Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg welcomed government regulation of content on the Internet in several areas, including “election integrity.” Around the world, there are increasing concerns that “fake news” threatens democracy. Our recent research supports this view — democracy is less likely to survive in a poor informational environment. […] Read more »
Is More Knowledge Making Us Less Reasonable?
… “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World,” designed and co-taught by University of Washington professors Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, begins with a premise so obvious we barely lend it the attention it deserves: “Our world is saturated with bullshit.” And so, every week for 12 weeks, the […] Read more »
A Campaign Insider’s Look at the 2020 Presidential Election
On this week’s episode of Poll Hub, Jefrey Pollock, President of Global Strategy Group, joins the roundtable. Pollock, who is working with Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on her 2020 presidential bid, shares his thoughts on the implications of the Mueller report, the large field of Democratic candidates, and what President […] Read more »
Attorney General Barr’s memo comes at a time of deep distrust in the executive branch
This weekend Attorney General William Barr released a memo summarizing the results of a special prosecutor’s investigation of President Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Barr wrote that he intends “to release as much of the Special Counsel’s report as I can consistent with applicable law, regulations, […] Read more »
Journalism needs to practice transparency in a different way to rebuild credibility
Does the news business need a better definition of transparency? Shutterstock Michael Palanski, Rochester Institute of Technology and Andrea Hickerson, Rochester Institute of Technology Public trust in media continues to hover near all-time lows, driven by perceptions that the news industry is partisan and peddles inaccurate information (“fake news”), as […] Read more »
Republicans and Democrats have never been more divided on confidence in the media
One of the ironies of writing about attitudes toward the media in The Washington Post is you are almost necessarily creating a paradox for some readers. If I say new data from the national General Social Survey released this week indicates more than two-thirds of Republicans say they have “hardly […] Read more »