Journalism

Will I go to prison for violating the terms of service? This is the question journalists must ask themselves, now, when writing data stories based on public information collected from a website, such as Facebook or Twitter. Violating a terms of service that prohibits scraping can carry with it possible criminal liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). No journalists have been prosecuted under this statute, but their sources have, and some journalists have been asked to stop using specific reporting tools by Facebook.

In the roughly 21 months since he took the oath of office, President Donald Trump has sunk far below the already-low bar he set for himself in his ugly campaign. As I see it, there are five main fronts of this assault on our democracy. First, there is Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law. Second, the legitimacy of our elections is in doubt. Third, the president is waging war on truth and reason. Lesley Stahl, the 60 Minutes reporter, asked Trump during his campaign why he’s always attacking the press.

Jeff Bezos finally talked about “the president.” After months of President Donald Trump berating Bezos’ two most visible companies, the Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner fired back. “It's really dangerous to demonize the media,” he said. “It's dangerous to call the media lowlifes. It's dangerous to say they're the 'enemy of the people.'" Bezos suggested President Trump take the high road and accept media scrutiny. "You don't take that job thinking you're not going to get scrutinized," he added. "You're going to get scrutinized.

According to a Quinnipiac University National Poll, American voters trust the news media more than President Donald Trump 54 - 30 percent to tell the truth about important issues. Republicans trust Trump more than the media 72 - 12 percent, the only group that trusts Trump more. White voters with no college degree are divided as 45 percent trust Trump more and 43 percent trust the media more. The news media is an important part of democracy, 69 percent of voters say, as 21 percent say the media is the enemy of the people.

In this report, part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Trust, Media and Democracy initiative, Gallup asked a representative sample of U.S. adults to discuss key factors that make them trust, or not trust, news media organizations. Key findings:

About two-thirds of American adults (68%) say they at least occasionally get news on social media, about the same share as at this time in 2017, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Many of these consumers, however, are skeptical of the information they see there: A majority (57%) say they expect the news they see on social media to be largely inaccurate. Still, most social media news consumers say getting news this way has made little difference in their understanding of current events, and more say it has helped than confused them (36% compared with 15%).

The most powerful false-news weapon in history is around the corner. The media industry has only a short time to get ahead of it. If technology continues its current advance, we may soon face totally convincing videos showing events that never happened — created so effectively that even experts will have trouble proving they’re fakes. “Deep fake” video will be able to show people saying, with the authentic ring of their own voices, things they never said. It will show them doing things they never did, by melding their images with other video or creating new images of them from scratch.

President Donald Trump lashed out at a host of familiar targets early Sept 6 as he grapples with the fallout of a New York Times op-ed in which an anonymous senior administration official wrote that some White House staffers have conspired to push back against the president's instincts. "The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy - & they don’t know what to do. The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption.

For years tech companies have been getting free content moderation from journalists who have often been the ones unearthing illegal or problematic behaviour on huge platforms, with social networks only dealing with issues once they know that there’s an impending news article coming. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey noted the role that journalists play in counteracting disinformation that spreads and is incentivized on his platform.

I’m alarmed at the state of our news. Fake news, “real” news, just about all news—the made-up stuff that comes without corroboration and from God knows where; the infotainment masquerading as news from media outlets that should know better; and the tweets and mistruths that spew forth daily from the White House that attempt, with considerable success, to determine what the rest us will talk about on that particular day. Over time, a society deprived of real news and information will begin to make decisions that work against its better interests.