2025-08-12 We have lost a most generous soul. I have lost a benefactor, mentor, and friend. Leonard Tow died Sunday at age 97. Len held a PhD in economic geography from Columbia and taught at Hunter and Columbia before deciding to leave for business …›
2025-07-18 Like every sane American, I am outraged that CBS/Paramount/Ellison Inc. canceled — in the true meaning of the word — Stephen Colbert, capitulating to Trump in the rapid Orbanization of American media. Here I propose what I hope come …›
2025-07-04 The Times has it out for Zohran Mamdani. The record is clear. It is time to examine receipts. The latest attack on him is journalistically unconscionable, and so is the editors’ reaction to legitimate criticism. In a story played by its …›
2025-02-06 In an endless game of lobbyists’ Whac-A-Mole, it’s a new year and here is new legislation trying to save the news. Except it’s not new. First, from Oregon, comes a rehash of bad legislation written by newspaper hedge-fund lobbyists, v …›
2025-01-21 For 25 years now, the Edelman PR company has issued its Trust Barometer. This year, it’s all about grievances. It’s Festivus every day, the world around. Six in 10 people in the survey “hold grievances against business, government, and th …›
2025-01-18 Two days to go until the fascist oligarchy comes to power in the United States and this is how our once-greatest newspaper, The New York Times, is covering what could end in the fall of American democracy. To The Times, all the world’s Trump …›
2024-11-09 Every current and common explanation for the reelection of Donald Trump — whether inflation or immigration, culture wars or campaign tactics, blaming Harris or Biden or the party — elides its true and root cause: racism. The U …›
2024-11-06 Nevermind every other theory or tactical complaint about what happened in this election. Kamala Harris did everything she possibly could to win. The fault is not hers. The fault is in our nation. We must come to the realization that Ameri …›
2024-10-17 Rupert Murdoch’s media have been a key source of moral panic about the internet and technology — see, for example, this from his Times declaring that phones are “dope” that imprison us all in an epidemic of addiction causing cognitive …›
2024-09-19 It is as if the editorial department at The Washington Post woke up one morning asking, in headlines I will quote below, “What are we doing wrong?” I will start by trying to answer the question for them, The New York Times, CNN, and the res …›
2024-09-11 As often as I am disappointed in and critical of them lately, I will not cancel my subscriptions to The New York Times or The Washington Post. They should be so lucky, for I will stay on their cases. I also wish to support the good reporting that stil …›
2024-09-06 As Nicolle Wallace exclaimed on her show Friday, Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have all gathered together around a cause. That cause is democracy and its standard bearer is Kamala Harris. This is a mome …›
2024-08-29 I’ve long said that Rupert Murdoch is the single most malign influence in English-speaking democracy. He executes his strategy in small ways that add up. Here is an example: how a trope is born across Murdoch’s worldwide empire. Here is the edi …›
2024-08-22 A deal has just been struck in California by Assembly member Buffy Wicks that averts what could have been, in my opinion, disastrous legislation written by lobbyists to benefit primarily incumbent, investor- and hedge-fund-controlled news media in …›
2022-05-11 As Australians prepare to head to the polls, political parties and politicians of all stripes have stoked fear-fuelled narratives about China in a bid to secure votes. During last week’s National Press Club Debate, Defence Minister Peter Dutton was d …›
2022-03-13 The challenge of monitoring, understanding, defining and responding to mis- and disinformation is exacerbated during election campaigns. This report outlines tactics used by agents of disinformation to undermine elections as observed by First Draft’s …›
2022-02-21 I remember the first time I met a person with AIDS. I was sitting at a reception desk, looked up, and saw a thin man with lesions on his face. […] The post How the ‘first rough draft of history’ can be revised and reimagined appeared first on …›
2021-12-03 False claims and conspiracy theories about the new Covid-19 variant Omicron emerged online after the variant was reported by South Africa to the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 24. The WHO said the variant has had a large number of mutation …›
2021-11-22 As the United States is poised to roll out its Covid-19 vaccine booster program for all adults, misleading information on social media around this latest development is likely to become the focal point of the next round of vaccine misinformation. Alrea …›
2021-11-22 False comparisons have again been drawn between Nazi Germany and Covid-19 pandemic measures, this time prompted by the introduction of a lockdown for people in Austria who are not fully vaccinated. About two million people in Austria, or one-third of t …›
2021-11-12 Vaccine misinformation concerning the coronavirus spike protein has again picked up in recent days. Vaccine skeptics and deniers have weaponized this medical term to deter people from trusting Covid-19 vaccines, which have been proven effective and saf …›
2021-11-12 Last week Pfizer published interim trial results for its experimental Covid-19 antiviral pill, Paxlovid, which the company said reduced the chance of hospitalization or death for some adults by almost 90 per cent. The US pharmaceutical giant’s analys …›
2021-11-06 Several videos of anti-vaccine medical workers recording themselves being suspended or fired from their jobs at healthcare facilities have generated significant interest in the past few days. Most physicians and healthcare workers in the United States …›
2021-11-06 Australia will begin offering Covid-19 vaccine booster shots to eligible members of its adult population on November 8. News that the country’s medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), had provisionally approved the Pfizer vac …›
2021-10-29 News headlines about a UK-based Australian actress who suffered a stroke “after getting Covid vaccine” or “after getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine” overly emphasized a single incident without providing important context about the rarity of …›
2021-04-29 What does the rise of live, audio-based social media mean for identifying and moderating misinformation? We’ve taken a look at the platforms and their moderation policies, and offer some key takeaways for journalists and misinformation researchers. ( …›
2018-06-19 Each week, MediaShift will list upcoming online trainings and courses for journalists and media people – with a focus on digital training. We’ll include our DigitalEd courses, as well as those from Mediabistro, NewsU, and others. If we’re …›
2017-10-10 This week, Research Director Jonathan Albright has published a number of articles on research about Russian ad networks and their influence during the 2016 election. Look at Jonathan’s dataset, and follow him on Medium, for more. Research The Was …›
2017-08-09 The Tow Center is pleased to announce that on Tuesday, September 19th, we will be hosting our Journalism Educator’s Symposium – an event designed to help build a community of interest and exchange around new approaches and best practices to …›
2017-06-07 We have witnessed the first wave of artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism in the form of chatbots, automated story generation, and machine learning techniques applied to news. The big tech companies have pushed AI to the center of their product st …›
2017-05-22 Jonathan Albright Joins Tow Center for Digital Journalism as Research Director The Tow Center is pleased to announce Dr. Jonathan Albright as its new Research Director. Jonathan’s research around networks of propaganda and misinformation has recentl …›
2017-04-14 MAY 11, 2017, 9am–5pm Harvard Law School Wasserstein Hall 1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA Next Gen Podcast Distribution Protocols: Innovation and governance in open development initiatives Presented by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet &a …›
2017-03-10 …›
2017-01-23 At a time when the accuracy of news sources is in question, and politicians want to restrict access to information, hyperlocal communications have more potential than ever. You Are Here is a project that essentially consists of a Wifi signal that broad …›
2017-01-23 How can automation help reduce the cost of story discovery in a newsroom? As a Tow fellow in 2015, I had the opportunity to explore this question by building a tool, available online at campaign-finance.org, that automates some of the explorator …›
2017-01-20 In December 2016, the Committee to Protect Journalists counted 259 journalists imprisoned worldwide, more than at any time since the group began its annual imprisoned census in 1990. On January 25th and 26th, we hope you will join our effort to offer m …›
2017-01-20 Note: This is the fourth post in the Beyond 140 characters series, which investigates how, why, and under what circumstances political journalists engage with Twitter. This piece shares some of the project’s key findings. The previous post reflected …›