Sports Writer Thomas George Comes to DE

The Imperatore Library was fortunate to host sports journalist Thomas George, father of DE senior Anthony, for a lunch time talk on Monday, April 23. Besides writing for publications such as The Denver Post, Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times, Mr. George is also the published author of three books, his most recent being Blitzed: Why NFL Teams Gamble on Starting Rookie Quarterbacks.

Anthony introduces his father, Thomas George.

He talked to enthusiastic sports fans and future potential journalists about the path of becoming a sports writer, offering advice on how to start out in the field. Reiterating the point that good readers make good writers, Mr. George challenged students to seek out award-winning pieces of journalism and analyze what makes them great. He consistently returned to the ideas of hard work, learning to listen, and cultivating excellence, encouraging students to rise above mediocrity regardless of their areas of interest. Engaged students were able to take away some concrete steps for their future aspirations.

Thomas George speaks with each student about their future aspirations.

If you have an idea for a guest speaker that you'd like to see in the library, come talk to Mrs. Shaurette or Mr. Petkus.

Journalist Anna Nicolaou Speaks About Fake News

The Imperatore Library was fortunate to host journalist Anna Nicolaou from the Financial Times on Friday, April 28. In order to reach a wide range of students, she gave two presentations, one for the eighth graders in the Media Studies and Current Events elective and the other for upper school students and faculty. 

Her presentation included some tips about avoiding fake news, such as looking out for sensational headlines and scrutinizing the URL of any news article you read. For more tips and tricks, see our blog post on fake news. She shared some examples of journalists' attempting to debunk fake stories, such as this New York Times piece. 

It was an enlightening afternoon full of good conversation and great questions. Thank you to Ms. Nicolaou and everyone that was able to join us on Friday!

The eighth grade Media Studies and Current Events classes meet for the presentation on fake news.

Anna Nicolaou shares tips for avoiding purposely misleading news.

Anna Nicolaou gives a presentation to the upper school students and faculty.

The audience had many questions about what it's like being a journalist in today's political climate.

Fake News

This month in the library we are focusing on the subject of fake news.  In today's digital world, news and information literacy is a far more complex subject than it was when the phrase was coined.  Today, students must know how to distinguish between real, factual news reporting and look-alike false stories churned out to deceive and/or influence its audience.  You can view several displays about fake news in the library and in the main hallway of Leggett Hall.    

News Literacy

The ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they come via print, television or the Internet.

--Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy

A majority of U.S. adults—62%—get news on social media

--May 2016 Pew Research Center Study

We are guaranteed a free press.  We are not guaranteed a neutral or a true press.  It is up to the reader or viewer to make reliability and credibility decisions.

Ask Yourself: 

• Who made this?
• Who is the target audience?
• Who paid for this? Or, who gets paid if you click on this?
• Who might benefit or be harmed by this message?
• What is left out of this message that might be important?
• Is this credible (and what makes you think that)? 

This video TEDEd by Damon Brown offers strategies for analyzing news sources:

Fake News Comes in a Variety of Flavors

• Pure fake news sites—fabricated stories to lure traffic
• Hoax sites—false information to trick readers
• Satirical sites—present news with comical, exaggerated spin (example:  The Onion)
• Born digital images and edited images—misrepresent visual reality
• Sometimes journalists are wrong, biased, and/or missing full context

Oxford Dictionaries recently announced post-truth as its 2016 international Word of the Year.  

POST-TRUTH, adjective:  Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:

‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’

‘some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’

It is well worth noting that the concept is not new. Oxford traces post-truth’s history from a peripheral term simmering for at least a decade to its dramatic spike this year.


Back in 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced the Word truthiness, now defined by Wikipedia as a quality characterizing a “truth” that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively “from the gut” or because it “feels right” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

FACT:  6 Media Giants now control 90% of the mainstream news we read, watch or listen to

TEST YOURSELF:

ABC News 10 Question Quiz:  Can You Pick the Fake News Headline?

Some Rules of Thumb

Check About and About Me pages: Clicking on or investigating authors’ names to consider their credentials in context should be a regular part of the research journey. 

Interrogate urls: We see quite a bit of domain manipulation these days. For instance, what looks like an .edu domain, followed by .co or “lo” is likely a fake or deceptive site.  If you are seeing a slightly variant version of a well-known URL, do a little investigating.

Suspect the sensational: When we see something posted that looks sensational, it is even more important to be skeptical. Exaggerated and provocative headlines with excessive use of capital letters or emotional language are serious red flags.

Go back to the source: When an article mentions a study, if you can, go directly to the source study and check its reliability as well.

Investigate: Try to verify the information in multiple sources, including traditional media and library databases. You can begin to rule out the hoaxes by checking out sites like the nonprofit, nonpartisan FactCheck.org, or popular sites like Snopes or Hoax-Slayer.

What exactly are you reading?: Even when you find yourself in a traditional news site, identify what type of writing you are reading. Is it news reporting, or a feature story, or an editorial, or work by a guest blogger, or a review, or an op-ed, or a disguised ad, or a comment?

Check your own search attitude and biases: Is your search language biased in any way?  Are you paying more attention to the information that confirms your own beliefs and ignoring evidence that does not?

Use a little energy: Make sure you’ve done your due diligence in seeking and validating the best possible news across media sources.

Stop before you forward (or use): When you see a widely shared or forwarded link, be suspicious of a hoax or a fake story.  Can you verify the information outside of the social media platform on which you discovered it?

 Be suspicious of pictures!: Not all photographs tell the truth. Images are normally edited, but sometimes they are digitally manipulated. A Google reverse image search can help discover the source of an image and its possible variations.

Sources: 

• Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world
• Can librarians help solve the fake news problem?

Water Found on Mars!

According to Kenneth Chang at The New York Times, "Scientists reported on Monday definitive signs of liquid water on the surface of present-day Mars, a finding that will fuel speculation that life, if it ever arose there, could persist to now." 

What would Mark Watney make of this detection?

Read more about this discovery in The New York Times article or stop by the library to read more about the red planet. 

Thank you to Ms. Lynn for sharing the link.

Who Broke "Bridgegate?"

By now, everyone has heard about the scandal involving Chris Christie and the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge.  David Carr writes in the New York Times about how stories like this tend to get uncovered and turned into national news stories.  He concludes it’s the small newspapers, like The Record, who often possess the knowledge and connections to probe deeply into local stories.  Read more about “Bridgegate” in The Record.

Who Made Your iPhone?

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is a one man show at the Public Theater in New York City featuring Mike Daisey who details the history of Apple and exposes what it takes to create a new piece of technology.  For reviews on this show, check out the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.  NPR digs deeper into the story of Chinese factory conditions that are responsible for creating our technology and Ira Glass features this story on This American Life.  To find out more about how your iPhone may have been created, see the show or listen to the podcast.