Journalists despair over toll of disinformation on jobs
NEW YORK (AP) — Journalists are sounding an alarm about the spread of disinformation in society and how it affects their jobs on a daily basis, along with skepticism on whether traditional methods to combat it really work.
The free speech advocates PEN America found in a survey of journalists released Thursday that 90% said their jobs have been affected by false content created with the intent to deceive.
Disinformation takes many forms: former President Donald Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, unproven COVID-19 treatments spreading online and wild QAnon theories about pedophilia. It could be as simple as a local politician lying about an opponent's record or this week's debate over whether video showed bird poop landing on President Joe Biden's jacket during a speech.
When more than 1,000 journalists returned the survey, PEN America was struck at how images in written responses “kept coming up with people being flooded with disinformation,” said Dru Menaker, the organization's chief operating officer.
“Clearly, we have touched a nerve,” she said.
Four in five respondents labeled it a serious problem and most say they deal with it regularly, either through sources passing along false information or the need to debunk something spreading online.
False information can be spread through bots, or in doctored photos and video that needs to be verified, Menaker said. It has spread in large part because its purveyors find it effective.
Luke O'Brien, a journalist and fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is now an expert on a beat that hardly existed a decade ago. He said he's been stunned at how fast misinformation spreads into the media.
“It just gets worse and worse,” he said.
While most journalists...