues and clues to look out for when they see a piece of information that doesn't sit quite right with them.”

-- Tiffany Hsu, New York Times reporter covering misinformation and disinformation, from part one of the NPCJI webinar series on ethics in the age of disinformation. 

This series, produced in part with funding from the Inasmuch Foundation, is designed to provide tools and best practices to support ethical, trustworthy journalism. Watch the full session here.

April 17: How journalists can build and support a culture of credibility

Join us for a virtual discussion among standards editors at national news outlets next Wednesday at 11:30 am ET, where they will raise the curtain on the important discussions that guide their outlets’ coverage.

From rigorously fact-checking reporting to framing global conflicts to language choices and beyond, they’ll share best practices and considerations journalists should make while serving the public.

Speakers:

• Amanda Barrett, vice president of news, standards and inclusion for The Associated Press 
• Anita Kumar, senior managing editor, North America, and standards editor for POLITICO
• Natalia Mironova, editor of news standards and best practices for Voice of America
• Eileen O’Reilly, managing editor for standards and training for Axios and NPCJI board member
• David Peterkin, vice president of news practice for ABC News 
• Moderator: Ed Kelley, dean emeritus at Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and NPCJI board member

This program is part of the Institute’s four-part training series focused on ethics in the age of disinformation. The series, produced in part with funding from the Inasmuch Foundation, is designed to provide tools and best practices to support ethical, trustworthy journalism.

Resources

• Video: Trauma-informed interviewing of children and caregivers (DART Center) 
• How a Spanish media group created an AI tool to detect audio deepfakes to help journalists in a big election year (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism) 
• Solutions Journalism: 11 tough questions on how to do solutions journalism (EJC.net)

This newsletter is written & edited by the National Press Club Journalism Institute staff: Beth Francesco, Bara Vaida, and Holly Butcher Grant. Send us your questions and suggestions for topics to cover.

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