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Is that a fact?

Is that a fact?

The News Literacy Project

"Is that a fact?" is produced by the non-partisan national education non-profit the News Literacy Project. It seeks to inform listeners about news literacy issues that affect their lives through informative conversations with experts working to combat misinformation.
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Top 10 Is that a fact? Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Is that a fact? episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Is that a fact? for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Is that a fact? episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Is that a fact? - Can democracy survive the rise of misinformation?
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09/15/20 • 31 min

Today, a core element of American democracy — access to reliable information — is threatened. How did this happen? And how can American democracy survive the impact of misinformation? Our guest is Brendan Nyhan. He is a contributor to The Upshot at the New York Times and a co-founder at Bright Line Watch, a group that monitors the status of American democracy. He is a professor of government at Dartmouth College.
Is that a fact? is brought to you by the nonpartisan, non-profit News Literacy Project. In each episode of this 10-part series, we’ll bring in an expert to discuss an aspect of our current information environment that is threatening the promise of American democracy. We’ll also ask our experts to share some solutions, so you can become a more informed voter.
For more information about the News Literacy Project, go to newslit.org.
Relevant interviews and links:

  • The Dartmouth, 2/5/2020 Discussing coverage of Trump’s impeachment trials
  • Albright Institute at Wellesley College, 01/11/2018 Talk titled: Why Facts and Science Don’t Always Change People’s Minds
  • NHPR 5/24/2017 Talking about political misinformation and "fake news" post-Trump
  • WNYC, 7/20/2017 Interview about the backfire effect on WNYC’s On The Media
  • The Communications Network (no date) Talking about research on misinformation

Additional credit: Zoe Denckla provided research assistance and Miranda Shafer provided production assistance.

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Is that a fact? - Beyond hot takes: Reporting on a warming planet
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07/20/23 • 30 min

Things have been heating up — literally — since Sabrina Shankman, our latest podcast guest, began covering climate change a decade ago. The scientific community has presented indisputable evidence that climate change is the result of carbon emissions from human activity. News organizations have committed more resources to covering the complex topic. And climate deniers and the misinformation they spread have evolved along with the conversation.
Shankman, who covers climate change at The Boston Globe, addresses these topics and more in this podcast episode.
The science proving climate change is real has been around for decades, but it’s taken society and the news media a while to catch up. But with wildfires, flooding, and other extreme weather events on the rise, the climate crisis has come knocking on our doors.
“When I was first a climate change reporter, I was covering the Arctic because it was a way to tell the story of climate change in the place where it was happening. Now, I can tell the story in Boston because it's happening in Boston, it's happening everywhere."
But as with any global issue that impacts economies, governments and society, misinformation and disinformation are part of the story. Getting reliable information from credible sources is key.
“You need to be interrogating the information that you're receiving. You have to say, ‘Okay, well maybe this information seems valid, but it's coming with a perspective. What are some other perspectives?’”
Listen in to find out why climate change isn’t just a big story, it’s the story.
Additional reading:

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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This episode of “Is that a Fact?” is part two of a two-part episode marking the 10th anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012, when a gunman murdered 20 first graders and six adults. If you haven’t listened to part one, in which we interview New York Times feature writer and author of the book, Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, we highly recommend that you do that first.
In part two, we speak with Lenny Pozner, father of Noah, the youngest victim at Sandy Hook. Pozner knew early on that the hoaxers’ movement would be widespread, lasting and harmful. So, he chose to fight back on behalf of his child and other victims. “Noah’s story will always need to be told because there’ll always be someone misusing it,” he said. “I knew that I needed to do everything that I’m able to do to help debunk, to help clarify, to tell my story as best as I can, which really is just telling Noah’s story.”
Over the two episodes we explore the aftermath of Sandy Hook and how what seemed an aberration of untruths would instead be a bellwether for a shift in the country’s public discourse, where conspiracy theories are a common element of tragic events. We also discuss how victims’ families have fought back against the lies and harassment and brought about lasting change.
Additional Reading:

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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Is that a fact? - The politicization of the pandemic
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12/16/21 • 52 min

In this episode, we set out to explore whether false narratives about the pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccines have overshadowed science or whether science has managed to hold its own, particularly in light of the politicization of the pandemic.

Politics has certainly influenced who has chosen to get vaccinated. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “there continue to be differences in COVID-19 vaccination rates along partisan lines, a gap that has grown over time.” The Kaiser study showed that almost 53 percent of people who live in counties that voted for Biden were fully vaccinated compared to nearly 40 percent of people in counties that went to Trump.

To better understand why people continue to reject overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the safety of the vaccines when compared to the dangers posed by the virus, we spoke to three people to learn more about the false narratives surrounding COVID-19 and the vaccines. Our first guest is Dr. Katherine J. Wu, a staff writer for The Atlantic who has a PhD in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard University and has covered many different aspects of the coronavirus since the pandemic began. She tells us that when there is a crisis like this pandemic, it’s not unusual for misinformation to follow and spread confusion.

Our second guest is Texas resident Tony Green, a Republican voter who has written about his first-hand experience with COVID-19. In June 2020, Green and his partner invited six family members to spend the weekend at their home in Dallas. At the time, Green was still referring to the pandemic as a “scamdemic” — wildly blown out of proportion. But over the course of that weekend, he developed symptoms of COVID-19 that would eventually land him and some his extended family in the hospital. In all, the virus spread to 14 members of his family and took the lives of two of them. (Starts at 18:25).

Our third and final guest is U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy who tells us why he issued his “Confronting Health Misinformation” advisory and a special toolkit to help people learn how to navigate their way through all the false and misleading information not just about the virus and vaccines, but about all kinds of health-related topics. (Starts at 35:32).

Is that a fact? is brought to you by the nonpartisan, non-profit News Literacy Project. For more information, go to newslit.org.

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Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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Our guest this week is Deen Freelon, an associate professor at the Hussman school of Journalism and Media at Univesrity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Our host spoke to Freelon about how foreign adversaries, and particularly the Internet Research Agency in Russia, are using social media platforms against us. We explore how foreign governments wage disinformation campaigns against us, who they target and why. Are they succeeding? And what can we do as news and information consumers to avoid falling for this nefarious form of misinformation?

Freelon is known for his coding and computational methods to extract, preprocess and analyze large sets of data. He has researched how misinformation is spread and what people can do to prevent the spread of false information. Freelon has published over 30 peer reviewed journal articles and contributed extensive research to the Knight Foundation. In the past few years, Freelon has done substantial analyses about the impact of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns on Twitter related to our elections and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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Is that a fact? - The lure of health and wellness misinformation
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08/17/23 • 35 min

You know the routine. You develop a physical symptom you’ve never had before and what do you do? You grab your phone and furiously Google symptoms and related medical conditions.
If you land on reputable medical sources, it’s not a problem — except it might provoke some unwarranted anxiety. But when online searches and social media spout quackery, the information you consume, and maybe act on, can put your health in danger.
In this episode, we discussed the hidden dangers of health and wellness mis- and disinformation with Derek Beres, co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat and co-host of the podcast Conspirituality.
Algorithms can take consumers looking for health and wellness advice down rabbit holes of misinformation, leading some of us to believe conspiracy theories that fuel distrust in proven medical methods and treatments.

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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Is that a fact? - Trailer

Trailer

Is that a fact?

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09/05/20 • 2 min

Welcome to Is that a fact?, a new podcast brought to you by the News Literacy Project.

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Libel laws and the First Amendment in the United States are meant to hit a sweet spot — protecting reputations and facts while also affording journalists the freedom to publish unflattering information about powerful people that the public needs to know. But disinformation is increasingly threatening that balance.
In this episode, law professor RonNell Andersen Jones explains what could be at risk. “If it's too easy for somebody to sue for defamation over a falsehood, then powerful people will hold that over everybody's head and threaten to sue their critics and will silence a lot of conversation that we ought to be having," she said.

Jones is a Distinguished Professor and Teitelbaum Chair in Law at the University of Utah and an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. A former newspaper reporter and editor, Jones is a First Amendment scholar who now teaches, researches and writes on legal issues affecting the press and on the intersection between media and the courts.
Listen to the conversation to learn more.
Additional Reading:

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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In today’s episode we speak with Emily Hund, author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media, about the evolution of social media influencers and how disparate events like rapid advances in technology and the decline of traditional news outlets have boosted their prevalence and impact since their emergence during the Great Recession.
These authentic-seeming people whose lives unfold online provide advice many social media users have come to follow as closely as they would that of a trusted friend. And yet, many of them aren't credentialed or especially qualified to provide even the most basic of recommendations.
"Their expertise is their authenticity," said Hund. "So that's what this all really comes down to. It's the thing that keeps this industry growing and thriving and changing. These people are able to construct their public personas as someone who's credible, someone who's believable because they're authentic."
Hund is also a research affiliate at the center on Digital Culture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Tune in to hear her insights about how influencers came to dominate our social media feeds and how much we can trust the authenticity they’ve staked their livelihoods on.

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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Have you ever scratched your head when reading an article or watching the news and wondered if you were getting facts or opinion? If so, you’re not alone. News organizations have not made it easy for consumers to differentiate between news and the views of an individual or media outlet.
Tom Rosenstiel, professor at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism and co-author of The Elements of Journalism, explained why there is confusion in today’s podcast episode. “The purpose of news is to inspire conversation, to inspire people to consider public life, to consider their community. Editorials are there to further inspire public consideration. Here's what we think. We've read many stories, we've talked to our reporters, we've considered this.”

Rosenstiel also explained how the rise of 24-hour cable TV has tilted the media world off it’s “just the facts” axis, particularly after 1996, when Fox and MSNBC entered the fray. To compete with CNN, which had a larger reporting staff, they filled their time slots with talk shows that provided a slanted view of the news.

Listen and find out more.
Additional Reading:

Is that a fact? is a production of the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to create a more news-literate America. Our host is Darragh Worland, our producer is Mike Webb, our editor is Timothy Kramer, and our theme music is by Eryn Busch.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Is that a fact? have?

Is that a fact? currently has 28 episodes available.

What topics does Is that a fact? cover?

The podcast is about Election, Democracy, Podcasts, Covid-19 and Education.

What is the most popular episode on Is that a fact??

The episode title 'Can democracy survive the rise of misinformation?' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Is that a fact??

The average episode length on Is that a fact? is 38 minutes.

How often are episodes of Is that a fact? released?

Episodes of Is that a fact? are typically released every 14 days.

When was the first episode of Is that a fact??

The first episode of Is that a fact? was released on Sep 5, 2020.

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