fact-checking

4 posts

The climate change of bad news

6 min read
Analysis Op-eds bad news Ben Smith caste cognitive dissonance fact-checking Jacob Silverman Jonah Lehrer journalism Miami Herald parachute journalism privileges Rafia Zakaria Rukmini Callimachi The Atlantic The New York Times The New Yorker

This post flows a bit like the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. As one friend put it, “It starts somewhere and then goes in a different direction.” This year hasn’t been beset by the same old steady driz…

Journalistic entropy

6 min read
Analysis Scicomm conspiracy theories coronavirus pandemic COVID-19 entropy fact-checking false balance health journalism image compression Indian Council of Medical Research information theory Prime Minister Narendra Modi Priyanka Pulla pseudoscience science journalism thermodynamics Washington Post

Say you need to store a square image 1,000 pixels wide to a side with the smallest filesize (setting aside compression techniques). The image begins with the colour #009900 on the left side and, as yo…