Samantha Sunne columns
Samantha Sunne is a freelance journalist and trainer based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She speaks at conferences, universities and newsrooms around the world, including Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Lede Program at Columbia University. She is co-authoring “Data + Journalism,” a textbook to be published in 2023. Her column will be exploring ways for newsrooms and journalists to battle misinformation and disinformation.
News outlets and social media provide an avalanche of information during a crisis
How do you sift out the accurate from the inaccurate?
Transparency tools can make your reporting more credible
News and tech organizations grapple with the challenge of helping news consumers distinguish trustworthy sources.
Don’t link directly to misinformation sites
Archiving, tracking and annotating can help you avoid directing traffic to malicious actors.
Addressing the latest wave of coronavirus misinformation
First Draft created a special section on COVID-19 in its Basic Toolkit for verification. ONA quickly published a COVID-19 Misinformation Playbook and SPJ’s Journalist’s Toolbox maintains its own page of resources for fact-checking coronavirus information. Using these guides and a few select tools can help journalists verify facts and fight misinformation.
How to verify videos
Videos can present a difficult challenge for verification when you aren’t receiving them from a trusted source.
How to avoid publishing misleading photos
One of the many challenges journalists face in the misinformation crisis is in images. As storytellers, we circulate an enormous number of images daily — online, in print, and on TV. This gives us a large risk for inadvertently spreading misinformation through inaccurate or misleading photos.