Don’t let the 'fake news' virus get you
A reporter who, under pressure to turn in a story or influenced by the age-old habit of failing to fact-check, jumps in with breaking news about an important event that ultimately turns out not to be true risks causing irreparable harm to readers’ trust.
To combat this distortion of their trade, which depends on audience trust, Univision, under the auspices of Luminate, has joined with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to offer the workshop “ ¿Qué chequear, cómo chequear y con qué herramientas lo hago? ” (What to check, how to check and what tools do I use to do so?), with the goal of training Hispanic journalists in the US in the urgent task of information verification in Spanish.
The objective is to provide the tools that will allow people to avoid the pitfall of spreading news that ultimately turns out to be false or manipulated, sometimes with a deliberate purpose or intention.
The free, two-part workshop will be held Monday, June 29 and Tuesday, June 30 during Global Fact 7, a worldwide event presented annually by IFCN. The 7th edition of Global Fact will break ground twice: this is the first time it is being held online and the first time it includes this workshop in Spanish, which Univision will make available on its website.
Cristina Tardáguila, IFCN associate director, will teach this two-part workshop and explain how to recognize fake news and what can be done to avoid spreading it. The event will be moderated by journalist Tamoa Calzadilla (Univision).
The idea is to tackle the ”fake news” that circulates on our networks in ever-increasing quantities and ever-greater speeds. Learning about its fabrication and distribution methods is an enormously important task because the techniques used to produce it are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Such is the case especially when anyone on social networks can manipulate text, audio, images and video to create news items and information that are believable but fictitious, altered or taken out of context, and they are in turn shared by users, affecting the credibility of media organizations, journalists and institutions.
The workshop will be held on June 29 and 30, 2020, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. CT at this link.
What to check, how to check and what tools do I use to do so?
June 21. Part 1: Toolbox and method for checking. What do we mean when we talk about disinformation? Methodology, discourse verification, principles and tips to do it well.
June 30. Part 2: Seeing is no longer believing: checking video and images. Image manipulation and the tools available to expose it. Photos and videos under scrutiny. Creative ways to fight disinformation.