Why do we fall for fake news?

S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State University In recent weeks, the amount of online fake news that circulated during the final months of the presidential race is coming to light, a disturbing revelation that threatens to undermine the country’s democratic process. We’re already seeing some real-world consequences. After fake news stories […] Read more »

Phillip Knightley, journalist behind some of the Sunday Times’s greatest investigations

Phillip Knightley, who has died aged 87, was one of the most accomplished reporters of his generation: his craftsmanship underpinned some of the 20th-century’s most memorable newspaper scoops and campaigns. He made a crucial contribution to the Sunday Times’s thalidomide exposé; revealed how the world’s biggest meat retailers, the Vestey […] Read more »

19 Things We Learned from the 2016 Election

OK, we can all agree that the November election result was a shocker. According to news reports, even the Trump campaign team was stunned to come up a winner. So now seemed like a good time to go over various theories floating around in political science and political reporting and […] Read more »

News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters

A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy. CONT. Thomas E. Patterson, Kennedy […] Read more »