NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Fact checker

Topics in Journalism v • d • e

Professional Issues

Ethics & News Values
Objectivity & Attribution
News Source & Libel Law
News & Investigation
Reporting & Writing
Business & Citizen
Alternative & Advocacy
Sports Journalism
Science Journalism
Computer and video game journalism
Journalism is a discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying, and presenting news regarding current events, trends, issues and people. ... Journalism ethics and standards include principles of ethics and of good practice to address the specific challenges faced by professional journalists. ... News values determine how much prominence a news story is given by a media outlet. ... Objectivity is frequently held to be essential to journalistic professionalism (particularly in the United States); however, there is some disagreement about what the concept consists of. ... It has been suggested that Attribution (journalism) be merged into this article or section. ... Source is a term used in journalism to refer to any individual from whom information about a story has been received. ... Libel redirects here. ... NewS (NEWS) is a J-pop group from Johnny & Associates, which also produced groups such as SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids, Arashi, and Tackey & Tsubasa. ... Investigative journalism is a kind of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a topic of interest, often related to crime, scandals, government corruption, or white collar crime. ... A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media. ... News style is the prose style of short, front-page newspaper stories and the news bulletins that air on radio and television. ... Business journalism includes coverage of companies, the workplace, personal finance, and economics, including unemployment and other economic indicators. ... Citizen journalism, also known as participatory journalism, is the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris... As long as there has been media there has been alternative media. ... Advocacy journalism is a genre of journalism which is strongly fact-based, but may seek to support a point-of-view in some public or private sector issue. ... Sportswriting (also sports writing) is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events. ... Science journalism is a relatively new branch of journalism, which utilizes the art of reporting to convey information on science topics to a public forum. ... It has been suggested that New Games Journalism be merged into this article or section. ...

Journalism Education & Fourth Estate
Other Topics & Books
A journalism school is a school, usually a part of an established university, where journalists are trained. ... A reporter The term Fourth Estate refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues. ... List of journalism topics A-D AP Stylebook Arizona Republic Associated Press Bar chart Canadian Association of Journalists Chart Citizen journalism Committee to Protect Journalists Conservative bias Copy editing Desktop publishing E-J Editor Freedom of the press Graphic design Hedcut Headline Headlinese Hostile media effect House style Information graphic... List of books related to journalism: The Art of Editing, by Floyd K. Baskette, Jack Z. Scissors, Brian S. Brooks Designing Infographics The Elements of Journalism What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel Infographics, by James Glen Stovall Media Management in the...

Social Impact

Infotainment & Celebrity
'Infotainers' & Personalities
News Management
Distortion & VNRs
PR & Propaganda Model
'Yellow' Journalism
Press freedom
Infotainment refers to a general type of media broadcast program which provides a combination of current events news and feature news, or features stories. Infotainment also refers to the segments of programming in television news programs which overall consist of both hard news segments and interviews, along with celebrity interviews... Celebrity news is an aspect of the wider infotainment/news trade which focuses on celebrities and celebrity gossip. ... Infotainers are entertainers in infotainment media, such as news anchors or news personalities who cross the line between journalism (quasi-journalism) and entertainment within the broader news trade. ... Infotainment or soft news, refers to a part of the wider news trade that provides information in a way that is considered entertaining to its viewers, as evident by attraction of a higher market demographic. ... Managing the news refers to acts which are intended to influence the presentation of information within the news media. ... Distorted news or planted news are terms in journalism for two deviated aspects of the wider news media wherein media outlets deliberately present false data, evidence, or sources as factual, in contradiction to the ethical practices in professional journalism. ... Image:Screen. ... Public relations (PR) is the art of managing communication between an organization and its key publics to build, manage and sustain a positive image. ... The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes. ... Nasty little printers devils spew forth from the Hoe press in this Puck cartoon of Nov. ... Freedom of the press (or press freedom) is the guarantee by a government of free public press for its citizens and their associations, extended to members of news gathering organizations, and their published reporting. ...

News media

Newspapers & Magazines
News Agencies
Broadcast Journalism
Online & Blogging
Alternative Media News media satellite up-link trucks and photojournalists gathered outside the Prudential Financial headquarters in Newark, New Jersey in August, 2004 following the announcement of evidence of a terrorist threat to it and to buildings in New York City. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to organizations in the news trade: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. ... Broadcast journalism refers to television news and radio news, as well as the online news outlets of broadcast affiliates. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Alternative media are defined most broadly as those media practices falling outside the mainstreams of corporate communication. ...

Roles

Journalist, Reporter, Editor, News presenter, Photo Journalist, Columnist, Visual Journalist The terms news trade or news business refers to news-related organizations in the mass media (or information media) as a business entity —associated with but distinct from the profession of journalism. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media. ... Editing is the process of preparing language, images, or sound for presentation through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications. ... ITV newscaster Mark Austin. ... Sports photojournalists at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. ... A columnist is a journalist who produces a specific form of writing for publication called a column. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and the Internet. ...

A fact checker is a person whose job consists of checking factual assertions made in news copy to determine whether they are correct. This job requires general knowledge but more importantly it requires the ability to conduct research quickly and properly. NewS (NEWS) is a J-pop group from Johnny & Associates, which also produced groups such as SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids, Arashi, and Tackey & Tsubasa. ... Research is often described as an active, diligent, and systematic process of inquiry aimed at discovering, interpreting and revising facts. ...

The resources and time necessary for fact-checking are considerable. As a consequence, this work cannot be applied to copy filed on a daily basis. For this reason, fact-checking is not commonly done at most newspapers, where reporters' ability to correct and verify their own information in a timely manner is chief among their qualifications. News sources that publish on a weekly, monthly or less frequent basis are more likely to employ fact-checkers than are daily newspapers. NewS (NEWS) is a J-pop group from Johnny & Associates, which also produced groups such as SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids, Arashi, and Tackey & Tsubasa. ...

Fact-checking, officially known as "research" at most major publications, is most critical for those publishing material written by authors who are not trained reporters—these writers are more likely to make professional, ethical, or merely factual mistakes. The methods employed in fact-checking vary from publication to publication. Some have neither the staff nor the budget necessary to verify every claim in a given article. Others will attempt to do just that, and go as far as contacting sources and authors in order to review the content of their statements as related in the piece.

Fact-checking is also distinctive to American publications. British and European magazines and newspapers may have editors tasked specifically with correcting spelling and performing superficial verification, but do not employ fact-checkers as such. Fact-checking is a typical entry level position at major magazines. Fact-checker jobs at The New Yorker are considered prestigious and can lead to higher positions there or at other magazines. The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction. ...

Among the benefits of printing only checked copy is that this practice can avert serious and sometimes costly problems—such as lawsuits and discreditation. Fact checkers are primarily useful in catching accidental mistakes; they are not a guarantee against journalistic frauds like Stephen Glass (who began his own career as a fact-checker). The fact checkers at The New Republic and other weeklies never flagged the numerous fictions in reportage he submitted. Michael Kelly, who edited some of the concocted stories, blamed himself, rather than the fact-checkers: The expression discrediting tactics in politics refers to personal attacks against a public figure intended to discourage people from believing in the figure or supporting their cause (see damaging quotations). ... Journalistic Fraud book cover Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted is a book by Bob Kohn with a thesis similar to that of Bernard Goldbergs Bias. ... Stephen Glass (born 1974) was an American reporter for The New Republic, who was fired for basing his articles on fake quotes, sources, and events. ... For other uses, see the disambiguation section. ... Reportage can be a single journalists report of news (especially when witnessed first-hand), distributed through the media. ... Michael Kelly (1957-2003) was an editor-at-large of the Atlantic Monthly and a columnist for the Washington Post. ...

See also

External links

Famous former fact-checkers