Poynter. » Verification

How the AP verified photo of Boston bombing suspect leaving scene

Andrew Beaujon — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:37:08 +0000

Associated Press
David Green’s cell-phone photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appearing to move away from the scene of last Monday’s bombing almost seemed too good to be true, Associated Press Director of Photography Santiago Lyon said in a phone call Friday … Read more

‘Let Me Tweet That For You’ site raises concerns for journalists

Jeff Sonderman — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:30:28 +0000

This tweet looks pretty real, doesn’t it?

It’s not, though. I faked that tweet using a Web service named “Let Me Tweet That For You.” It’s pretty simple — you type in a Twitter username and a message, … Read more

How old ‘Swedish mannequins’ picture spread with bogus information

Andrew Beaujon — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:09:24 +0000

Quartz | The Washington Post
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen this image by now, along with cheers about the message H&M is sending by using mannequins that look like real women.

But the picture isn’t new, Jeff Yang … Read more

Fake news: Pig rescuing goat is really a dog

Kelly McBride — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:31:03 +0000

Dave Itzkoff of the NYTimes asked me last week to look at a 30-second video of a cute little pig rescuing a cute little bleating goat that was somehow trapped in a pond.

My first reaction was: fake. Yet several … Read more

New research details how journalists verify information

Craig Silverman — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:55:09 +0000

Stop a journalist on the street and ask her to list the fundamentals of the job and you’re almost certain to hear mention of accuracy.

In “The Elements of Journalism,” Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote that journalism’s “essence … Read more

Montreal students take credit for fake viral video of baby-snatching eagle

Jeff Sonderman — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:48:06 +0000

Editor Fergus Bell explains how AP verifies user-generated content from Sandy to Syria

Craig Silverman — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:07:40 +0000

Hurricane Sandy was the kind of event Fergus Bell was promoted to help handle.

Bell was recently named AP’s Social Media & UGC Editor, International thanks to his work sourcing and verifying user-generated content for the organization.

So when Sandy … Read more

New York Times creates new story form for ‘Watching Syria’s War’

Bill Mitchell — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:05:51 +0000

Watching the video is almost unbearable.

But grasping the horror of what’s happening in Syria without watching it is almost unthinkable.

“A Father’s Farewell,” posted Oct. 12 to a curation site maintained by The New York Times, appears … Read more

Whose fault is it that ‘Comfortably Smug’ lies about Hurricane Sandy spread?

Andrew Beaujon — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:19:48 +0000

The Guardian | The Atlantic | The New York Times | GigaOM
Shashank Tripathi was always a jerk on Twitter, Heidi N. Moore writes, but the BS he was pushing out to his @ComfortablySmug followers during Hurricane Sandy was … Read more

Emergency information response is a public service we can coordinate through real-time verification

Craig Silverman — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:41:32 +0000

It didn’t take long for a variety of debunking efforts to help combat misinformation and fake images related to Hurricane Sandy.

The Atlantic launched InstaSnopes, the “Is Twitter Wrong?” Tumblr spread quickly, BuzzFeed collected fake images and produced … Read more