How the news media can vaccinate against misinformation

The looming public distribution of COVID-19 vaccines offers great optimism for ending the pandemic. But doing so requires a substantial majority of the population to acquire immunity either by contracting and recovering from the disease or by getting a vaccine.

Good luck with that, everyone. We live in a society where we can’t even agree that the coronavirus is real, much less that we all ought to wear masks and get vaccinated.

Making matters worse are the approximately 39 percent of Americans who say they probably or definitely will not seek a COVID vaccine, according to a Pew Research survey in November. If that number holds or goes up, that could be an obstacle to achieving the desired herd immunity that protects everyone.

The skeptics’ reasons range from understandable – whether a vaccine developed in such an accelerated time frame is safe and effective – to myths and conspiracy theories: You can get a disease from its vaccine. Vaccines cause autism. Bill Gates put microchips in the ones we’re getting now. That list will get longer. Mistrust is especially high among African-Americans, many of whom haven’t forgotten infamous cases of medical research that actually weren’t that long ago.

The success of COVID vaccinations will hinge greatly on effective public messaging by health officials and government leaders. The news media will play a crucial role, as well. Here are some recommended best practices that mainstream national and local news media should follow if we’re going to whip this thing. (I offer no hope for the right-wing news outlets that are busy covering Lalaland.)

• Pursue first hand accounts of the suffering of COVID-19 patients. This is still too much of a hidden story. A little fright could go a long way. Hospitals must worry about privacy, but news media negotiating access for visuals is key.

• Explain the concept of herd immunity and the required threshold. And don’t stop.

• Report on influential people locally and nationally getting vaccinated. These are behavior leaders who can range from ex-presidents and celebrities to mayors and neighborhood preachers. In the case of elected officials, they cannot claim privacy as to whether they’ve inoculated or not.

• Lean on doctors and other medical experts as interview sources. Local media should know that local experts carry more clout than those from faraway institutions. Always check source credentials, in particular their field of specialty (the Scott Atlas rule).

• Limit comments by vaccine recipients to what they know first hand, such as side effects. But no medical self diagnosis, because patients are often clueless. If they say the vaccine gave them COVID, they’re wrong. Keep it in the notebook.

• Explain, every time, that side effects of varying kinds are likely. They don’t mean something has gone haywire.

• Debunk misinformation and disinformation (misinformation with deliberate intent).  I acknowledge the alternative of the news media ignoring falsehoods, because publicity of any kind could backfire into more, not less, appeal among people who are predisposed. But my department colleague, Dr. Jiyoung Lee, an expert in health misinformation, points out that disinformation has avenues for rapid spreading, such as social media, so the news media needs to “actively monitor and respond to it.” They must debunk effectively, though. The knockdown should begin in the same sentence that introduces the misinformation. A story that evenly balances wrong statements with corrective facts is a failure. That’s false equivalency and it’s dangerous. Lee also points out the need to state why a claim is false, using specific evidence.

• In opinion pieces aimed at changing the views and actions of vaccine resisters, go heavy on facts, express understanding of their concerns, and spare the belittling attacks, because that only makes them more stubborn. “Negative framing may stigmatize them,” Lee said. Aim to collectively motivate, not to “incite shame or anger.” Good advice. But withholding judgment on individuals who stand in the way of ending the coronavirus pandemic may be the hardest commandment of all.

MISINFORMATION ABOVE, MISINFORMATION TO THE LEFT. you can see the efforts to debunk it. this is going to be a constant battle.

Six takeaways from the semester of Zoom

AL.com sports writer Michael Casagrande lays some wisdom on my Sports Writing and Reporting students. In a “hybrid” class such as this, students are assigned on a rotating basis to attend in person or by Zoom.

With the end of in-person instruction on Friday, we have answers to some fraught pre-semester questions about educating college students in the middle of a pandemic. Or at least I have drawn some conclusions, starting with: It’s not as preposterous as it once seemed. And the apprehension I wrote about in August is not so severe anymore.

Here are my top takeaways after 14 weeks of this most bizarre of semesters. Others on UA’s campus might disagree, of course. But some reflection is warranted because here and at other universities, we have to do this all over again in January.

1) The classrooms are safe

Students and faculty wear masks. In classrooms, UA allows only the number of students who can socially distance. Others join by Zoom. Really large classes have gone completely to remote learning. Students (at least to my knowledge) stay away if they’re ill or if they know they’ve been in close contact with someone with the coronavirus. UA’s positive tests are not coming from classrooms.

2) Masks ruin everything

It’s well understood in education that in-person learning works best. But those studies didn’t include wearing a damn muzzle as a test variable. Putting on a mask is vital these days, of course, but lectures and discussions really suffer without facial expressions. Teaching is half performance art, you know. Also, students aren’t known for projection and enunciation when they speak. Sometimes I have absolutely no clue what a masked student said. Considering the improvements in remote teaching techniques, it just might be educationally better to put everyone on Zoom and lose the masks.

3) Some parents are wrong about their kids

UA and other universities, especially those still charging full tuition as UA is, have tried to ensure a certain (even if minority) percentage of in-person education. That hasn’t stopped some parents from complaining that too many classes have moved to online. Certainly some students feel disappointed and perhaps educationally disadvantaged. But in “hybrid” courses that allow a choice between classroom attendance and videoconferencing, many students choose to stay home. Every time. The kids don’t want to go to class as much as some of their parents think they should.

4) Students don’t cheat

Not a revelation. The average weekly quiz score for the first seven weeks of my course with more than 200 students went down (about half a percentage point) from the spring semester with students in classrooms to this semester with students mostly on Zoom. The only anti-cheating measure this semester is the very non-foolproof requirement (uh oh, that was an ill-advised confession) that students must remain on camera during the test. A rare few likely have used unapproved references outside of camera view. But I do not understand the professors around the country who use oppressive surveillance software that monitors students’ head and eye movements during online tests. Nice way to put a torch to your nurturing and collaborative learning environment.

5) UA didn’t get all of it right

Early on the university assumed the best about its students – that they’d obey rules and refrain from the usual large social activities. Results were Hindenburg-like. The early-semester coronavirus case count drew national attention. UA ramped up public warnings of discipline, including suspensions, for students who violated restrictions, and in fact followed through. Many universities that opened their campuses were criticized for naivete about the predictable behavior of college students. Fair point. Students deserve blame, too (some of them, anyway). They were easy targets of news media and social media. I’d only point out that their incautious actions don’t make them any different from half the adults in the country.

6) College football season was a mistake

More than 80 Division I football games have been postponed or cancelled due to COVID-19, and many others went on with reduced rosters. Sources of exposure are everywhere, of course, but it’s implausible that college athletic departments have managed to create the only kind of large gathering that is safe, especially considering vulnerabilities such as virus detection time lag and spectators who ignore rules. If everyone’s protective protocols were foolproof, Florida State wouldn’t have cancelled its game against Clemson three hours before kickoff Saturday. And a half-dozen Temple players wouldn’t have been removed from the locker room shortly before that kickoff.

Many of the unplayed games so far this season stemmed from too many players in precautionary quarantine. Still, add up the athletes around the country who contracted COVID, plus the coaches and support personnel who did, plus the spectators who did. They weren’t all asymptomatic. And early research indicates that even after recovering from COVID, some number will suffer extended health consequences. Of course, you can’t add up the number of athletes. Many universities, including UA, don’t publicly report it. Because heck if they want you to know how badly their decision backfired.

The Athletic continues to shake up traditional sports media

Update Nov. 9, 2024: The New York Times announced that The Athletic made its first-ever quarterly profit, at $2.6 million.

Update July 21, 2023: A lot has happened since I posted this. The New York Times bought The Athletic for $550 million in 2022, and it’s continuing to lose money. This month, NYT closed its own sports department, replacing it with stories from The Athletic and receiving criticism that this was a union-busting move. NYT also started moving away from The Athletic’s original mission of team by team coverage across the nation in favor of more nationally focused content. This included laying off 20 team- or city-focused journalists, including some good ones. One of them publicly ripped The Athletic for its obsession with metrics (subscriptions created) over quality content.

Original post: Occasionally I like to highlight interesting and useful research into journalism, because usually it gets lost in dense academic journals that no one ever reads. At least not voluntarily.

The beat reporter for a professional sports team that I follow tweeted this week that he signed “a multi-year extension” with The Athletic, a four-year-old website that specializes in long enterprise stories about college and pro sports teams. In light of the decline of many sports news organizations – Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Bleacher Report and almost every newspaper sports department under the sun – The Athletic is showing a whole lot of confidence in itself.

The past decade has beaten up on local and regional sports departments, with layoffs, travel reductions, diminished access to sources and the rise of team PR sites. Then along came The Athletic in 2016 with its millions of dollars in investment money and the co-founder’s pledge to “let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing.”

Since then, the subscription-based sports website has sent major reverberations through the sports journalism world by hiring away top reporters, converting some readers, and causing many existing sports departments to debate whether to compete with The Athletic or surrender and differentiate their content.

The Athletic has a network of team-focused sites in more than 50 markets with pro and college teams, including the University of Alabama (Auburn University is sporadically covered at the moment). The company says it has surpassed 1 million subscribers and expects to begin making a profit in 2021. Its impact, therefore, is worth understanding.

That’s what four researchers in UA’s College of Communication have helped to do in their article “Poaching the News Producers: The Athletic’s Effect on Sports in Hometown Newspapers,” which was published online ($) recently by Journalism Studies. My professor colleagues Dr. Andrew C. Billings and Dr. Sean Sadri, along with doctoral students Nicholas R. Buzzelli (first author) and Patrick Gentile, interviewed 22 sports editors and producers in U.S. markets where The Athletic has established a site.

The Athletic has lured established beat reporters from newspapers by offering higher salaries (sometimes double) and greater editorial freedom, according to the interviews. (Its primary UA reporter is Aaron Suttles, who worked for many years for the Tuscaloosa News.) Local sports editors had mostly weak counterarguments (“weak” is my word) for their reporters to stay put, with the exception of pointing out that The Athletic’s long-term survival isn’t assured. I sensed some sour feelings. One editor said The Athletic hires “Twitter celebrities, as opposed to actually good journalists.”

The Athletic focuses on in-depth stories, not a team’s daily happenings, so sports editors split on whether it represents direct competition. Most believe they differentiate themselves by offering day-to-day coverage in volume. A few, though, said they have put greater priority on long-form storytelling to better contend.

With the popularity of sports, isn’t there room for everyone? Perhaps not, at least not in markets where local outlets also sell subscriptions. Other research shows that most news consumers do not wish to pay for their news, and among those who are willing to do so, the most typical number of paid subscriptions is only one. As the UA article says, it’s a zero-sum game.

I have seen one other effect of The Athletic, based purely on anecdotal evidence. I follow several pro sports teams in cities where a long-time newspaper beat writer jumped to The Athletic. In each case, the writer’s coverage got more aggressive and appropriately critical. That’s a good thing. It reflects, I think, a superior editorial culture at The Athletic compared to some local newsrooms. It may also reflect institutional constraints that can temper the journalism of hometown outlets.     

Despite The Athletic’s remarkable success in producing high-quality work, adding subscribers, raising investment money and expanding to new cities, there’s no guarantee a purely subscription business model can sustain this large and expensive operation long term. In a setback that the company attributed strictly to the coronavirus shutdown, The Athletic laid off 8 percent of its staff and cut salaries across the board in June. Looking down the road, many of the editors interviewed by the UA researchers “wonder if its model is sustainable for fans who prefer quantity over quality.”

But the researchers note that, having come this far, The Athletic has given everyone hope that subscriptions can become a new, sustainable strategy to pay for good sports journalism. “Perhaps The Athletic’s most profound impact on sports media has been normalizing the paywall.”

Amen to that. But I also hope The Athletic demonstrates to everyone the journalistic and commercial value of innovative, in-depth stories about sports. If competing newsrooms choose to surrender that kind of coverage to The Athletic and instead focus on endless churning of routine stuff, that would be a shame.

When a news website is not really a news website

For some reason, the South Birmingham Times thinks Colorado’s governor deserves a bigger headline than Alabama’s.

Apparently I shouldn’t be wondering about the agenda of my city’s newly elected mayor or what improvements I can find at the renovated public library down the street. Apparently I should be thinking instead about the awful “C” rating given to Democratic Colorado governor Jared Polis by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., for poor fiscal management.

 Because that was the top story when I visited the news website of the South Birmingham Times on Thursday (and on Friday!)

 The site is one of nearly 1,300 pretend local news sites launched by a company called Metric Media in the past several years. That’s about twice as many as the nation’s largest newspaper chain.

 Alabama has 20 of them, according to The New York Times, with seemingly legitimate and neutral names such as the Tuscaloosa Leader, the Jefferson Reporter and the Decatur Times. But the actual mission of Metric Media sites is to support Republican political candidates and right-wing causes. (For the whole list, NYT subscribers can click here.)

 As both the New York Times and another recent article in the Wall Street Journal point out, supposed news sites with ideological bents have sprung up on behalf of candidates and viewpoints on both ends of the political spectrum. The problem, no matter the political leaning, is that readers potentially believe they’re getting legitimate news when they’re actually getting skewed news or flat-out propaganda.

The sites in Alabama are pretty easy to recognize as garbage. The template About Us page says Metric Media was established “to fill the void in community news after years of decline in local reporting by legacy media.” It’s correct about the decline and the void. It continues: “This site is one of hundreds nationwide to inform citizens about news in their local communities.” That’s a canard.

I looked at the homepages of three of the Alabama sites. I found one local story. Below the big Jared Polis headline, the South Birmingham Times had a story about a jury convicting a Vestavia Hills man of a crime. The story came from a press release. Seven months ago.

The Decatur Times’ lead story also came from a press release. A woman from Laredo, Texas, was sentenced for cocaine distribution. Eight months ago. In the U.S. Southern District of Alabama.

Want to write a letter to either newsroom? They have the same address. It’s in Delaware.

The unacknowledged but recognizable Republican slant showed on both sites in the story reporting that the top marginal tax rate in Alabama – a statistic much higher than the actual tax rate – could reach 54% under Joe Biden’s tax plan, according to the Tax Foundation. No mention of Donald Trump’s plan. My speculation is that if Alabama were a contested election state rather than a virtual Republican lock, Metric Media would be feeding more content to its Alabama sites.

Check out the headlines on the right side of the homepage. Does the Decatur Times’ webmaster (probably not a human) think the website serves Decatur, Illinois?

The New York Times further reported that political groups and public relations firms can pay for Metric Media (mostly freelance writers) to create a desired story, including specified interview questions. No legitimate news organization allows this, of course, and such a practice magnifies the audience deception.

It’s possible to cite cases of hidden bias in journalism, obviously, from corporate level steering of editorial decisions to unspoken agendas of individual journalists. But it’s especially nefarious when non-journalism tries to present itself as journalism. Which happens all the time. Because communicators engaged in persuasion or propaganda know their messages become more effective if the audience accords them the credibility of vetted, impartial news.

That’s why, for instance, native advertising is made to look like the surrounding news content, save for a teeny tiny label identifying it as advertising. That’s why innumerable TV commercials are staged as a news broadcast or a press conference. That’s why the US military wrote and paid Iraqi newspapers in 2005 to publish propaganda supporting the US mission in Iraq in the form of news articles.

It is not easy to identify websites with undisclosed political motives. (It’s easier if a site is just making stuff up but even then a lot of people fall for it.) Some recommended steps for spotting bias:

• Look at headlines. Are all the negative ones about people and causes on one side of the political divide? Is the language inflammatory?

• Look at individual stories. Do they present both sides of an issue or controversy?

• Read stories on the same subject published by other, reputable news outlets. Do you get a different picture?

• Read the About Us page. You may (or may not) find honesty there. Pay special attention to ownership and funding sources, if they’re mentioned.

• Google the names of bylined writers. What’s their background and for what publications have they written previously?

• Check out a watchdog website that rates the bias of news sites, such as NewsGuard, Media Bias Fact Check, Ad Fontes Media’s bias chart or the Global Disinformation Index.

(For even more advice, click here.)

We face a monumental election and a pandemic, two hot-button issues that have prompted no-holds-barred tactics to win public opinion, including the appropriation of the powerful mantle of journalism for political persuasion. And that’s civically dangerous, because persuasion works best when people don’t realize that’s what it is.

Crimson White journalists experience the other side of the questions

National media have paid much attention to how colleges have handled the pandemic. It’s a newsworthy topic, of course, though I suspect some of the attention comes from the appeal of presumed narratives such as “Irresponsible College Kids Break Rules” and “Colleges Endanger Lives to Play Football.”

CW photo editor Hannah Saad on CNN

The best way to report the subject is to send journalists to campuses for several days. Alas, too expensive and time consuming for many news organizations. So, the next-best option is to talk to smart current students who are witnessing and even reporting on events. That’s why several staff members of the University of Alabama’s independent campus news outlet, the Crimson White, have appeared on various national and even international news programs lately. Very cool.

CW photo editor Hannah Saad (full disclosure: former student of mine) appeared on CNN Newsroom with Anderson Cooper and talked by phone to The Paul Finebaum Show. Media began contacting her after she tweeted photos of large or unmasked gatherings on and off campus during UA Bid Day.

CW news editor Reid Bolling (full disclosure: former student of mine) also appeared on CNN, once pre-recorded with John King and once live with Brooke Baldwin. CNN took an interest after seeing a CW story she wrote about students being moved out of their dorms to make way for students with COVID-19.

 Kaddyja Jallow, a CW culture writer, was interviewed on BBC Radio, which spotted the “UA ‘24” in her Twitter bio.

“Doing media” isn’t as easy as it seems, and it’s always eye-opening for journalists when they become the interviewee instead of the interviewer.

The CW journalists told me they knew the planned general topics, but not the specific questions they’d be asked, which is customary journalistic practice. They were mostly satisfied with their answers, they said. Hannah said she got good advice from my department colleague, Dr. Chris Roberts: Just say what you know; don’t predict future events. That’s good advice for lots of pundits in the media these days. 

Hannah said she wished she had given a more thorough answer to a good question asked by Finebaum, who is an adept interviewer: Would her reporting on care-free behavior end up adversely affecting students? Live formats don’t give much time to think, though.

 Hannah also witnessed the national media’s tendency toward unnuanced views of local issues. Coverage from national outlets focused on the lines of scofflaws outside Tuscaloosa bars, but Hannah thought the more interesting angle was the decision to have a Bid Day and how that helped to create the images that reached the nation.

CW news editor reid bolling on cnn (we like the shirt, reid)

 It’s easy to get nervous, of course, when millions of people are watching or listening. Reid, talking on her laptop in her kitchen, and Hannah, talking from the CW newsroom, couldn’t see their CNN hosts, which they both said made the experience easier. Kaddyja, talking to BBC Radio on a FaceTime audio call from her dorm room at 8 a.m., didn’t understand something the host said to her. Thinking she had muted herself, she asked her roommate for help. But she wasn’t muted. BBC edited that part out. 

 Reid has only one regret. She realized later that she wore the same shirt for both of her CNN appearances. “I promise I have more than one nice shirt!” she said.

 So these were educational experiences for these college journalists in ways both small and large. And when they’re national journalists, they’ll bring a little extra understanding when it’s their turn to interview a college journalist about who-knows-what hot issue on college campuses at that moment.

I did not save any opinions for a book

I at first disagreed with the criticism that investigative journalist Bob Woodward should have gone public right away with Donald Trump’s taped interview comments about the deadliness of the coronavirus in early February.  Instead, Woodward held them for publication in his book “Rage.”

The claim is that Woodward would have saved lives if the public knew Trump was lying when he repeatedly downplayed the danger during the virus’ early stages in this country. But after three-plus years of relentless conning and fabricating, I don’t think people still trusting Trump for health information would have believed Woodward anyway. Even with Trump on tape (“It’s fake!”). I doubt an audio snippet could have changed their behavior or the consequences. 

People assessing the threat based on a broader view of the evidence, not just on Trump’s portrayal, had plenty of other indicators – media stories, statements by other government officials, shutdowns in China – that the virus was serious business. They didn’t need a sneak peek of “Rage” to know to protect themselves.

But a related piece of Woodward’s book reporting, if known sooner, could have made a difference, a point insightfully offered on CNN on Thursday by Dr. Michael Saag, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at UAB.

Saag contracted COVID-19 after he picked up his son in the virus hotspot of New York for a car ride back to Birmingham in early March. Neither knew the son was infected. The focus of their precautions was on avoiding dangerous contact with others, he said. They didn’t focus on the possibility of transmission by air. “That was at a time in early March when we weren’t 100 percent sure about aerosols. I wish I had known that because we would have worn masks and we would have kept the windows cracked…. We were thinking transmission by contact back then. It wasn’t right.”

Yet Trump told Woodward in early February, presumably based on government data and intelligence not available publicly, that the virus for certain spreads by air.

Bob Woodward

Woodward argues that everything the president told him about the virus was already known at the time. He also argues, more persuasively, that he needed time to confirm the truthfulness of the president’s statements. Still, he accomplished that by May. And probably, if the reporter had passed along his information to associates at The Washington Post, as he has done before, a team of reporters could have nailed it down even sooner. (One other time, though, Woodward apologized for not sharing a discovery with The Post.)

A more immediate revelation, of course, blows up the remarkable access that Woodward gained to Trump and other insiders based on the concept and timeline of a book. And that would be a notable loss, for heavily reported books that go deeper and portray a bigger picture over time shed light that the daily grind of stories cannot. “Rage,” which comes out on Tuesday, may be especially valuable as an exceptionally penetrating view of the Trump presidency just two months before the most consequential presidential election in many decades.

Journalists at major news organizations often want to write books that piggyback on their daily work. Organizations let them, including granting long stretches of book leave, because it adds credibility and prestige to their bylines, and because if they don’t, a prized staff member might jump to somewhere else that does. Usually, the writer and organization management have an understanding that significant news uncovered for a book should get offered first for publication on regular platforms. But books will never sell if they’re just rehash. Judgments about grey areas are constant.

“You just breathe the air, and that’s how it’s passed.”

— Donald Trump to Bob Woodward on Feb. 7

The cost of delayed reporting is lower when revelations involve the important but still standard behind-the-scenes decision making and politics that characterize many of the books by journalists and former government officials these days. When the unearthed news is an actionable health or safety warning in the moment, though, the stakes don’t go any higher.

The president’s dishonesty aside, we didn’t need to hear a tape recording to know seven months ago to brace for a probable epidemic in this country. But knowing of airborne transmission is vital to defending against it, both now and then. It’s vital enough that neither the president nor a reporter should have withheld it.

This blog post is excellent, according to sources

President Trump claims The Atlantic “made up” its aghasting Thursday night report that the president has privately referred to dead American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” The magazine didn’t, as shown by subsequent confirmations by The Associated Press and other outlets. But it’s harder to refute claims of falseness when, as was the case here, a news organization relies solely on anonymous sources.

“These weak, pathetic, cowardly background ‘sources’ do not have the courage or decency to put their names to these false accusations because they know how completely ludicrous they are,” a former deputy White House press secretary tweeted Thursday night. Even some members of mainstream media, while praising The Atlantic’s reporting, called on the sources in the story to come forward.

Journalists have debated the ethics of this kind of attribution forever. They’ve also used it forever. The slam against unnamed sources is that they deprive readers of the ability to judge a report’s credibility for themselves. Further, the practice eliminates accountability for a source who speaks untruthfully or distorts information for a hidden personal or political agenda. Another flashing caution is that some of the audience doesn’t even understand what they’re seeing. A 2018 survey by the Media Insight Project reported that almost one-third of respondents believe not even the journalists themselves know the names of their “anonymous” sources (which is why “unnamed” or “confidential” is a better label). 

The compelling counterargument is that without confidential sources, some essential stories would never get published. Often, a source demands confidentiality in exchange for information not because of cowardice or nefarious motives but because of a legitimate concern over retaliation.

The clashing benefits and harms necessitate that news outlets set criteria for when they’ll use confidential sources. This is a typical checklist:

• A source’s information is a vital part of a story the public needs to know.

• The story contains multiple firsthand sources giving consistent accounts. The higher the source count, the better. (The Atlantic’s story relied on four, though not for every revelation.) 

• A source does not have a history of inaccuracy.

• There’s no way to report the story without confidential sources.

In addition to criteria for use, there are best practices:

• Assess a source’s motive. Is it apparently self-interest or public interest? (Still, I’d argue that motive is irrelevant if the information is true.)

• Don’t readily agree to confidentiality. Seek to persuade otherwise. (Some journalists don’t do this enough.)

• If sources insist on confidentiality, describe them as specifically as the sources will allow without identifying them. Readers can better judge credibility with an attribution such as “a senior FBI official who has seen the document” than an attribution such as “sources familiar with the situation.” (Again, some journalists don’t do this enough.)

• Tell readers why sources won’t allow publication of their names.

The criteria for use, obviously, are subjective. Which is why reliance on unnamed sources is rampant and sometimes excessive, especially in stories datelined Washington, D.C. The New York Times, for instance, reckoned with its overuse of such attribution following two significant errors by toughening standards in 2016. The Times, of course, was the foremost organization that allowed unnamed officials in the George W. Bush administration to build a phony case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, leading to a costly war in Iraq.

More recently, CNN was reminded of the danger of deviating from the customary requirement of multiple sources. Three journalists resigned in 2017 after publishing a not-ready article about a Congressional investigation into Trump’s Russian connections that was based on a single unidentified source. A retraction, editor’s note and apology followed.

The Atlantic article is a justified and valuable use of confidential sources. It’s justified because with the Trump administration’s history of retribution, this story likely never surfaces without protection for the individuals telling it. It’s valuable not only as another brutal portrayal of the character of a president seeking re-election, but also as probable insight into significant decisions such as Trump’s inaction on Russian bounties for American military lives.

Withholding identities does make some of the audience wonder if they can trust what they are reading in a story. But I’d argue that the public still can assess its trust on a larger scale: They can decide whether a news outlet’s reputation reassures them (or doesn’t) that the story wouldn’t be there if it were less than ironclad.

The Trump administration is the most audacious and consequential example of certain governments at all levels that engage in actions detrimental to the public, then seek to cloak them with secrecy, propaganda and punishment of internal dissent. In such climates, confidential sources that meet exacting criteria are an imperative tool to find the stories the public deserves to know. Not knowing is so much worse.

Man, some of these new Associated Press style rules are crazy

On Monday my News Writing and Reporting students will hear the semesterly discussion of the value of Associated Press style, with which I have a love/hate relationship. There’s no doubt the pointless switch to the percent symbol instead of spelling out “percent” was solely to make me change my PowerPoint slides. Explaining why “noon” is OK and “midnight” isn’t will only take forever. And I haven’t completely recovered from the decision that “over” can mean “more than.”

Regardless, I emphasize the AP Stylebook in class as a great guide not only for consistent journalistic style and proper grammar, but also for respectful word choices and ethical policies involving sensitive subjects. I’m on board with the capitalized “Black” and the lower case “white.” There was no simple solution to that one.

But each year’s revisions inevitably make me scratch my head about at least a few of them.

The latest book has a new entry on gender-neutral language that is good and necessary. Words such as “policeman” and “mailman” are sexist, inaccurate and easily replaced with neutral words. The entry says “actresses” should be “actors.” “Waiter” should be “server.” I’m good with all that. But I find it borderline absurd that:

• “Manhunt” should be avoided in favor of “search”

• “Manpower” should be avoided in favor of “crew” or “staff”

• “Manhole” should be replaced by “maintenance hole”

• “Man-made” should give way to “human-made”

These are the silliest rules in the history of humankind.

Not since Day 1 have I felt this nervous about my job

a hand sanitizing station in Reese Phifer HALL

On Wednesday I’ll put on my armor, trek to Tuscaloosa and battle for four months against the coronavirus and other uncontrollable circumstances.

OK, enough with the melodramatic depiction. Save war analogies for doctors, nurses and real soldiers.

Still, I know from conversations and social media that faculty returning to the new semester at the University of Alabama and elsewhere share varying degrees of trepidation about whether they will be sufficiently protected from getting COVID-19 on campus. We need to worry about an invisible virus in the classroom, potential active shooters in the hallway, and Zoombombing online. Guess I can relax in the parking lot.

Many UA faculty members nonetheless plan to enter the classroom this fall, because that’s a better education for the students. And yeah, it gives the university some cover for continuing to charge full tuition. Slightly less than half of all UA courses will be taught face to face in classrooms. The ratio of enrollment to room size will allow social distancing. About one-third of all courses will be taught in “hybrid” fashion, meaning a few students in a socially distanced classroom each week with the remainder joining simultaneously by videoconferencing from a remote location. All other courses will be completely online.

I can’t speak to every situation, but generally the university granted teachers’ preferences for class format (though some subjects don’t allow flexibility). Teachers I know who fall in a COVID-vulnerable category will teach completely online.

My large lecture class, normally in a jam-packed room, will go completely online, with students in a live Zoom meeting. Two others of mine will be hybrid, and one, with nine students in a huge room, will operate face to face.

All in all, I consider the university’s protective steps sufficient enough that I’m willing to teach in classrooms. The university’s caps on number of people in a room – at least the caps I’m familiar with – are tighter than I thought they’d be. The university also mandates masks for everyone.

Occasional testing is part of the plan, too, but even though I understand the value of testing in fighting a pandemic on a macro scale, it’s not much comfort on a micro level because of false or slow results. A student or professor is only as non-threatening as what they did last night.

I’d trust 98% of my students with my life (which, come to think of it, isn’t merely an expression in this case). But the 2% can ruin it for everyone. And recent evidence of crowded locations in Tuscaloosa, Auburn and elsewhere is reason for alarm, if not total panic. (Report from youngest son as he drove past bars in downtown Tuscaloosa on Saturday night: “Packed.”) How bad could it get? In Chapel Hill, it got bad enough that the University of North Carolina on Monday halted in-person learning and will flip to remote teaching. Its semester was one week old.

One administrator at UA offered some smart advice: Assume everyone has the virus. That won’t be true, of course, but a lot of faculty and staff do want to know the number and rate of positive tests among people on campus, broken down by students and employees, on a daily basis. Locations of outbreak clusters are of vital public interest, too. None of this violates FERPA, the educational records privacy act.

The UA System hasn’t made such information public yet. Employees are taking on a health risk to help fulfill the university’s mission, thereby also benefitting the university financially. That creates an ethical obligation to provide key information that lets everyone know whether this experiment is going to blow up or not.

With huge stakes, maybe media will cover campaigns right this time

Occasionally I like to highlight interesting and useful research into journalism, because usually it gets lost in dense academic journals that no one ever reads. At least not voluntarily.

Donald Trump has presided over multiple crises in America, but don’t forget that Joe Biden has said some stupid things during campaign speeches.

I have just engaged in a prevalent failing of the mainstream political press: false equivalency, which means to give a similar volume of attention to two dissimilar and unequal sets of facts in order to appear fair and balanced. You might recall “But her emails…” from the presidential campaign coverage of 2016.

As we head toward an obviously monumental presidential election on Nov. 3, nonpartisan political reporters are doing their best to avoid their highly consequential mistakes of 2016 and some previous election cycles. With such a stark contrast between the two presumptive nominees – uh oh, I may have just engaged in the also common press failing of tempered euphemism – the stakes couldn’t be higher for the performance of the press over the next three months.

Constructive press criticism helps the media do a better job of fulfilling their role in the democratic election process, or at least of avoiding past blunders. Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, for instance, recently offered her ideas on how the political media can avoid the “epic journalistic failure” that was presidential campaign coverage in 2016.

Very helpfully, three academic researchers reviewed more than 300 articles of press criticism from the 2000 presidential election through the one in 2016. Using industry trade publications such as Columbia Journalism Review and the Poynter Institute, Elizabeth Bent and Ryan J. Thomas of the University of Missouri and Kimberly Kelling of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh identified continuing problems in press practices ($). (Political journalists could argue that the press criticism isn’t accurate, but this is a pretty big sample size to be all wrong.) Two main takeaways from the researchers’ work: the political press doesn’t break bad habits very well, which is a scary thought right now, and 2016 was an especially flawed showing in hindsight.

Some more-specific findings from the article in the latest issue of the Journal of Media Ethics:

• Coverage focuses way more on “the horse race” – who’s winning and why – than on policy. The authors cite one study of the 2016 campaign that found four times more space for the former than for the latter. (A good upcoming test case: Will coverage of Joe Biden’s VP choice emphasize her track record and fitness to be president, or the voting blocs she’ll appeal to?) 

• Despite the emphasis on the horse race, the press still gets it wrong sometimes. Many national outlets wrongly declared Al Gore the winner of the decisive state of Florida in 2000, prompting complaints not only of irresponsible haste but also of dissuading some people from voting. Heightened caution followed. In a different kind of error, in 2016, reporters’ excessive faith in polling led them to present a too-certain picture that Hillary Clinton would win.

• Polling has been a “constant problem,” including overemphasis on polls that may not truly reflect public opinion and failure to present or adequately explain margin of error. (Brief data journalism lesson: If Candidate A polls 51% and Candidate B polls 49% with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, who’s winning? Answer: You can’t tell. If you polled everyone instead of using a sample, Candidate B could poll as high as 51% or as low as 47%.)

• Even outside of polling, national political coverage has frequently failed to reflect key segments of the population, primarily racial minorities and voters who are rural and conservative. Not recognizing the mood of the latter group was an especial problem in 2016. Local and regional journalists did a better job of reporting on the views of “red state” citizens and Trump’s appeal than national outlets did.

Trump’s win, according to the researchers’ review of articles, prompted new debate over the merit of polls, new reporting practices intended to hear more diverse voices, and calls for “a more radical rethink” of campaign coverage. One press critic wrote in 2016, “When your reporting and storytelling toolbox is challenged by a norm-violating candidate, acknowledge it and innovate – fast.”

The national political media have indeed started to bust some routines, such as reluctance to prominently call out falsehoods. But it’s vital for the next three months that they address all areas of past failures, and that they rise to current new challenges, such as exposing the multiple efforts under way to suppress voting and rooting out how re-election considerations influence pandemic decisions. Many such articles have appeared. Three months is an eternity in the election process, though. A lot of time left to go wrong, and a lot on the line, because a 2020 repeat of 2016 wouldn’t be disastrous only for the press.