As we start another year, we at Media Sifter decided to take a look back at 2017. In addition to making a few wishes for journalism in 2018, we are going to elaborate on some of the main events in the past year, and how we are going to keep working on bringing truth back to news.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘post-truth’ was chosen as the word of the year of 2016. In the UK, the Brexit–supporting press spreading negative stories about the EU, combined with harsh political campaigning based on false information arguably had an impact on the referendum. On the other side of the Atlantic, it was claimed that fake news spread on social media, contributed towards the historical presidential election result in November 2016.

In 2017, most media consumers became familiar with the term ‘fake news’, but it has remained unclear whether dealing with misinformation has become significantly better — at least by social media channels themselves. Due to associations with fake news, the main social media channels have used firmer editorial power to harvest misinformation and other harmful content on their sites.

For instance, in October 2017, a US-based NGO NLPC reported how Facebook, Twitter and YouTube censored conservative, right-wing content on their sites. By the end of the year, both Facebook and Google informed us about their decision to increase the number of moderators by 10,000 in order to maintain general internet safety and a code of conduct on their sites.

These actions have two main flaws: firstly, it gives tech companies a significant amount of editorial power in terms of ethics, defining the standards, possibly limiting a fundamental democratic right: freedom of expression.

Secondly, the working conditions of the moderators remain obscure: it is possible that the moderators remain as contractors rather than employees, who are subjected to significantly low wages and an inability to unionize, which has been the case in the past.

In 2017, the term ‘fake news’ also became popularized and unfortunately, used by politicians in countries suffering from an unstable political situation and limited: Poland, Libya, and Myanmar to name a few. Needless to mention how harmful this may forming civic movements, particularly in contexts where trust in democracy is generally low.

In order to prevent politicians from taking advantage of the situation, it has been suggested that we should give using the term ‘fake news’ altogether, and focus on the promoting on media criticism and media literacy instead.

Consequently, a number of NGOs and companies, such as Mozilla, GAPMIL by UNESCO and EAVI have established projects and initiatives in order to improve media and web literacy.

Even though such attempts are welcomed and a great start, the truth is that facts and media literacy are difficult to sell. Cognitive experiments have proven that people tend to believe they know more than they do, and would rather consume information that confirms their previous beliefs than challenge themselves.

This is why social media mobs, leading to lynching of innocent civilians in the aftermath of Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, and recently in India, where WhatsApp is used as a tool for religious propaganda, are not solely digital issues, either.

The phenomenon is similar to witch-hunting in the Middle Ages, that were also often started by one or two influential individuals that the mass followed. It is partly explained a human tendency for groupthink: a desire for social harmony resulting in irrational group behavior and ignorance of critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints.

Furthermore, as Victoria R. Rubin from Western University, Canada, has argued, people are generally truth-biased. This means that interpersonal messages tend to be judged truthful rather than deceptive, regardless of the actual truth of the messages.

Considering the complexity of the issue, and the our general lack of expertise of distinguishing truth from fiction, it is clear that we also need companies with social responsibility and commitment to distribute truth and facts.

Luckily, by the end of 2017, we have already witnessed a glimmer of hope regarding the future of journalism. As we’ve pointed out earlier, the Guardian’s revenue from supporters recently exceeded that from advertisements for the first time since the newspaper went online.

Likewise, a number of Silicon Valley heretics, such as Justin Rustein, the inventor of the wildly successful Facebook like-button, and Chamath Palihapitiya the former Facebook Vice President for user growth, have raised worries about the rise of the attention economy and its impacts on healthy civic discussion.

Rather than repeating the mantra according to which social media is making the world a better place, they admit deliberately cutting down personal social media use due to its distracting and addictive nature, promoting social interactions fueled by ‘likes, hearts and thumbs ups’, in the words of Chamath Palihapitiya.

Nevertheless these are only examples of two people, they may tell something about the current state of affairs: people are getting bored of misinformation and attention-driven platforms, giving a warm welcome to change.

Therefore, there are also clearly growing demands and a marketplace for platforms like Media Sifter, that enable critical consumption of media and promote civic discussion. We want to challenge the attention economy by introducing the evidence economy, where users are rewarded based on their contribution and reviewing of facts.

Thankfully, Blockchain — which is at the core of Media Sifter’s design — provides powerful tools for this, and can be used to enhance transparency to a remarkable extent. In 2018, we hope that misuse of the term ‘fake news’ will become history. In addition, we hope that blockchain will be further exploited towards the common good, and will improve journalism and society on a long-term basis.

A new year’s resolution by Media Sifter is to commit to working towards bringing trust back to the news, promoting media and information literacy on our behalf. Thank you for being with us in the past year. We hope that the 2018 will bring plenty of interesting debates and conversations that you can be a continue to partake as well.

If you are still unsure about how the technology behind the Media Sifter platform works, read more about our token model, and check out our most read article from 2017, where we explain how a decentralized community can truth-hack Fake News on Blockchain.

And in case you haven’t already, join our community on Telegram and / or Slack.

Happy New Year!

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Our New Media Resolutions for 2018 was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And how Media Sifter can help to tackle them

The web is filled with enormous amounts of information. Googling ‘Beyonce’ will provide you with 123 000 000 results, so a mechanism filtering out unnecessary pages is likely to be useful, unless you have the time to go through all the articles, while looking for the artist’s tour dates in your city.

Likewise, based on your browsing history and likes, if you search for ‘apple’, Google knows whether you are interested in Apple products or fruits, helping you to find relevant articles and advertisements instantly. Based on your clicks and likes, news organisations can recommend articles that may interest you and deepen your understanding about an issue.

While personalized and filtered results help us to navigate in the jungle of information, it has led to a recent issue especially on feed-based platforms — filter bubbles. Here are some of the reasons why filter bubbles are problematic for the health of democracy, and personal well-being, that has even raised worries for Bill Gates:

1.Lack of transparency: Nearly all media outlets and social media sites use algorithmic curation on their sites, but a significant proportion of people are unaware of this, let alone how it works. For instance, according to a study conducted in the University of Michigan in 2015, over 60 % of Facebook users are unaware of algorithmic curation on their newsfeed, presuming that missing a news story is a result of their own actions, such as lack of activity on the site. Furthermore, in order to maintain competitiveness on the market, the logic behind algorithms are some of the best-kept secrets at new media giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter — even field experts are unable to figure out why certain content is ultimately fed to us. Even though filter bubbles existed in the times of traditional media, their existence was easier to acknowledge; the majority of media consumers have a rough idea of the political stance of the Fox News, for example. On the contrary, personalized newsfeeds on digital platforms are such a mixture of advertisements, promotions and human curated content, that it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate from one another.

2. They reinforce stereotypes: Even when you logout of Google, the company can track up to 57 signals about you — from the device that you are using, to your age, income and gender. They can presume your stance on vaccinations and other significant personal and health-related issues. Likewise, your Facebook newsfeed looks completely different during election time depending whether the algorithmic logic considers you as a liberal or conservative, and feeds you with according news. So contrary to expanding your access to information, filter bubbles may enforce categorization and stereotyping of personalities.

3. They can influence political opinions and increase misinformation in the public sphere: As Eli Pariser has pointed out, personalized articles are like information junk food. We may be provided with articles that have entertainment value, but miss reportage on un-sexy, structural issues that cultivate over time, such as deforestation or poverty. Even worse, Facebook has been recently become inundated with ‘fake news’ — poorly researched stories, built on rumour and hoaxes fueled by advertising and the attention economy. Fake news distributed on social media channels have been accused of spreading misleading information about the 2016 US presidential election and polarizing voters, which may have helped the victory of Donald Trump. Social media channels, such as Facebook, have tried to tackle the issue, but so far, their self-regulatory attempts have remained debatable and insufficient. Often, the story gets flagged after it has already gone viral and the damage is done.

While we may continue to discuss the responsibility of new media companies in addressing issues of algorithmic transparency and accountability, us humans still have skills that algorithms don’t: intuition, critical thinking, and pairing and comparing different views together. Therefore, a decentralized platform, pairing news from different sources, where facts and opinions are checked, is helpful at maintaining the quality of information in, and promoting a healthy dialogue in the media and public sphere.

Recent technical innovations, such as Blockchain, can help to further enhance transparency, which also brings significant opportunities to journalism. These are the core concepts Media Sifter is working to address. If you’re interested in joining the debate, or discussing these issues jump on our social channels and talk directly with me and the team.

Join the Community Changing the Rules of the Media Game:

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3 Reasons why Filter Bubbles are Distorting Your Reality was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Edward S. Herman has sadly passed away. He was one of the great critical voices speaking out while the media grew steadily into the conglomerated machine it is today. It is testament to his work that his ideas transcend generations. While technology has moved on, the problems inherent to the media have remained, and if anything become further entrenched.

The book he co-authored with Noahm Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent is a towering classic and one of the major inspirations for Media Sifter. In fact we always keep a copy nearby. Our fact-based news platform on the blockchain is designed with Ed’s ideals in mind; to help people see through the hidden agendas and bias that the mainstream media has become riddled with.

In his last article written in the Monthly Review, he took the media to task once more for their fixation on the rise of so-called ‘fake news’. He calls out the New York Times and other mainstream press outlets for their own brand of misinformation, one that has been a consistent and pervasive element, rather than a recent phenomenon fueled by the internet:

“These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.”

The article is a masterclass in media research, reaching back to 1917 to trace a century of falsehoods and selective facts written about Russia by the mainstream press in the United States. From the ‘disastrous’ coverage of the Bolshevik revolution, through to the propaganda of the cold-war and the current ‘Putin era’, Ed does what he did best; challenging the mainstream narrative with wit and guile.

While Ed was not infallible, the piece is rich in evidence, with 32 sources and references to support his assertions, allowing you to do due diligence as a reader. This is type of evidence-rich journalism is unfortunately a rarity, because as Ed and Noahm outline in their Five Filters much of the media is no longer interested in investigation.

Our world of real-time publishing, churnalism, and fake news is the dramatic end-game emerging from the fundamental conditions that have plagued the media industry for decades. When profit is the overarching motive, yet only achievable through advertising, the emphasis on editorial quality is quickly surrendered, superseded by business motives. News outlets become media conglomerates. Journalists are rewards for clicks and likes, rather than the quality of their investigation. This model not only represents a threat to the news industry, but to society itself.

We want to change the rules of the game.

Our platform will bring evidence back to the news. Anyone with credibility, who can contribute validated information to the community, will earn rewards. Rather than following fads, journalists can focus on their craft. Post-publication engagement will shift from the below the fold mania of partisan comment threads, to an inclusive in-line space where facts take precedence.

We will shortly be releasing our white paper, outlining in great detail how we intend to do this. In the mean-time we leave you with the words of Ed, taken from Manufacturing Consent.

‘The organization and self-education of groups in the community and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratization of our social life and any meaningful social change. Only to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to see media that are free and independent.’

— Join the Community changing the rules of the media game:

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The Real Fake News — A short tribute to Edward S. Herman was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Two days ago, the Telegraph in the UK published a piece entitled “Cambridge University caves to student demands to ‘decolonise’ English curriculum”. The front page of the print edition featured an image leading to the article — a large inset picture of Cambridge University Student Union women’s officer Lola Olufemi. The image is titled “Student forces Cambridge to drop white authors”. The caption is even more pointed;

Cambridge will replace some white authors with black writers on English courses following demands from Lola Olufemi, the student union women’s officer. Miss Olufemi wrote a letter saying that the curriculum ‘risks perpetuating institutional racism’

Online the article (which has subsequently been amended), available to read here, repeats the claim in its first sentence with a slight modification to include the theme of ‘decolonisation’:

Cambridge University’s English Literature professors could replace white authors with black writers, following proposals put forward by academic staff in response to student demands to “decolonise” the curriculum.

The call for this change is said to have come from an open letter, written by Olufemi and signed by more than 100 other students.

The article incited a huge response online, particularly within the comments section and threads on Reddit. Many people were angered by what they had read in the Telegraph and were worried about the possible effects.

However, the response on Twitter was the real story. In today’s age of real-time publishing, an article filled with inflammatory language and inaccuracies can be quickly called out. As a British-born person, my Twitter was quickly filled with tweets like this:

In response, the Telegraph did what nearly all mainstream media outlets typically do in the situation — they amended the article and published a small correction on page two of the newspaper a few days later. No headline text or image this time. Of course this was again called out on Twitter.

But surely there is a better way to hold the media to account? Especially given all this amazing technology that allows us to do magical things on a daily basis.

The case we are examining here is fairly well publicized, yet only a fraction of the people that saw the front-page (remember it’s not only people that buy the newspaper that see the front-page) and read the story online will see the correction from the publication. In fact anyone reading the article today will only see the amended article.

Now think about all the less publicized stories. The small reports that don’t make it onto page one, or trigger a tweet-storm. Unfortunately there is currently a huge amount of bad reporting that goes uncorrected. The ugly truth is that in an attention economy, if a story does not cause enough controversy the incentives for the publisher to act responsibly are negligible.

Holding the Media to Account

So how do we solve this? Perhaps we can all take to Twitter and write to the journalists. But if the result is just a correction on page two, plus some amends that actually remove any trace of the original story, is that really a win?

We could all boycott the mainstream media and shift towards niche, independent publications unbeholden to outside interests, which I would certainly advocate, yet this does not seem like a realistic proposition.

Some people call for printing clarifications at the same size as the original article. But let’s face it, in a world where the media has little accountability to anyone apart from its advertising partners, this is extremely unlikely to happen. It’s no wonder then that people have lost faith in the traditional media.

Well, we have an idea that could help change that

Imagine now that if instead of an apology being issued by the publication two days later on a random page in print (and practically invisible online), anyone with evidence could annotate the original article and call out misinformation, disinformation, slander and any other misleading elements.

In this example, on the Media Sifter platform, the original article would be available as before. But readers would immediately see that some claims in the article are misleading. This would happen from the moment the article is published, a real-time discussion literally on the story.

If the publication decides to issue an apology, this could also be linked to on the article itself, so that readers could also see that the publisher has retreated from their initial stance. This of course would increase the responsibility of the publisher in the first place — reducing their incentives to incite while providing incentives for responsible journalism built around quality investigation.

This story and so many more like it occur everyday for a host of reasons, but one of them is that the level of media accountability today is so low. We want to help give the power back to the reader and create a platform built around evidence and fact-based content. Where stories like the one published by the Telegraph still arise, but when they do, we all have the power to hold them to account.

If that sounds like something you’d like to see happen, Join the community changing the rules of the Media Game:

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For more information, visit MediaSifter.co

Apologies for Fake News was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to The SIFT, a regular analysis of media coverage by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition provides a wide range of perspectives on a particular story, exposing bias, sub-topics and agendas…

The discussion of major weather events is now regularly accompanied by the persistent subtext of global warming. Hurricane Irma was no exception. In this edition of The SIFT we look at how Irma was reported as it moved across the Atlantic. We break down the debate that ensued around politicizing tragedy, and examine whether the media hyped-up, or down-played global warming in Irma’s aftermath.

Early Reporting

Coverage of Irma began in the wake of Hurricane Harvey which at the time was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the USA since 2005. On the 30th August reports of Tropical Storm Irma began appearing. By September 1st, Irma had developed into a category 3 hurricane, was in the mid-Atlantic and five days away from the Caribbean. At this early stage, reports were highly speculative, summed up by this tweet from meteorologist Ryan Maue:

A huge array of satellite images could be found across the media, as well as discussion of the different forecasting models and conflicting reports detailing the potential paths the hurricane might take.

Even at this stage, many media outlets began to talk up the likelihood of Hurricane Irma becoming a devastating storm. The Express used click-bait within search results to attract visitors to their article.

Destruction in the Caribbean

By September 5th, reporting of Irma had shifted dramatically. It was labeled a “potentially catastrophic” storm. As the winds intensified to 185km/h, Irma’s place on the league table of hurricanes differed from report to report. Some claimed that Irma now tied for the second-strongest Atlantic hurricane on record. Others stated that it was the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history. Rather confusing. To clear up matters, 9news produced this helpful article.

On September 6th, Hurricane Irma made landfall in the Caribbean and the first island affected was Barbuda. The Guardian reported phone lines going down, heavy rain and howling winds. The article had a cataclysmic tone, particularly a featured quote from an official ending with the phrase,

“May God protect us all.”

Irma made its way through the Caribbean, hitting a number of small and flat islands which were essentially sitting ducks. It caused blackouts and flooding on St. Martin and St Barthélemy, roared through the British Virgin Islands, and flattened homes and left 1 million people without electricity on Puerto Rico. While it pummeled the Turks and Caicos Islands, the neighboring islands of Haiti and the Dominican Republic were slightly more fortunate.

When Irma struck the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba, it was the first time the island had been hit by a category 5 hurricane since 1932. CBC painted a picture of relative relief on the island following the storm:

“Many Cubans expressed a sense of relief after the eye of the first Category 5 storm to make landfall on the island since 1932.”

They indicated that no deaths had been reported, and that the hurricane “uprooted trees and tore off roofs”. In stark contrast, The Guardian reported catastrophic destruction, mentioning Cuba’s ‘crumbling infrastructure’, ‘giant waves’ and ‘neck-high floodwaters’. They indicate that at “ least 10 people died”, later confirmed by the Cuban authorities.

The destruction was announced by the media in superlative terms. NBC portrayed Hurricane Irma as having “carved a merciless path of destruction through the Caribbean”. CNN described the aftermath as a “nuclear landscape”.

Passing over Florida

Even while it was causing havoc in the Caribbean, reports began to focus on the hurricane’s path towards Florida. On September 5th, USA Today described Irma as “spinning angrily in the Atlantic Ocean, a Category 5 monster”. The article featured an auto play video featuring people in Florida “stocking up” at grocery stores in preparation for the storm hitting.

Mandatory evacuations were placed upon residents in certain parts of Florida and warnings from Florida’s Governor Rick Scott were commonplace in the media:

“If you’re in an area that was told to evacuate, you need to leave now. This is your last chance to make a good decision.”

Irma made landfall on the Florida keys archipelago, weakening as it moved through the state. Major cities were relatively spared, yet early reports estimated that the storm inflicted $20 billion to $40 billion in damage according to catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide. The Telegraph reported 6.2 million people without power and six deaths in Florida but carried this message:

The scope of damage in Florida and neighboring states paled in comparison with the utter devastation left by Irma as a rare Category 5 hurricane in parts of the Caribbean

The SIFT’s Take:
While Irma clearly had a significant impact on some parts of the United States, the difference in magnitude in terms of damage caused, as well as share of voice, between the Caribbean and Florida is difficult to reconcile. The New Yorker was one of the few outlets to detail this, eloquently highlighting the disparity :

“As bad as things have been for those who suffered loss and discomfort from Hurricane Irma in the continental United States — where millions of Floridians evacuated their homes and fled north in slow-moving processions of possession-packed cars — the difference in scale between their experience and that of residents of the affected Caribbean islands cannot be overstated.”

Politicising Tragedy

Before Irma hit, the American Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement rejecting any link between climate change and the extreme rainfall from Hurricane Harvey. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman, responding to a question about comments from climate scientists said:

“EPA is focused on the safety of those affected by Hurricane Harvey and providing emergency response support — not engaging in attempts to politicize an ongoing tragedy,”

The chief of the EPA, Scott Pruitt was also quick to denounce any discussion of climate change while Hurricane Irma was affecting people:

“To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm; versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.”

The idea of whether or not we should be discussing climate change while people’s lives were at risk became the subject of heated debate. This piece from The Grist’s Social Media Manager stood out, outlining that while global warming is the subtext during these disasters, attempts to prematurely build a narrative around it only serve to increase division, exposing again the divided nature of the US and how the media plays to this:

“Both sides of our extremely divided country will find time to bicker, but they mostly play to their respective audiences.”

Indeed this was the case. On Breitbart News, several pieces appeared accusing the left of using the tragedy to further their agenda. James Delinpole’s feature included within the ‘Big Government’ category of the site stated:

“Whatever the spin the goal is always the same: to exploit the personal tragedies of the disaster victims for political gain by dishonestly pretending that natural extreme weather events are somehow connected with “man-made climate change.”

The article, a sift of sort through ‘left-wing’ or ‘climate-alarmist’ statements, systematically undermines scientific sources as well as the publications which feature them. To support his own claims, the writer links to a poorly sourced article he previously wrote. Both articles are lacking in credible references, especially in the context of sensationalist, bold statements such as:

“This is junk science. It’s fake news. It’s nonsense on stilts.”

The agenda of the piece however, is if anything, highly transparent, associating proponents of climate change with the mainstream media, before commending a piece entitled “Witches, Jews And Climate Deniers”.

ThinkProgress, providing a ‘progressive perspective’ featured an article selecting the comments of a Republican, Tomás Regalado, criticizing Donald Trump and the EPA:

“This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,”

Another article in the same publication claimed ‘climate silence’ is the biggest threat to Americans, comparing the EPA and Trump administration to a doctor unwilling to talk about smoking when treating cancer. The writer roundly rejects the EPA’s notion that discussion of climate change would be politicizing an ongoing tragedy, stating that we must hear from scientists in order to prepare for future events:

“In reality, now is the time we need to hear from climate scientists the most, since now is the time we are going to have to spend tens of billions of dollars rebuilding low-lying areas devastated by superhurricanes Harvey and Irma.”

The SIFT’s Take:
In this debate, both sides unfortunately played uniquely to their respective audiences, offering extremely little in the way of balance. Reinforcing existing views is of course more difficult than confronting opinions which we do not share. That’s why part of our mission at Media Sifter is to provide the full array of perspectives, especially those which you might not usually encounter, in order to challenge established views.

The Elephant In The Room

While the eye of the storm was passing over Barbuda, opinion pieces linking Irma to climate change emerged. Andrew Freedman writing in Mashable referred to Irma as “rewriting meteorological history…swallowing islands in the process” before introducing the elephant in the room;

“And finally, there’s the elephant in the room, which must be acknowledged. In some ways, Hurricane Irma is a storm that allows us to picture what global warming looks like.”

Careful not to make any outright claims, stating that climate change is “probably playing some role” in elevating the intensity of the storm, he included evidence from a journal, which purports that ocean heat content (OHC) has risen significantly since the 1980s — OHC is suggested as one of the contributing factors for hurricanes.

The New Scientist start their article with “It’s a Monster”, featuring a dramatic image of Irma approaching seemingly tiny islands. They claim that the most likely reason for Irma becoming a monster is the effect of climate change warming Atlantic waters. Support for this comes via an evidence rich (but one-sided) article that appeared in the same publication in 2015 while covering Hurricane Patricia.

The New Scientist, Mashable and many more mainstream media sites explain that powerful hurricanes will become more frequent, though the overall number of storms might actually decline. Mashable provide this statement from the World Meteorological Organization as evidence, while The New Scientist again link internally to an article which outlines the findings of Brian Soden at the University of Miami in Florida.

The National Geographic were of the same opinion. In their article running through some of the common questions people were asking following Irma, they tackled the issue of climate change:

“It’s complicated, but there’s reason to think that a changing climate will have at least some impact on hurricane season activity.”

They also mention that,

“Every scientist contacted by National Geographic for a previous story agreed that Hurricane Harvey’s record-breaking rain was almost certainly shaped by rising temperatures from human activity.”

Indeed Irma’s occurrence so soon after Harvey was pointed to by various writers as evidence for climate change creating more devastating storms, yet less frequent storms overall. The Boston Globe under the headline “Global warming to make powerful hurricanes more likely” start their article:

“The rapid succession of Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey is unusual, say scientists.”

In the main, articles which sought to link climate change to the hurricanes featured tentative claims, despite various expert sources and journals being quoted. It is written repeatedly that there is no clear evidence linking climate change to hurricanes, yet across the mainstream media, headlines and search results are filled with outright claims including climate change related terms:

Opposing views and dissenting voices were few and far between in the mainstream press. The Daily Mail featured this article from Richard Littlejon, comparing climate activists to middle-age heathens. Along the way he lampoons NGOs using old-English:

“A spokes-crier for Greene Peace blameth ye man-made globalle warminge for the great flood and loss of life, proclaiming the science was settled.”

It comes across as rather tasteless, especially the captioning of images of people affected by the hurricane in the Caribbean. We found a more educated attempt to argue against the link between climate change and an increased threat from hurricanes in The Times (paywalled):

“As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put it recently: “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century.”

This source is not linked to in the article; we did find a reference here for those interested. We suggest that the quote featured in The Times is rather selective given that in the same source we find the following:

“It is unlikely that annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have increased over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin. Evidence, however, is for a virtually certain increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s in that region.”

This appears to corroborate the claims earlier outlined by many writers in the mainstream media.

Most articles which rejected any link between climate change and the intensity of the hurricanes came from niche publications. These often employed mockery as a tactic to undermine and challenge ‘facts’.

A well-shared article in Zero-Hedge exemplifies this. It details the apparent persecution of those who do not accept that climate change is occurring. The article goes on to mock the Pope and Richard Branson who waded into the debate following hurricane Irma:

“And while we’re not sure if imprisonment is the right punishment, it does seem a bit outrageous for a Georgia Tech climate scientist to challenge the opinions of both the Pope and Sir Richard Branson on climate change…who does she think she is?”

The article features evidence which suggest that less hurricanes are occurring than at other periods in recorded history. The graph below for example, based on National Hurricane Center (NHC) data, is presented as a chart that the writer discovered:

“we do find the following chart on U.S. hurricane strikes by decade to be somewhat perplexing”

We were unable to find this chart on the NHC website, though the data is available (we did not fact-check the data at the time of publication). The source would also suggest that it was put together using NHC data by the writer.

If you are looking for a more optimistic perspective on climate change, we advise visiting Investors.com. Their article talks up the positive effects of global warming,

“The only thing that never, ever gets linked to climate change is good weather.”

While downplaying the effects of hurricane Irma,

“There’s no question that Irma was and continues to be destructive. But there’s also no question that it was not nearly the storm it was predicted by all the experts to be.”

The article laments the ‘one-sidedness’ of research into the aspects of climate change, citing professor Chris Thomas, an environmental professor at the University of York who earlier this year published “Inheritors of the Earth” — a book subtitled “How nature is thriving in an age of extinction”.

Meanwhile in a related sub-plot, Rush Limbaugh, a well-known radio talk-show host in Florida was able to attract some attention by issuing a monologue suggesting that there was an agenda to link climate change and hurricanes. This was widely covered and rebuked by mainstream news, The Independent summing up the comments of the “Right Wing Radio Host”,

“Coverage of Hurricane Irma is a conspiracy to trick people into believing in climate change and buying batteries.”

According to the transcript, Limbaugh does discuss at length his ‘theory’ linking commercial interests to reporting of storms and the creation of panic. He does also state at the beginning of the show that,

“I’ve gotta be very careful here because I am not a meteorologist, and nothing I say today should be considered to be a forecast or a prediction.”

We leave it to you to decide whether that disclaimer is sufficient. Limbaugh was later roundly mocked by the press as he left Florida under the mandatory evacuation process, Mashable quipping “What’s the big Rush?”

The SIFT’s Take:
In general there seemed to be a lack of responsibility on reporting of this topic. While claims linking climate change and increased hurricane activity were notably cagey in the mainstream media, headlines and search terms were designed to hype the issue and incite clicks. Niche and alternative news sources were typically bold in every sense, playing to their audiences and narratives.

Since it appears from most reports that if anything the science is unclear for now, the glaring omission was a reasonable debate across the media landscape. While this debate might be unpalatable for both camps, for differing reasons, enhancing knowledge can only come from scrutinizing the facts, rather than censoring certain voices.

For further reading we recommend this collection of letters in the San Diego Union Tribune, a wide variety of perspectives, as well as this fantastic cartoon.

Thanks for reading. If you like what you’ve just read, don’t forget to give us a clap! We will soon be launching a Private Alpha, a testing ground for our fact-based platform. If you would like to be part of the community of testers please get in touch via the channels below:

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A Political Hurricane was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to The SIFT, a weekly analysis of media coverage by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition provides a wide range of perspectives on a particular story, exposing sub-topics, undercurrents and bias.

The shootings in Las Vegas last week prompted a huge amount of analysis, competing narratives, as well as wider reflections on ongoing issues in the United States. In this week’s edition, we SIFT through some of the dominant narratives that emerged during a traumatic week in Las Vegas.

False Narratives

As news broke of the attack, theories quickly spread online about what was really going on. This became a race between the official account and the spread of alternative narratives.

The pixelated, shaky video footage captured by smartphones during the shooting was played across a wide variety of media channels. Some such as InfoWars used the footage to spread an array of narratives corroborated by eyewitnesses as well as mystery sources such as “High level CIA individuals” who (perhaps conveniently) cannot be named. These theories reportedly created on sites like 4chan, proved to be highly popular, spreading like wildfire across the internet in the immediate aftermath.

The vacuum of information about the perpetrator, his motives and affiliations, created the opportunity for these theories to gain traction. Often they were supported by evidence and eyewitness reports. In Sign Of The Times we are given the case for the multiple shooter theory through an interview with Rocky Palermo, a victim of the attack;

“Palermo strongly believes there were between 3–5 active shooters during the attack because as he ran away from the initial gunfire, he describes bullets not only raining down, but flying horizontally at the crowd”.

SOTT go on to provide evidence for their source’s reliability,

“Palermo — an avid hunter familiar with guns and ballistics”

Now, accustomed to this battle for information, on the other side of the equation, some media channels were seemingly well prepared to analyse and disprove emerging stories. Buzzfeed created an ongoing update of hoaxes “as they came in” (currently the count is at 20).

Other attempts to systematically disprove the theories were common. Vice used click-bait to pull in readers for their entertaining rather than informative article. In contrast Snopes provided a robust round up, responding to the numerous theories and claims, with evidence to support their arguments.

Systematic analysis however was rare. Rather than engaging in tit for tat, mainstream media and general interest news concentrated on a wide ranging discussion of the topic. Vox featured an article about misinformation, explaining that while these stories on their own mean little, they feed into “an ongoing war” online between proponents of these narratives and democratic society which includes the “mainstream media”.

With video the key media following the shooting, video ranking algorithms came under scrutiny as they briefly helped the spread of misinformation. The Verge reported on the boosting of the video “Proof Las Vegas Shooting Was a FALSE FLAG attack — Shooter on 4th Floor,” which received 1.1 million views before being pulled by YouTube, who later brought forward changes to their ranking algorithm. Facebook and Google also had issues with hoaxes, illustrating the growing challenge the internet establishment faces to verify claims and provide fact-based information.

Given that false narratives are a hot-topic, articles were carefully SEO optimised to pull in clicks. Specific titles were used in order to appear in search rankings for “Fake News” (a term we do not advocate at Media Sifter), which were then subtly altered when landing on the site, to include more credible terms.

The SIFT’s Take:
While this story did suffer from a huge amount of poor or simply misleading information, the reflex of the mainstream media to dismiss alternative media reporting as ‘fake news’ plays into the hands of the smaller players. They typically create content for those who severely distrust the traditional media. This audience are looking for ideas and ideals that fit their worldview.

The mainstream media are also quick to blame the public themselves for this state of affairs, claiming “never have people been so eager to spread and believe false information.” While we agree that holding on to opinions can make theories and “alternative facts” convenient, placing the blame on a particular audience seems to us as ill-advised. Rather than accusatory buck-passing, we would like to see media channels attempt to create tools for their communities to help them form evidence backed opinions.

Gun Control

After another shooting, a familiar debate around the Second Amendment sprung up. Party lines were immediately drawn and seemed to dominate opinion.

On the right, the media sought to undermine the Democrat response. Fox for example commented on the predictability of the Democrat line rather than focus on the message;

“Dems return to usual script on gun control after Las Vegas massacre”.

Democrat voices featured in articles were unanimously for increased gun control. The Hill, which featured a mix of views, foregrounded the comments of Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her quote about a “gun-happy country”,

“ ..I think there are many of us in growing numbers that don’t want a gun-happy country,”

The Republicans on the other hand were characterised again and again by their belief that guns are not the problem, a view summed up in this quote from an NBC transcript of Meet The Press with Republican Congressman Steve Scalise;

“The problem is not that there are too many guns. It’s that there are people that will go out and break the law, whether it’s a gun or some other weapon or a bomb.”

With nothing new really coming from either side, Bump Stocks emerged as a new term for us all to become familiar with. Despite the familiar disagreement over gun control, one thing nearly everyone agreed on was a review of Bump Stocks, including potentially the NRA.

It did appear that pro-gun groups were on the back-foot after this incident. While they maintained a tough line, with Executive Director Chris Cox claiming that “Gun Control Will Not Stop Attacks After Las Vegas” a quote and story covered by NBC and many more mainstream media channels in the US, there were few strong defences. Writers and channels that might otherwise stand up for the right to bear arms took the opportunity to focus their (and the reader’s) attention on theories and alternative narratives.

Opinion pieces calling for increased regulation on the other hand were abundant and fiery. Jeremy Scahill writing for the Intercept, produced one of the more visceral attacks on gun control under the banner “A Sick Country Filled With Guns”, playing on the quote from Senator Feinstein. While sensationalist, the article is filled with evidence to support the writer’s demands. Scahill manages to coherently address the NRA, interpretations of the Second Amendment as well as critique the media’s differential coverage and treatment of perpetrators based on ethnicity and religion;

“When it’s a Muslim shooter, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about what the U.S. response should be: watchlisting, banning people from entering the country, surveillance of mosques. But when white people do the killing, don’t talk about guns.”

The SIFT’s Take:
The debate over gun control seemed stilted, particularly the coverage around it. It is in our opinion an incredibly important conversation to have in order to keep learning and advocating for improved measures, yet reporting seemed routine.

Maybe story fatigue set in. Or repetition. Both are possible explanations, but perhaps the excitement that alternative theories incite in people is part of the story. Journalists across the field seemed to throw their best into articles decrying false narratives, but that energy was missing, with a few noted examples, when it came to discuss gun control.

The Perpetrator

The shooter who killed 58 people and injured more than 500 was confirmed as Stephen Paddock. Since he took his own life and left little to provide information about his motives, his life and persona became the focus of reports across the media.

This article in the BBC exemplifies the typical ‘regular guy, gone wrong’ narrative seen in most accounts; a quiet accountant who some people found weird with a troubled past but no criminal record. These adjectives and descriptions abounded almost as much as the image of an unkempt Paddock in a white t-shirt smiling to camera, seemingly harmless and friendly in a slightly zany sort of way.

The other image circulated (beyond the false image of a sex offender) shows an older Paddock with his eyes closed. While the traditional media did point to a troubled past and went out of their way to report on Paddock’s father’s notoriety, given the scale of the crime, the picture painted was reasonably positive; a successful, wealthy man who had little reason to carry out such an attack.

It’s no surprise then that a lot of words were dedicated to explaining why he did this. The Daily Mail is a curious example, using obvious clickbait linking Stephen Paddock to prostitutes and “violent sex” while another article in the same publication tells us that Paddock “cared about everybody and tried to make people happy”. The Mail offers no link between the articles, two competing narratives on the same subtopic existing in silos on the same channel.

The Huffington Post were one of a few outlets we found that decried the type of “humanised Paddock” that the BBC and others describe. David Canter writing for Al-Jazeera was more preoccupied with the line between a shooting and a terrorist event:

“If he (Paddock) was not part of a network, but a “lone wolf”, isolated from the pack attacking the vulnerable where he can, does this still make him a terrorist?”

The article asserts that while we should not call Paddock a terrorist, very few attacks truly warrant that label, including those that are carried out by self-stylised jihadists. This idea is supported by “reserach” conducted by Canter. To add to his credibility the article ends with a brief, yet hyperbole filled resumé for “one of the UK’s most eminent applied social psychologists”.

One of the more original takes we found was the ‘White Male’ problem highlighted in Vox and presented as scientific analysis by Tristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober for Quartz. They initially state that “The truth cannot be boiled down to any single issue” before using a combination of statistics and social theory to argue that masculinity threat is to blame for this type of violence:

“Mass shootings need to be seen, in part, as enactments of masculinity.”

The SIFT’s Take:
In cases such as this it is vital to pay attention to the way in which the media portray those at fault. There does seem to be evidence that certain groups are treated differently than others in the press. As highlighted by Scahill the characterisation of the white ‘lone wolf’, brown ‘terrorist’ and black ‘thug’ has become almost cliché.

Much like the theories seeking to spread misinformation, claims about Paddock reflect an ongoing obsession in the media to concentrate on a killer’s motives. This might be considered simple human nature, to understand why something happened, and there is clearly value in improving our collective knowledge on such matters. However, wild, unfocused speculation based on hearsay and uncorroborated evidence does little to educate readers or help them form fact-based opinions.

The Victims

In an event like this the balance of focus between victim(s) and attacker(s) is worth paying attention to. In this case tragically 58 people were killed, each with their own life and story.

While the perpetrator received individual features, a host of angles and subplots, the media tended to try to focus on the victims as a group. A single story. The Guardian’s feature typifies this approach — a large image showing 21 smiling faces. We are told that victims included a Nurse, local government workers and student. Unlike the perpetrator we do not hear about any negative aspects from their history.

Tragedies involving large numbers of people, especially in the West, now seem to be followed by specially designed tribute pages telling the personal stories of the victims. This relatively new and carefully curated format uses non-traditional layouts and divergent colour schemes.

The Washington Post had a special feature entitled The lives lost in Las Vegas featuring photos of many of the deceased, as well as the default avatar from Facebook for those they were unable to provide a photo for. CNN put together this special page allowing people to pay tribute to the victims and click through to learn more about the individual. In many cases we hear of the victim’s bravery during the event and very specific details about their lives such as being part of the “school-parents’ association.”

The SIFT’s Take:
In the sources analysed, the allocation of attention was skewed towards the perpetrator rather than the victims despite the huge disparity in numbers. This imbalance strikes us as problematic yet uncomfortably natural in the modern media landscape.

These incidents expose how the media game has become numbers oriented — the share of voice allocated based on clicks and shares. It’s worth reflecting on the fact that a large share of voice was given to the messages of celebrities totally unconnected with the events in Las Vegas, as well as the frankly bizarre sub-plot involving an Instagram star and a Medal of Honor recipient. These stories are optimised for algorithms, tagged for rankings and designed to capture your attention. We leave you to make up your own mind.

Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, don’t forget to give us a clap. We will soon be launching a Private Alpha, a testing ground for our fact-based platform. If you would like to be part of the community of testers please get in touch via the channels below:

Join the Community:

• Join the conversation on our Slack and Telegram channels
• Follow us for a weekly SIFT of the media
• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Follow Media Sifter on Reddit and Twitter
• For Open positions, see angel.co/media-sifter

For more information, visit MediaSifter.co

Misinformation in Las Vegas was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to the first edition of The SIFT, a weekly overview of the biggest stories by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition will follow the guiding principles that our platform is built around.

Since there are a multiverse of perspectives on any given topic, we advocate a form of media consumption, not based on censorship or filters, but rather on scrutinizing the details. We believe in providing as much evidence as possible for the reader to make up their own mind.

This week The SIFT focuses on events in Catalonia, where a referendum vote on independence, left the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union on the brink of declaring independence.

We analyzed mainstream media outlets including the New York Times, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and The Guardian, as well as an in-depth look at a view from Catalonia’s distant relatives in Scotland.

New York Times

Headline: Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes

In this article, the NYT seeks to state that while pro-independence and central authorities claimed respective victories, the only clear outcome is that both sides are more divided than before.

The referendum vote is described as “descending into chaos”, and as the “gravest test of democracy in Spain since Franco”. A video is prominently featured showing the violent actions of the Spanish police, it is captioned:

“ Hundreds of people were hurt as the Spanish police closed polling stations and seized ballot boxes during Catalonia’s independence vote on Sunday”

The stand-out interview is with Mr. Pulpillo, a wheel-chair bound man, who talks of Spain’s ugly past. His turnout to vote (and the turnout in general) is described as an “extraordinary show of determination”. The combination of Franco, graphic video and determined suffrage suggests that the NYT sees the Catalonians attempting to vote as the oppressed party.

Despite the article stating that “ slightly less than half” of Catalonia’s population are pro-independence, not a single pro-unionist public voice is featured. The share of voice provided to the political parties on either side is much more balanced, with 65 words are attributed to President Rajoy and his Vice President and 60 words (and an untranslated tweet) from the leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and the “left wing Mayor of Barcelona” Ada Colau, the only indication of political leanings in the piece.

Al-Jazeera

Headline: Catalonia vote: Social media mirrors street tension

In this round-up of social media tweets, posts and videos, the middle-eastern publication takes a far more nuanced stance on events in Catalonia. While they seem determined not to appear biased, through the use of media from both sides, the culmination of the article seems to suggest that they would like to highlight how events in Spain resemble elections in parts of the world that the Western press are often quick to criticize.

The language used is restrained throughout; tension in place of chaos or violence. Amazingly this is the only coverage we found that makes reference to the actual referendum question;

“Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?”

The reader is given the impression of balanced reporting, with official posts from both sides. We are presented a clearly pro-government video of a police officer helping a member of the public, published by Spain’s interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido. Then immediately a tweet from Raül Romeva i Rueda, the Catalan government’s minister of foreign affairs, showing the grizzly aftermath of police violence. This back and forth pattern continues with tweets and videos, while referencing the fact that the opinion polls (and indeed opinion) are split on the issue.

Interestingly the three contributions of private individuals plucked from social media all show police using significant force against civilians. Messages such as “Where is Democracy” are focused upon, striking and poignant slogans in an EU state perceived as democratic. We are told that a number of high-profile European politicians entered the fray. Tweets from Jeremy Corbyn, the UK opposition’s leader, Miro Cerar, the centrist Slovenian leader and Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel are all featured, without any mention of the missing voices.

The article ends with a tweet from the Human Right’s Watch. While the tweet itself is mild and does not offer a strong condemnation, the very fact that this type of tweet, normalized in the election coverage of so called undemocratic countries, is featured at all, comes across as a slight to the ‘democratic west’.

BBC

Headline: EU looks away as Catalan crisis unfolds

The BBC provides another perspective on matters, looking at the reaction of the EU states and leaders to the events in Catalonia. The article immediately launches into a series of rhetorical questions:

So where the cries of outrage? Where the statements of condemnation, the tweets of shock at the violence meted out on the voters of Catalonia at the hands of the Spanish police?

Comparisons are drawn to the flurry of messages that accompany the Brexit saga. Three reasons are given, with the third reason, the EUs staunch opposition to separatist movements in general, cited as the underlying reason for the comparative quiet.

The government in Madrid sees Catalan independence as a fundamental threat to the constitutional Spanish (…) And a European Union that gives daily lip service to the idea of breaking down the boundaries between its members looks silently away as one of its number uses state violence to protect the integrity of its borders.

The article seeks to persuade us that the idea of nationalism, despite the cries for supranational action, is on the rise and is manifest in the actions of both the Spanish and Catalan authorities. The silence from the EU is portrayed as nothing more than an act of self-preservation.

The Guardian

Headline: The Guardian view on Catalonia’s referendum: the Spanish state has lost

The sole overt, editorial piece on behalf of a publisher in this week’s SIFT. The headline is concise and transparent, presenting a position without resorting to sensationalism.

The lead image shows an impassioned woman, arms aloft, with an ambiguous look of desperation and/or defiance towards an unmoved police officer — a representative of the Spanish state. In the first paragraph we are given graphic details of the conduct of these officers:

“..dragging voters out by the hair or throwing them down stairs, firing rubber bullets to disperse crowds — even striking at Catalan firefighters and jostling with Catalan police.”

We are told that the immediate result of the “violence” was hundreds of casualties — the source is provided as Catalan authorities.

There is a relentless focus on President Rajoy’s handling of the situation, placing the blame squarely on his shoulders for the rise of the independence movement, the actions of the police and probable success of the secessionists. The article then deftly alludes to monarchic tendencies, representing the state, and by extension the President, as a reigning, sovereign entity, oppressing its citizens — the unnamed ‘many’;

“Who wants to be ruled by a state like this, many are asking.”

Towards the conclusion, more considered arguments are presented for the editorial line. The fact that public support for the referendum and independence peaked in 2013. Or that most people who supported the union would be unlikely to vote.

“Between them, the two sides have produced both a vote that is hugely contentious and a result that is meaningless.”

After more discussion of the heavy-handed police, the editorial follows the NYT, discussing the failure of both sides to secure a clear outcome. It then takes a page from the BBC’s James Landale pointing to the lack of condemnation from other EU members. The Guardian however seeks to explain this away as necessary to avoid “accusations of authoritarianism and complaints about the suppression of the Catalan will”.

“Mr Verhofstadt urged de-escalation, a negotiated solution bringing in all parties — including the opposition in Catalonia — and respect for Spain’s constitutional and legal order. He is right.”

After taking aim at Mr Rajoy for most of the article, interestingly The Guardian conclude by declaring Mr Puigdemont’s claims of victory “at best half true”. In contrast to the piece on the BBC, the only party to come away with any real credit here is the much maligned EU, and Mr Verhofstad.

The View From a Distant Cousin

Given events over the weekend, it’s hard not to think back to the 2014 referendum in Scotland. Catalonia and Scotland are often referred to as similar cases, distant cousins. Both forced into a larger union, they share complicated histories with their respective centralized authorities. Their similar-sized populations have also in recent times grown increasingly pro-independence.

Our featured analysis comes from The Scottish Sunday Herald, a newspaper that famously backed the “Yes” campaign, while its weekly edition backed the eventual winners “No”. This article by David Torrance caught our eye:

‘Today…they lost Catalonia’ say referendum organisers as police brutality sickens world

The sensationalist headline immediately suggests that the writer’s sympathies lie with the Catalonians, and indeed the article leads with a strongly pro-independence stance. Unionist voices are provided in the middle for balance, before a strong kicker wraps things up.

Given the amount of graphic images and video circulated, it is noteworthy that this article features a single image — a woman draped in the Spanish flag in the manner of a religious follower. This rather peaceful image is juxtaposed with the description of a scene in a school, where “referendum staff showed each other videos of police brutality at other polling stations”. Despite creating a sense of imminent threat, the democratic process witnessed by the writer is depicted as idyllic, — peaceful voting, beaming citizens and careful voting administration.

The quote featured in the headline ‘Today, they lost Catalonia’ is attributed to a member of the referendum staff. To clarify who they are, the writer reinforces that they are simply ‘Spain’. The writer, on the ground in Catalonia, compares the actions of the “lone Catalan policeman” benignly looking on, and his Spanish counterparts “firing rubber bullets into crowds and physically assaulting voters”. This creates a chasm like discrepancy between the two forces in terms of both temperament and force.

Mid-way into the story we have our first encounter with Spanish unionists, the other side of this referendum vote. This group of demonstrators are described as a large “silent-majority”, applying the term popularized by Nixon and recycled by Trump to label his supporters in the run up to the 2016 US election. We are told “Catalonia is split between ‘independistas’ and those who want to remain part of Spain”, however no numbers are provided.

A series of interviews follow. None of the interviewees are pro-independence, though the interviews may be noted for the fact that they do not feature a single Catalan respondent. We are presented a brief timeline of events, which provides 2010 as the genesis of the story. We are told at that time 15–20 per cent of people supported secession [unsourced]. The economic crisis and the response of the Madrid based government to referendum demands are cited as the major contributors to current events.

A further respondent tells us that he and his friends have switched allegiances, becoming supporters of independence due to “all this repression” before implying that “Catalanophobia” could be the cause of President Rajoy’s actions, seeking to appear strong rather than “too soft”.

The writer concludes sharply, suggesting that the illegality under law of the referendum vote bears no comparison with the actions of the Spanish government. He declares that it is the central authority in Madrid that has lost legitimacy with its actions. That the violence surrounding voting, which he describes as “the most peaceful of activities” is steering Catalonia towards independence.

Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, don’t forget to give us a clap. We’d love to hear your thoughts and value your comments as we continue on our quest at Media Sifter to offer you more than just a perspective.

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Catalonia On The Brink was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last Friday, a feeble rumor stating that China was planning to shut down local cryptocurrency exchanges started to gain traction.

The fact that it had originated from the translation of a Chinese article mentioning an out of context comment from unconfirmed sources didn’t matter. A couple of hours after it started appearing on Twitter, Bitcoin was down more than 14%.

However, this isn’t even the largest cause for concern. Although I believe people have a responsibility to be critical when consuming information, one cannot blame them for wanting to be on the safe side when their money is at stake.

What is most concerning is that supposedly trustworthy mainstream media such as Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal published the story as if it was confirmed news, despite not having any credible source nor confirmation from Chinese exchanges at the time. These were still claiming that they had not received any order to stop operations.

I am not denying the possibility of this happening. China has a reputation for its handling of cryptocurrency and there has been an official announcement from the country banning ICOs (which is temporary). In the last hours, some notable community figures have even appeared to attest to the accuracy of the claims, although none have revealed sources.

But let’s take a moment here to analyse how this rumor got to the headlines of mainstream media before there was any true evidence of the news.

It is quite clear that the immediacy and anxiousness that the internet has brought into other aspects of our life, has also affected the way news is developed.

In very simple terms one could say that in the past, the news development process went like this:

Journalism has always been about novelty and scoops, but once you add the internet-immediacy to that mix you get a recipe for disaster.

The steps of the news development process have been turned upside down. Rumors are now published as news before any proper investigation or validation, which may take place later once the news has already been published. Finally the rumor may become an actual event or be proven false, but this is no longer the most important, because the news has already been published.

The rumor is the news, not the event.

As consumers, we were okay with this quality control process from tabloids and news blogs a couple of years ago, but this new paradigm of news creation has slowly crept into the newsrooms of the most reputable media outlets out there.

How is this possible and when did this happen?

We could point out several reasons, including the ripple effects of the attention economy and a surge of content created by amateurs or algorithms.

As a reader, there is little we can do to fight these two. We can try to resist the attention economy and be more conscious of what we choose to consume, but we inevitably fall for our basic instincts at times. Experienced content creators know this and are trained to exploit it.

But, there is one aspect as readers that we can be in control of, and that is making publications and journalists accountable for their actions. The lack of accountability and the blank check we gave these outlets perpetuates a system that is universally damaging.

John Pilger said “It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.” So when they don’t make themselves responsible for this, we need to be holding journalists accountable for it.

The spreading of Fake News and the high levels of inaccuracies are another consequence of the lack of accountability.

However, the problem with holding media accountable is not only one of action but of resources. There are a lot of committed individuals in the space trying to help fight this with NGOs, organizations, or even ambitious and well-intentioned projects like WikiTribune.

But a lot of them tend to leave average readers out of the equation, or request too much from them.

The average Joe reading their free news online finds himself lacking either simple tools or the proper incentives to collaborate in this accountability process.

And if the average reader is not integrated as a core element in this process, nothing will change.

We need to provide both the tools and the right incentives for readers to become part of the process of improving media.

Fake News Made in China was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The news industry is in desperate need for some kind of disruption.

There are plenty of analyses and examples that examine this so I won’t go into details. Whether you choose to blame the internet and its noisy and overwhelming landscape, the broken business models, or the interests that push the agenda of publications, something needs to change and fast.

If you are an active follower of the technology space and you’ve kept yourself up to date with some of the newer technologies, you might have spotted a trend going on right now where all industries seem to be implementing blockchain infrastructure into their projects.

Some of these may not currently need it and they may just be capitalizing on a booming market. However, the news industry and the blockchain seem to be made for each other.

While news outlets can only work if people trust them, the blockchain introduced the concept of “Trustless trust”. With it, the blockchain can decentralise influence and control over information, remove the gatekeepers from public news access (whether that is a newsroom or a social media platform like Facebook), and ensure a censorship-free media landscape.

Although still in its early stages, there are already several projects being developed with blockchain technology to build the future of the news industry. A future that attempts to fix news creation and consumption, giving back power to the public, while benefitting all parts in the process.

Take a peek at what the future may bring with these seven projects:

1. Civil — http://joincivil.com

Civil: Self-Sustaining Journalism wants to reformulate and build a whole new operating model for journalism using the benefits of the blockchain.

In their own words, Civil is an Ethereum-based decentralized platform that can be used to create “newsrooms” and “stations” — blockchain-based marketplaces where citizens and journalists form communities around a shared purpose and set of standards, financially support factual reporting and investigative work, and substantially limit misinformation through effective collaborative-editing methods.

The intent of Civil is to create a mesh network of self-governing news marketplaces where news making, fact-checking and platform sustainability are economically rewarded.

2. Decentralized News Network — https://dnn.media

Decentralized News Network, or DNN Media for short, wants to combine the openness and freedom of blogs with the formal fact-checking of news organizations.

Similarly to Civil, they are looking to create a network of readers, writers, reviewers, and publishers that contribute to the platform to achieve independent news creation and, thanks to a review system, fact-checkers can validate writer submitted content for overall accuracy and legitimacy.

Simply put, writers produce and submit content, which is inspected for accuracy by a randomized set of reviewers on the network. Articles deemed acceptable enough as per DNN’s guidelines will be published to the network and made available to readers.

3. Media Sifter — http://mediasifter.co

The biggest issue with news sources in the digital age is verifiability. Media Sifter is solving this issue with a news aggregator that utilises the wisdom of the crowd to verify content through blockchain-powered user-consensus.

Unlike Civil or DNN, Media Sifter focuses on the reader and starts by fixing the consumption end of the news media process. Focused on the 4 stages of critical news consumption the platform will allow users to navigate through the noise and bias of the current media landscape by utilising the wisdom of the crowd to help verify or refute claims.

One of the main differences of Media Sifter is that by aggregating existing news, they are solving the chicken-and-egg problem from the supply side, thus creating value to attract users.

Thanks to this, users can also continue reading their usual sources of information, but they won’t have to go out of their way to be sure what they are reading is fact-checked. Instead, they will get a second layer of reporting curated by other active users on the platform.

4. Trive News — http://trive.news

Similar to Media Sifter, Trive News is also attempting to fix news media by fact checking on mass media verification rather than build a news publication platform.

Trive is a social science consensus engine that researches and clarifies facts through Human Swarmed crowd wisdom. They incentivize people to do primary research into news stories, and compensate them, while hashing/stashing the results on the blockchain.

The engine creates a Nash Equilibrium incentive structure for the research into news story claims. An antagonistic relationship between researchers and verifiers creates a checks/balances process that reinforces research quality.

5. Snip — https://www.snip.network

Snip is a decentralized, user-generated news platform where anyone can write a news story (“snip”) about a topic of their choice, and read news on the issues they care about.

Rather than targeting critical news consumption, the project is focused on concise and simple content. Although writers will be able to post content of any length the platform will be oriented towards short content.

In the platform, anyone can write a news story about any topic for readers to find. The content on the platform is personalized for each user using an open-source news feed algorithm, so users can personalize their own algorithm.

6. Steemit — https://steemit.com

Steemit is a blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can earn rewards.

Although it is closer to a social platform than a news media platform, Steemit is one of the first projects to focus on the decentralization of content and its creation.

Because of its decentralized and uncensored nature, a lot of journalists have opted for Steemit to share stories that would have otherwise not reached the media because it clashed with their interests.

7. Hubii — https://hubii.network

You might have heard about Hubii thanks to an unexpected “spokesman”, the boxer Floyd Mayweather. Hubii is a blockchain based decentralised content marketplace.

It is open to any type of content creation, including news in all of its formats. Their goal is to disintermediate gatekeeper companies and, put control in the hands of makers and users, and allow a true marketplace to establish value.

One particular use case of their network mentioned in their whitepaper is the “fake-news” detection. With it, a content creator can request the community verification of a set of facts within their article in exchange for earnings.

Like any technology in its early stages, it is difficult to predict which projects will succeed and which won’t. But as long as there are projects interested in keeping the industry alive and help the public get trustworthy and verified information, news media is still safe. And so is our society.

Thanks for taking the time to read. If you enjoyed the article and the projects please consider supporting by clapping and sharing!

7 innovative blockchain projects fixing news media was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Humans like to make sense of their world in stories. Not only do they like it but they are programmed for it. This is one of the reasons why we enjoy projecting and finding similarities between the stories we know and the lives we are living.

As someone that has a communications background and an interest in sociology and human behaviour, I am fascinated by books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World, and the societies they depict.

We are still far away from becoming any of those dystopian societies and we aren’t necessarily moving towards any one of them in particular. However, my guess is that I am not the only one who gets shivers down my spine when seeing how similar some of the ideas portrayed in these books are with the society we live in.

It is often said that knowledge is power, and the aforementioned novels are a clear manifestation of this. They all have something in common: a powerful central organism that seizes and manipulates information to retain control and dominance.

Distant as we may be from these fictional worlds, if we allow our society to get closer to any one of them, it is mostly ourselves we should blame.

The chain of information seems to be disrupted and internet and social media are often pointed out as the causes. The reasons for this include the growth of “Fake News”, the crisis of mainstream media, and the commoditisation of news. These are all information distorting elements that impact our society.

Technologies are not inherently good or bad. They cannot be blamed as they are only what we want and allow them to be. The same tools that are blamed for the current demise could be used to immensely enrich us.

However, this is not an easy thing to do. When every platform on the internet seems to appeal to our most basic instincts for their economic benefit and when every click-baity title is crafted to make us click subconsciously, it would seem we don’t stand a chance.

Still, we need to do our part to be in control. Because if we yield the power to control the information we consume and the decisions we make, we allow our rational and critical thinking to slowly die. And in the end, it will be because we decided we were more comfortable doing so.

We’ll admit we were better off consuming watery, distorted or even fake information, than doing the little bit that was necessary to withhold power. We didn’t even have to stand up from our swivel chairs.

When looking at the current state of the media, I feel both angered at how we have left things drift off and let ourselves be confused and manipulated. But I also understand why we let it happen, after all we are facing powerful interests.

Powerful interests driven by foul purposes or simply for dishonest profit. Never by the duty and purpose of the media to serve the public.

But there are better ways to take a stand, and we don’t have to do it alone. We can work together, as a society, as a community, to build on each others’ knowledge and create tools to make it better and easier to avoid defaulting to idleness and comfort. To stop expecting to be spoon-fed and to start feeding ourselves.

Thanks for taking the time to read. If you enjoyed the article please clap and share!

The Huxley and Orwell information nightmare we don’t live in was originally published in The-Fact-Based-News-Platform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.