Speaking to technology industry executives at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee addressed AP’s election coverage, trust around polling and the accuracy of AP’s new voter survey in telling the story of the U.S. midterm elections. CONT. Lauren Easton, Associated Press Read more »
Fundamentalists Are More Likely to Fall for Fake News
Precisely two years after the election of President Donald Trump—a contest stained by deliberately inaccurate information that was shared and weaponized on social media—America has not yet come to grips with the issue of fake news. How it spreads is a central issue, but an even more basic question is […] Read more »
Most Americans Confident in Accuracy of Upcoming Elections
As U.S. voters prepare to head to the polls for Tuesday’s midterm elections, seven in 10 Americans say they are “very” (28%) or “somewhat” confident (42%) that votes will be accurately cast and counted, similar to what Gallup has measured in past elections, except for 2008. CONT. Justin McCarthy, Gallup Read more »
Trump’s Attacks on the News Media Are Working
… By one measure, a CBS News poll over the summer, 91 percent of “strong Trump supporters” trust him to provide accurate information; 11 percent said the same about the news media. Mr. Trump was open about the tactic in a 2016 conversation with Lesley Stahl of CBS News, which she […] Read more »
How disinformation, voter suppression and partisanship destroy democracy
… As Walter Lippmann first argued in “Public Opinion” (1922), people in mass societies interpret the modern world through the “pictures” and “fictions” in their heads. The “pseudo-environments” they inhabit are made comprehensible only through the “stereotypes” that enable them to make sense of an otherwise chaotic reality, and for […] Read more »
Should you worry about American democracy? Here’s what our new poll finds.
In just two weeks, Americans will vote in a midterm election that may well decide what party controls Congress and the legislative agenda for the next two years. But as Americans head into this democratic exercise, some observers wonder whether the country has become dissatisfied with democracy. Young Americans seem […] Read more »