Readers are more suspicious of journalists providing corrections than journalists providing confirmations

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Tuesday, August 6, 2024 [Readers are more suspicious of journalists providing corrections than journalists providing confirmations]( The challenge for journalists may be figuring out how to provide debunkings without seeming like a debunker. By Randy Stein and Caroline Meyersohn. [Axios has its first-ever layoffs, citing “shifting reader attention and behavior” and AI]( What We’re Reading 404 Media / Jason Koebler [Where Facebook’s AI slop comes from →]( “‘The post you are seeing now is of a poor man that is being used to generate revenue,’ [he says in Hindi]( pointing with his pen to an image of a skeletal elderly man hunched over being eaten by hundreds of bugs. ‘The Indian audience is very emotional. After seeing photos like this, they Like, Comment and share them. So you too should create a page like this, upload photos and make money through Performance bonus.'” EL PAÍS English / Javier Salas [How X is fueling racism after the Southport murders in the U.K. →]( “A perfect occasion is the information vacuum that occurs after a tragedy such as Southport: while the authorities remain silent (by protocol or ignorance), hoaxers fill the gap with self-serving speculation or outright lies.” The Associated Press / Christine Fernando [Secretaries of state urge Elon Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading election misinformation on X →]( “The top election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington told Musk that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.” Bloomberg News [Nicolás Maduro is calling Venezuelans to delete WhatsApp in a growing crackdown on social media platforms →]( “Maduro’s attack on social media platforms comes on the heels of a wave of repression by his regime against any resistance to his self-declared win in the presidential election…Maduro’s request for the removal of WhatsApp is a quick aboutface, after having relied on social media to help soften his image ahead of the July 28 election.” Poynter / Enock Nyariki [How India’s Shakti project fact-checked the largest election in history at scale →]( “Media executives in India put their rivalries aside to collaborate on Shakti, a joint project connecting fact-checkers and news publishers to combat election misinformation. The project, backed with funding from Google News Initiative, involved the translation and distribution of fact-check reports among roughly 50 newsrooms.” Tampa Bay Times [Tampa Bay Times offers buyouts to staff →]( “In a letter to Times staff, Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty said employees have until Aug. 16 to decide if they want to seek a buyout package that maxes out at 12 weeks pay. Layoffs would follow later this month if the savings fall short of the target, Gallaty wrote.” Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt [Ex-Reuters agency chief Sue Brooks warns journalism has become an “elite sport” as she’s named head of the National Council for Training Journalists →]( “The NCTJ’s 2023 Diversity in Journalism report said 72% of UK journalists were from professional or upper class backgrounds compared to 44% of all UK workers – and that this trend is currently higher among more junior journalists.” The Guardian / Lili Bayer [“Somewhere between Orwell and Kafka”: Hungary closes in on its media →]( “Led by a figure with close links to the ruling Fidesz party and granted the power to draw upon the intelligence services without judicial oversight, the office was set up by Orbán’s government, formally to monitor foreign influence. But in practice, critics say, it is serving not as an independent state body, but as a tool to apply pressure on government critics.” The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin [CNET has been sold to Ziff Davis →]( “CNET, which attracted 38 million visitors in June according to SimilarWeb, has had several owners since it was founded three decades ago. CBS bought it in 2008 at an eye-popping valuation of $1.8 billion. The digital media company Red Ventures bought it in 2020 for about $500 million.” Columbia Journalism Review / Bill Grueskin [When split newsrooms work, and when they falter →]( “Split newsrooms work until they don’t. For news organizations that can afford the costs and attract the talent, they can incubate ideas and execute them deftly, without the bureaucratic wrangling that legacy staffs often impose. But if they’re successful—as Politico Pro was, and as the sites at the Times, Post, and Journal were—the main company will reabsorb them, like the burying beetles that eat their young to ensure the species will survive.” Simon Owens's Media Newsletter / Simon Owens [How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet →]( “In 2008, [Lydia Chavez] and her colleagues launched Mission Local, a local news blog that covered San Francisco’s Mission District. It quickly gained traction within the community, and in 2014 Lydia spun it out into its own independent news organization. Today, it’s fully sustained by a mix of large and small donors.” Caracas Chronicles / Claudia Smolansky and Clavel Rangel [Media crackdown following Venezuela’s contested elections →]( Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission “is calling directly to the owners and producers of media outlets to specifically mandate that they can’t report anything related to [opposition leaders Edmundo González Urrutia and Maria Corina Machado], protests, or the data from NGOs that reveal deaths, injuries, and arbitrary detentions by security forces and colectivos. According to local NGOs and media, 19 people were killed in the context of protests, and 711 have been victims of arbitrary detentions and 119 of enforced disappearance.” Trans Journalists Association [What’s fair? What journalists can learn from the Olympic boxing controversy →]( “Our industry often hyper-focuses on questions of testosterone and chromosomes, because these are the metrics often being debated on an international stage. But why are some genetic advantages considered fair, and some not? And how and when should the playing field be leveled?” [Nieman Lab]( / [Fuego]( [Twitter]( / [Facebook]( [View email in browser]( [Unsubscribe]( You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org. Nieman Journalism Lab Harvard University 1 Francis Ave.Cambridge, MA 02138 [Add us to your address book](