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Misinformation

This guide is designed to provide a clear and transparent foundation for misinformation, an incredibly knotty, complicated, and decidedly unclear topic.

Coverage, Sourcing, and Confirmation Bias

Making media is the process of many decisions—beginning with what topics or events to cover at all—that contribute to a story's narrative and how it is received. This framing results from decisions about what information to include or not include, the language used, and whose perspectives or voices are emphasized all contribute to a story’s narrative and how it is received. The framing is the result of many choices made by reporters and editors, including word choice (for instance, “protest” versus “riot” or “anti-abortion” versus “pro-life”), sourcing (who is interviewed or referenced, and why), and story structure (what’s up top versus later on, or left out altogether). Making conscious, informed decisions about whose perspectives are emphasized and how information is presented and organized are critical to accurate and responsible journalism.

 
Guides

  • Media Literacy Guide: How to Detect Bias in News Media (FAIR)
    This guide provides specific “questions to ask yourself about news you consume, whether it’s in print, online, on TV or radio or in your social media feed”—such as Who is telling the story? and Are the visuals misleading?—with examples of how newsmaking choices shape public narratives.

  • Confirmation bias in journalism: What it is and strategies to avoid it (The Journalist’s Resource)
    A behavior scientist unpacks how journalists can “recognize and reduce the influence of cognitive bias in their work.”

  • How Journalists Minimize Bias (Facing History and Ourselves)
    In this short video, journalists discuss what bias in journalism means to them and how they combat it in their reporting.

  • Finding Underrepresented Sources (Columbia University Libraries)
    This research guide provides resources for identifying experts in a variety of areas that should be heard from more in the news.

  • Don’t Be a Copagandist (Interrupting Criminalization)
    A resource for journalists on covering “crime” and violence, compiled by Mia Henry, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Andrea J. Ritchie.

  • “A Test of the News: Objectivity, democracy, and the American mosaic” (CJR)
    In an analysis of the meanings of journalistic objectivity, journalist Wesley Lowery makes the case that fair and principled journalism requires these processes and methods: Devotion to rigor, Commitment to fairness, Valuing context, Practicing transparency, Exploring nuance, and Seeking clarity.

 
Articles
 
Books