NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Join our Election News Hunt with PBS and P.O.V.

Join our News Hunt for good journalism on the 2008 Presidential Election, in partnership with PBS Engage and the documentary series P.O.V. For two weeks, starting starting today and continuing through July 14th, PBS and P.O.V. viewers will join forces with the NewTrust community to find the best online news coverage of the 2008 elections, from the perspective of everyday Americans. Using the NewsTrust review tools, we'll find great reporting on this topic, from campaign advertising and town hall meetings to the voting booth.

To begin your exploration, go to our Election topic page. There you'll find a wide range of news stories and opinion pieces on the 2008 election. Try out the NewsTrust review tool to rate these stories, keeping in mind to focus on the quality of the journalism, rather than whether you agree or disagree with the viewpoints expressed in each story.

On Tuesday July 1st, you might like to watch P.O.V.'s new documentary, "Election Day," which focuses on the street-level experience of voters in America. You will be able to watch it online at the P.O.V. website, or see it on your local PBS station (check here for local listings).

As we watch these citizens from all walks of life take democracy into their own hands, let's ask ourselves what works and what doesn't in our current election process -- and what needs to change so that citizens can participate more effectively. We'll then join forces to find great journalism that investigates practical solutions to these issues, including election reform.

If you haven't already, please sign up to review stories on NewsTrust.

For additional tips on how to participate, check our Election News Hunt welcome page.

Media and Politics News Hunt Results

Last week, we organized a News Hunt on Media and Politics, in partnership with the Poynter Institute and PolitiFact. Here are some of the top stories we found together on this topic:

Mainstream Media

• One Angry Man - New Yorker
• Lost in Translation: Alhurra--America's Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds - ProPublica / CBS News
• The Internet and the 2008 Election - Pew Research
• Barack Obama's Media Agenda - Broadcasting & Cable
• Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner - New York Times

Independent Media

• McClatchy Washington bureau shines as bright example for online journalism - Online Journalism Review
• Obama's support for the FISA "compromise" - Salon
• Rating confusion: Is Obama a liberal? - PolitiFact
• Barack Makes More News Than McCain, But It's Not All Good - Journalism.org
• What Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Fred Hiatt mean by "bipartisanship" - Salon

These stories look at the relationship between media and politics from various angles, mostly focusing on where media coverage has been irresponsible, or even absent. But positive work was highlighted as well. The Online Journalism Review praised McClatchy for so often getting the story right in their piece "McClatchy Washington bureau shines as bright example for online journalism". NewsTrust host Jim Lang explained that the "interview presents the views of a McClatchy Washington bureau editor regarding the importance of a web site, the problems with polarization of the audience (seeking only news and views that they agree with), the interplay between a national bureau and individual papers and the value of 'grass roots' reporting."

The effects of the Internet on the media, and the political implications of a shifting media landscape, was a common thread through many of the top rated stories. Reviewer Paul Mena found much value in an analysis of the Pew survey on The Internet and the 2008 Election. Paul writes:

This is a good account about a very useful survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Report that shows the impact of Internet in the current presidential campaign. The results of the report deserve attention of journalists, media, scholars and politics. Especially interesting is the importance of political videos and social networking. I would have like for this news story to include more information from the survey about the use that the Obama and McCain's campaigns have given to the online world.

In a changing media landscape, the decisions made by the FCC, the agency charged with regulating telecommunications in the US, will have a major impact on what news Americans will have access to in the future. The trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable interviewed Presidential candidate Barack Obama on his ideas about FCC regulations. Reviewer Elizabeth White-Nadler rated this interview highly. She explains:

This is an informative interview about an extremely important subject. Since the public's perception about, literally, everything happening in the world is shaped by the media which provides (or fails to provide) their information, few policies are more important for a nominee to clarify. Eggerton did an excellent job in selecting questions for Obama and for the most part Obama answered them clearly. There were a couple of places where Eggerton should have prevented Obama from being intentionally vague; but on the whole, Obama's positions sound like a move in the right direction.

Our Partners - PolitiFact and Poynter
NewsTrust was honored to collaborate in this News Hunt with PolitiFact and the Poynter Institute. PolitiFact, a joint collaboration between The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, is a site dedicated to helping American voters cut through campaign rhetoric and spin. Their staff fact-checks the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications having to do with the 2008 U.S. election, and NewsTrust reviewers believe they do an excellent job. PolitiFact has a 3.9 preliminary NT source rating, making it one of the highest rated sources on NewsTrust.

The PolitiFact analysis piece, "Rating confusion: Is Obama a liberal?" is a prime example of the excellent journalism coming out of this organization. Long-time NewsTrust host Dale Penn had this insight about that story:

Here is a good reference article for anyone inclined to take as gospel any statistical analysis presented as news. The statistics can be skewed, the analysis can be skewed and therefore the story can be skewed. This is very good journalism as it may cause reviewers and readers to reconsider how much weight the put on evidence provided via polls or statistics.

Thanks to Bill Adair at PolitiFact for driving the News Hunt on their end. We look forward to featuring more great content from this site as the general election battle heats up. A big thanks also goes out to Ellyn Angelotti at the Ponyter Institute. Ellyn helped make this partnership happen and went beyond the call of duty to promote the News Hunt to the journalists and students at the Poynter Institute. We're very grateful to her for being such a wonderful partner, and to her colleague Bill Mitchell for helping guide our course as a NewsTrust Advisor.

NewsTrust and Poynter: David Cohn, Fabrice Florin, Ellyn Angelotti, Kaizar Campwala

Final Notes on the John McCain News Hunt | Early Findings on the Media and Politics News Hunt

Here are our final observations on our June 2-9 News Hunt on John McCain, as well as some first highlights on this week’s News Hunt on Media and Politics.

McCain News Hunt Final Results
For our McCain News Hunt we partnered with Huffington Post’s OffTheBus project (see first results). A big thanks goes out to everyone there, especially Amanda Michel, who led the charge on their end and to Arianna Huffington, whose invitation to join us yielded so many participants.

OffTheBus founder Jay Rosen, blogged about our collaboration, noting: "One of the interesting things about the NewsTrust initiative is that is has both emergent and conservative ideas built into it. The news judgment of newsroom priests is dethroned. The people formerly known as the audience take over the "gate," as it were. But the virtues upheld--accuracy, fairness, evidence, proportion, decency, respect for our intelligence--are the old sturdy ones."

Since Jay did such a good job of discussing the highest and lowest rated stories we found on John McCain, based on their journalistic quality, I thought we might look at the stories from another angle.  To do so, I kept in mind an observation by Kelly Garrett, our advisor at the Ohio State University School of Communications, who emailed us a while back that some stories appeal to people with viewpoints on the right but not to those on the left (or vice versa), but that if both sides find merit, "that suggests that the story provided deep coverage of at least two sides of the debate."

Here then, are just five stories on Senator McCain from center-right sources which appealed to our new members from Off the Bus, along with a few of their comments. (As noted in our first results, 78% of new members who completed their profile identified with viewpoints on the left, while 17% identified with the center of the political spectrum.  All of the folks I've cited identified themselves as being on the left, unless I noted otherwise.)

1.  "Clearing the Field" by National Review's Michael Barone.

Social worker Deborah Plummer gave the story a 3.2 average rating and wrote:

This lie will not die, "Hillary Clinton carried the popular vote." Every time I see/read it, I'm thankful for the "Internet" for news and information. Otherwise, this article was well-written and [had] enough general information...about the general election to sustain the rating of "somewhat important" because of the following profound statement, which summarizes the article: '.... this looks like a presidential race unlike any other.

Steven Meyer, who "taught courses on the Presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, and Elections for ten years at the U.S. Air Force Academy while on active duty", said:

Barone argues persuasively this election will hinge on different combinations of key states that those familiar from 2000 and 2004. Both sides intend to lengthen the playing field, seriously competing in opposing color states and forcing the opposition to expend resources in supposedly safe states. He also illustrates the possible negation of the 'old rule' that hard economic conditions favor the Democrats, an observation backed by polling data and in a way I had not seen a national reporter advance as such before.

2. "The Unhappy Warrior" by Politico's Jonathan Martin

Kristin Gorski (no political viewpoint listed) wrote:

[I] recommend this story for two reasons: (1) it is a critique of mainstream media (and its coverage of McCain) by alternative media, which is a huge theme underpinning this election season (e.g., bloggers breaking big stories first), and (2) it attempts to look at McCain's temper, which could become his biggest campaign issue, from a balanced perspective. The article quotes many in McCain's camp, and their quotations are fascinating, as they seem to state pretty clearly that they know their candidate has to keep his cool or he'll lose the election. At the same time, it quotes a McCain "friend" (anonymous source) who provides insight into McCain's state of mind. I am so skeptical of anonymous "friend" sources -- it seems too tabloid, and this article, already quite compelling, would have been stronger if this anon. source had been omitted.

3. "Why Does the Michelle Obama Tape Rumor Match a 2006 Novel?" by the National Review's Jim Geraghty

Tom Maertens (who hasn't filled his profile yet) rates this blog post 3.5 and comments:

It is surprising that a conservative publication and a conservative blogger would be criticizing a Clinton supporter who has apparently fabricated a story about a videotape that could be devastating, if true, to Michelle Obama. But that is what this story is about.

4.  "Lead Senator" by the National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy

Michael Evelyn (hasn't filled his profile yet) wrote about this story is on McCain and warrantless wiretapping:

Revealing article. Want to know how Sen. McCain sets (flip-flops) his policy? He succumbs to pointed questions, pleas, and cajoling. This op-ed was a call for McCain to show his conservative bona-fides.

5. "In Energy Policy, McCain, Obama Differ on Role of Government" by the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Power

Harv Roth, a retired business owner, gave the story a 4.7 rating and commented:

In a factual article, the reporter compares John McCain and Barak Obama's plans for a new Energy Policy. The Republican view is to not use the governments power to legislate or command industry to do anything. Even though he professes that change is needed little is done to cause that change. Obama's plan would use the government to control more of the Energy scene. Nuclear energy, energy credits, ethanol tax incentives, coal transference to liquid form. All of these are discussed with alternate views by the candidates.

Media and Politics News Hunt

This week, we're conducting a News Hunt on Media and Politics, in partnership with the Poynter Institute and PolitiFact (a joint project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quaterly.) We're looking for good journalism on how the news media are covering the presidential campaign -- and how this coverage shapes American attitudes towards candidates and issues.

For our first highlight from that News Hunt, I'd like to point to one PolitiFact story which is getting high ratings from all points along the political spectrum. In "Rating confusion: Is Obama a liberal?" PolitiFact's Bill Adair writes,

The political magazine National Journal rated Obama the most liberal senator for 2007, while Congressional Quarterly calculated that Obama voted with Bush 40 to 50 percent over the past two years. … McCain's seemingly contradictory claims illustrate the limitations of congressional ratings. Although they can provide a quick snapshot of someone's voting record, the ratings have many shortcomings...

Our long-time member, Roland Hirsch (who did not fill his profile, but writes that he considers President Bush "a moderate") rates the story 3.9 and comments:

This news analysis has considerable journalistic merit. It distinguishes between ratings based upon party affiliation and those based on philosophical positions, such as liberal or conservative (however the authors ignore the fact that these are not opposites but orthogonal to each, measuring different things).

Meanwhile, Off the Bus member Denise Clendening, an environmental scientist affiliated with the Democratic Party and MoveOn.org, writes:

Another informative story from PolitiFact, full of facts and great links on what ratings mean and how they are calculated. This page will be very helpful in responding to talking points and interpreting what the ratings mean. It was interesting to read how many votes Obama missed last year (33 out of 99) due to campaigning and McCain missed so many that the magazine that gave Obama the liberal rating could not give McCain an overall rating. Great resource.

And Off the Bus member Jeff Clark, who lists no political viewpoint, finds the article excellent and informative and raises this interesting question about media and politics:

"How is it that an allegedly nonpartisan 'news source' National Journal, branded Kerry and Obama as more 'liberal' than Feingold, Kennedy, Boxer, and the socialist Sanders? Such labeling tells us little about the Senators and much more about the Journal's perceived need to stay in the shmoozy Washington media game by providing 'news' that can be fodder for attacks.

A big thanks to all of you, whether on the left, in the center or on the right, who want NewsTrust to remain true to its mission to find quality journalism across the political spectrum. The best way for us to do this is to submit stories from a variety of sources, invite new members from across party lines and to strive to be civil and constructive by

• putting our own politics aside and writing reviews based on jounalist values; and
• rating other members based on the helpfulness of the reviews, not whether they agree with our own points of view.

We're glad that so many of the new members from Off the Bus have stayed with us following the June 9 wrapup of our News Hunt on John McCain. We hope many of our members, old and new, will continue to join us in this week's news hunt on Media and Politics.

Beth Wellington, NewsTrust Community Developer

Join our News Hunt on Media and Politics

This week on NewsTrust, our featured topic is Media and Politics, in partnership with the Poynter Institute and PolitiFact.

All week, from Monday, June 16th through Sunday, June 22nd, we will collectively review a wide range of news articles and opinions for this News Hunt about the intersection of Media and Politics, using the NewsTrust review tools. Think of this 'news hunt' as a scavenger hunt for good journalism on how the news media are covering the presidential campaign -- and how this coverage shapes American attitudes towards candidates and issues.

Together, we will rate the news based on quality, not just popularity -- by evaluating each article's fairness, sourcing, context and other core principles of good journalism. This focus on quality information and news literacy can help us all make more informed decisions as citizens, as well as re-build the trust that has been lost between the news media and the public.

Get involved
Help us find the best journalism on this important topic, by joining forces with NewsTrust, the Poynter Institute, and PolitiFact, to review and submit stories about Media and Politics.

If you haven't already, please sign up to review some of the recommended stories on our site. To quickly submit new stories on this topic, be sure to get our bookmarklet. For more tips on how to join our news hunt, check our welcome page for new members.

Thanks to our partners at Poynter and PolitiFact
NewsTrust has had a long relationship the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, based in St. Petersburg Florida. Bill Mitchell, Poynter's director of publishing, serves on the NewsTrust advisory board and has been an important voice in guiding the future of the site. A big thank you goes out to Ellyn Angelotti, Interactivity Editor at Poynter Institute, who made this partnership happen. The work done at Poynter in fostering good journalism is vital to a healthy media ecology, and NewsTrust is honored to be partnering with them. 

PolitiFact (a joint project of the St. Petersburg Times and CQ Politics) is also a partner in this NewsHunt. PolitiFact is a relatively new site that helps voters cut through political spin and find the facts about the candidates. As explained on their website:

The St. Petersburg Times of Florida and Congressional Quarterly of Washington, D.C. – two of America’s most trusted, independent newsrooms – have created the site to help voters separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications. We’ll publish new findings every day on PolitiFact.com, and list our sources for all to see.

PolitiFact's mission aligns strongly with NewsTrust's, and we're excited to welcome PolitiFact readers to NewsTrust.

NewsTrust and Poynter: David Cohn, Fabrice Florin, Ellyn Angelotti, Kaizar Campwala

Introducing our new Widget Partner - Skewz
We're also glad to introduce the NewsTrust community to Skewz, our new widget partner. Skewz is a political news aggregator that focuses on exposing media bias using some innovative, crowd-sourced tools. We encourage NewsTrust readers to check out their site, and if you come across stories that exemplify good journalism, submit the story to NewsTrust by clicking on the NewsTrust button under the 'Share' option.

Check this blog for the results of the News Hunt. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us by email or post your feedback on our Suggestions page. See you online!

UPDATE: New findings about our John McCain News Hunt
OffTheBus founder Jay Rosen has written a great article about last week's John McCain News Hunt, with insightful observations that shed new light on our initiative:

One of interesting things about the NewsTrust initiative is that is has both emergent and conservative ideas built into it. The news judgment of newsroom priests is dethroned. The people formerly known as the audience take over the “gate,” as it were. But the virtues upheld—accuracy, fairness, evidence, proportion, decency, respect for our intelligence—are the old sturdy ones.
Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism New York University, founder of NewAssignment.Net, author, Pressthink.org

Jay makes a fascinating point, and says it beautifully: the image of the 'people formerly known as the audience taking over the gate with old virtues' is illuminating ...
(in truly recursive fashion, you can review Jay's article right here on NewsTrust.)

Thanks, Jay, Gabe and Amanda, for this thoughtful report -- and to all our new members, thanks as well for your great reviews and suggestions! Some of the insights from our collective quest will find their way into the next version of our website, due out this fall. Stay tuned for more.

John McCain News Hunt Results

Last week, NewsTrust teamed up with the Huffington Post's OffTheBus team to organize a 'News Hunt' for good journalism on John McCain. We jointly invited members of HuffPo and NewsTrust communities to evaluate the quality of news and opinion about Senator McCain, his character, his views, and his track record.

The McCain News Hunt took place over a 7-day period, from Monday, June 2 to Monday, June 9 at 9pm ET. Members were invited by email and on both partner sites to find great journalism on this topic, and review some of the recommended stories on NewsTrust's John McCain topic page.

In the course of the News Hunt, we collected some fascinating data - both about the media's news coverage of John McCain, and about ourselves. Here are some of the first results from that exciting project. In coming days, we will feature other reports providing more in-depth findings and commentary about our News Hunt.

Top Rated Stories
During the News Hunt, we reviewed hundreds of news stories and opinion pieces about Senator McCain, from a variety of mainstream and independent sources. Our search yielded 233 rated stories on this topic, based on 1,713 reviews that week (or an average of 7 reviews per story).

Here are some of the highest rated stories on John McCain last week, broken down between news and opinion.

News

• Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps - New York Times
• Katrina Kerfuffle - FactCheck
• John McCain's Gramm Gamble - Texas Observer
• McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too - Wired
• Soft on Iran - FactCheck

Opinion

• McCain, spying and executive power: A complete reversal in 6 months - Salon
• McCain Emerges as Master Economic Flip-Flopper - Bloomberg
• Make No Mistake: McCain's a Neocon - Consortium News
• One Historic Night, Two Americas - New York Times
• John McCain's Arab-American problem - Salon

To see more, take a look at the full listing of stories rated during the McCain News Hunt, sorted by rating, or by date.

And if you haven't already, be sure to read our initial observations on some of these stories, in our first update and second update about the McCain News Hunt. In a few days, we will publish more observations about these top rated stories, both here and on our HuffPo blog.

Media Analysis
Here's how our McCain stories and reviews break down by content type, media type and publication.

Overall, news stories (news reports, special reports, and news analysis) represented two thirds of the total stories reviewed, as shown here:

News   -  155 stories    (66%)
Opinion  -  79 stories    (34%)

The majority of stories reviewed in our News Hunt were from newspapers and online sites, as shown in the graph below. Radio was the least reviewed medium.



A more detailed breakdown by media type shows that newspaper articles were by far the most reviewed stories in our News Hunt, as shown in this table:



* Due to the small sample size of this News Hunt, average ratings are PRELIMINARY and only apply to this limited investigation. They should not be interpreted as a general indication of content quality for each media type above.

In the course of a week, we reviewed stories from 101 individual publications. Here are the top 20 most reviewed publications (news sources with at least 20 reviews and 3 stories).



* Because of the small sample size of this News Hunt, all publication ratings are PRELIMINARY. These ratings only apply to this particular investigation and should not be viewed as an overall indicator of each publication's general work quality.


Overall Findings
We all learned a lot about John McCain during this News Hunt, and discovered some great articles, as well as added new publications like PolitiFact and Texas Observer to our source database. We found a lot of good journalism in the most unlikely places, whether from mainstream or independent sources. On average, online sites, wire services, newspapers and blogs were given slightly higher quality ratings -- and TV and radio were rated a bit lower than their non-broadcast counterparts. But these differences are minimal, as good information flows like water throughout our new media landscape.

Besides getting better information about this important news topic, perhaps the greatest benefit of this News Hunt is that it helped thousands of us become more discriminating news consumers. We have also developed a deeper appreciation for good journalism, and have become more engaged as citizens.

Here's what some of our new reviewers had to say about this process:

"What this did for me: I started reading stories and posts with an eye to the criteria of good journalism. It has really raised my awareness getting involved and becoming more informed. I thought I couldn't get more informed." -- Harv Roth

"It's been very exciting to be part of something so important. This goes beyond the Web 2.0 experience because most participants are not performing anonymously but quite the opposite. ... It is exciting to be communicating in the open and it inspires a courtesy and decorum, even if challenged. It appears the good ole' days are yet to come." -- Vincent Caminiti

Meet our new reviewers
Thanks to our partners at Huffington Post, this News Hunt drew more new reviewers than any other NewsTrust partnership this spring. Over 780 HuffPo readers signed up as NewsTrust members, and 300 of them became reviewers. Good for you!



Here at NewsTrust, we believe that transparency promotes a civil dialogue and a broader perspective, based on a deeper understanding of our individual backgrounds. With that in mind, our new members from HuffPo were kind enough to tell us quite a bit about themselves on their member profiles.

A majority of new members from HuffPo are over 35 years of age (82%). They are evenly divided by gender (53% male). They show high levels of education, and 80% have college degrees. About 78% self-identify as left-of-center politically, while 17% identify themselves as moderates.

Our new members from HuffPo were quite productive and posted over 1,600 reviews in one week. As a result, our story ratings for this News Hunt were largely driven by these new members, and often reflect their viewpoints. HuffPo members typically have clear views about republican candidate John McCain and how the media is covering him, as you can see in our story reviews.

When new members sign up for NewsTrust, we encourage them to check their ideology at the door and review news and information based on its own journalistic merits (rather than whether or not we agree with its views). As we have all personally found out, this is no easy task, and it takes practice to get good at it. As we all become more experienced reviewers, we expect our ratings to become more nuanced and our comments more impartial.

We welcome a range of political viewpoints at NewsTrus. To broaden our perspective, we are actively looking for partnerships with established publications that are widely read on the right and center of the political spectrum. If you work in such an organization, and can reach a large audience, we would be interested in discussing a collaboration on future News Hunts. Please contact us by email about media partnership opportunities.

Thanks to our partners and members
It's been a true pleasure to work with our wonderful partners at Huffington Post OffTheBus, especially Amanda Michel, Jay Rosen, Arianna Huffington, Betsy Morgan, Mario Ruiz, Marc Cooper, Paul Berry, John Tomasic, Gabriel Beltrone and the rest of the fine HuffPo community. We thank them all for making this project possible, and look forward to doing more together soon ...

Many thanks as well to our new Off the Bus 10+ reviewers, including our most active contributors:
Paul Peete, Harv Roth, Cat Bemis, Andrew Spencer, Ardent Hollingsworth, Andrew Urban, Randy Morrow, Pamela Rogers, Sandy Stone, Denise Clendening, Jennifer Hageman, Michael Evelyn, Lee Beckom, Max Blum, Richard Riehl, John Bracken, Angie M. Santiago, Tom Maertens, Elaine Meyer, Mark Siet, and Randi Swindel, Jeff Clark, Kyrston Banks, Jan Scott, Peter McManus, Deborah Plummer, Sharon McIntosh and Larry Miller. Kudos to you all for your fine work!

And we're very grateful as well to regular NewsTrust stalwarts Chris Finnie, Patricia L'Herrou, Connie Deady, Jack Dinkmeyer,  Dale Penn, Stephen Pizzo,  Dwight Rousu, Ann Wilmer, Barry Grossheim, Joel Kulenkamp, Douglas Hord and Derek Hawkins, just to name a few.  Once again, you guys rose to the occasion and helped make this News Hunt our best ever -- thank you all!

Last but not least, a big thank you to our world-class NewsTrust team for leading the charge on this project: Beth Wellington, Kaizar Campwala, David Cohn, David Fox and the rest of the gang. We appreciate your going the extra mile to help this project happen.

Check this blog (or our NewsTrust blog on HuffPo) for more findings and commentary about this News Hunt. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us by email or post your feedback on our Suggestions page.

Fabrice Florin, with Kaizar Campwala, Beth Wellington and the NewsTrust Team

________________________________________________________________
UPDATE 2 (6/16): New findings about our John McCain News Hunt
OffTheBus founder Jay Rosen has written a great article about this News Hunt, with insightful observations that shed new light on our initiative:

One of interesting things about the NewsTrust initiative is that is has both emergent and conservative ideas built into it. The news judgment of newsroom priests is dethroned. The people formerly known as the audience take over the “gate,” as it were. But the virtues upheld—accuracy, fairness, evidence, proportion, decency, respect for our intelligence—are the old sturdy ones.
Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism New York University, founder of NewAssignment.Net, author, Pressthink.org

Jay makes a fascinating point, and says it beautifully: the image of the 'people formerly known as the audience taking over the gate with old virtues' is illuminating ...
(in truly recursive fashion, you can review Jay's article right here on NewsTrust.)

Thanks, Jay, Gabe and Amanda, for this thoughtful report -- and to all our new members, thanks as well for your great reviews and suggestions! Some of the insights from our collective quest will find their way into the next version of our website, due out this fall. Stay tuned for more.

________________________________________________________________ UPDATE 1 (6/15/08) Thanks to Jay Rosen for pointing out a couple discrepancies in the top 10 list above. As a result, we made these changes:

* 'Katrina Kerfuffle' is now the updated title for the FactCheck story formerly known as 'McCain claims he "supported every investigation" into the government's role regarding the hurricane'

* 'Soft on Iran' is now the updated title for 'McCain Distorts Obama's Iran Views' - and its original publication is FactCheck (not Newsweek, which was merely republishing original work from FactCheck).

We regret these errors -- and applaud FactCheck.org for getting two entries in the top 10, a noteworthy accomplishment!

John McCain, McCain, Elections, NewsTrust

Our John McCain News Hunt is on a roll ...

We're amazed by the results of our John McCain News Hunt. Thanks to our partners at Huffington Post's OffTheBus, we've signed up over 800 new members, who have already done over 1,100 reviews of 150 news and opinion pieces on John McCain this week.  And that doesn't even count the story reviews by regular NewsTrust stalwarts Chris Finnie, Patricia L'Herrou, Connie Deady, Jack Dinkmeyer,  Dale Penn, Stephen Pizzo,  Dwight Rousu, Ann Wilmer, Barry Grossheim, Joel Kulenkamp, Douglas Hord and Derek Hawkins, just to name a few.  Together, we've broken several new records for NewsTrust  -- thank you all!

UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FIRST RESULTS OF OUR NEWS HUNT, AS WELL AS THE FULL LISTING OF REVIEWED STORIES, FROM JUNE 2 TO JUNE 9.

So far, we've reviewed about 150 stories since our news hunt started on Monday. In order to reach our goal of 200 stories, we'll need to find and review at least 50 more stories between now and Monday, June 9 at 9pm Eastern. Please join our search and review some of the stories on our John McCain topic page this week-end (particularly unrated stories still up for review, marked with gray stars - read more below).

Welcome, new  Off the Bus 10+ reviewers!
When we checked your stats this morning, the 'Off The Bus 10+ Reviews Club' had grown dramatically as well. Besides charter members
Paul Peete, Harv Roth, Cat Bemis, Andrew Spencer, Ardent Hollingsworth and Andrew Urban, some of our new regulars include:
Randy Morrow, Pamela Rogers, Sandy Stone, Denise Clendening, Jennifer Hageman, Michael Evelyn, Lee Beckom, Max Blum, Richard Riehl, John Bracken, Angie M. Santiago, Tom Maertens, Elaine Meyer, Mark Siet, and Randi Swindel, Jeff Clark, Kyrston Banks, Jan Scott, Peter McManus, Deborah Plummer, Sharon McIntosh and Larry Miller. Kudos to you all for your fine work!

Where does McCain stand on key issues?
Have we (and the press) done a good job covering McCain's policy positions through the stories we've submitted so far? To help answer this question, we can start with the categories used by OntheIssues.org, which has categories for International, Domestic, Economic and Social Issues.

Today, I want to concentrate on a few highlights of media coverage of McCain's stand on  international issues.  You may remember from my last post that earlier this week, the media concentrated on foreign policy and war and peace.  Toay, however, the top story on our site  was Charlie Savage's New York Times article, "Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps." 

Savage's reporting is excellent -- he is thorough, factual, well-sourced and writes clearly. In this article, he traces a change in MCCain's stated position on presidential power regarding warrantless surveillance in a move that is winning praise for McCain from conservatives who previously doubted him. He interviews legal scholars and attempts to interview McCain and his top aide, but has his request declined. He traces the emerging story and credits other reporters and their publications by name (although not by story title). While the Times doesn't provide hyperlinks, the story by Andrew McCarthy in the National Review, "Lead, Senator", is now available on NewsTrust for review, as is Glenn Greenwald's piece for Salon,  "McCain, spying and executive power: A complete reversal in 6 months", and Ryan Singel's article for Wired, "McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too."

Off the Bus member Jeff Clark weighed in on Savage's piece:  "Excellent journalism. It gives a chance for the McCain side to explain (read: obfuscate) its position, but doesn't fudge the facts or hesitate to bring up a sharp critic like Greenwald. With journalists like Charlie Savage and more stories like this one, NYT might begin to restore its tarnished reputation."

On the issue of free trade, our associate editor Kaizar Campwala found a great story yesterday in Marketwatch, "Pushing Obama to the left: McCain's move to center means Democrats can't presume anything," by Darrell Delamaide.

On the issue of immigration,  a May 23 blog post by Michael Luo at the New York Times, "McCain Says Immigration Reform Should Be Top Priority"  finds another indication of MCain's "pivoting toward the general election" in a roundtable with business leaders in which he said that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president.  The author found that notable given the demise of the immigration reform and the fact that "When Mr. McCain's presidential bid stalled last summer, many blamed his advocacy for the immigration reform bill in the Senate, which included a pathway to citizenship for the illegal immigrants already here in the country."  To me that might just be a sign of what some have called "pandering" since the Chamber of Commerce supports loosened immigration restrictions so as more easily fill low-paid jobs.  Interestingly, McCain had changed his position while campaigning, saying that he now placed border security as the first priority, as indicated in the March 8 AP story, I went back and found,  "McCain adjusts immigration stance: GOP hopeful emphasizes securing borders first ."

On the issue of energy, Off the Bus member Tony Westbrooks submitted Carl Pope's June 3 blog post at the Huffington Post, "Global Warming Symphony #1: The Overture," which reported that  "McCain has signaled that he won't participate in the debate" on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 (S. 3036.)

How you can help this weekend
If you're looking for stories to submit and review on our John McCain topic page this week-end, why not see what we've got on each issue and what needs fleshing out.  Also, try to find good journalism from across the political spectrum, so we can review media coverage from all angles.  Knowing who is being cited by the best sources on the center and right can provide some perspective when trying to learn more about McCain.  Another thing might be to look for good sources in McCain's home state of Arizona and to see what's being said by those who, presumably, should know him best. We're especially looking for more stories from TV and radio sources, to balance out what we've reviewed so far.

Please remember to review first any stories designated by the grey stars.  Write plenty of comments about what you liked about each story and how you would improve it. (This makes your rating count more.). To give more nuanced reviews, try to  look at what the article does best (e.g.: fairness, context) and give more stars for those journalistic qualities; then look at what it does a little less well and give less stars for those and so forth.   

For more tips on how to join our news hunt, check our welcome page for new members. If you haven't already, please sign up to review some of the stories on our site. To quickly submit new stories on this topic, be sure to get our bookmarklet.

We cannot begin to tell you how exciting it has been for us at NewsTrust to collaborate with Huffington Post's OffTheBus team this week.  Thanks to all of you who have submitted and reviewed, so far. If you have a moment, be sure to add your photo to your member profile (in the preferences section), so we can see who you are ;o).  We're looking forward to learning what else you can find by the time we wrap things up on Monday, June 9th at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Beth Wellington, with Kaizar Campwala, Fabrice Florin and the whole NewsTrust Team

 

John McCain, JohnMcCain, McCain, Elections, NewsTrust

John McCain News Hunt Update

If you have noticed a recent surge in folks reviewing and submitting stories on NewsTrust, it's because of our partnership with Huffington Post’s Off the Bus -- this week, we're going on a News Hunt for good journalism about John McCain. HuffPo readers have been signing up in droves, especially after Arianna Huffington wrote about it in her blog on Monday. UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FIRST RESULTS OF OUR NEWS HUNT, AS WELL AS THE FULL LISTING OF REVIEWED STORIES, FROM JUNE 2 TO JUNE 9.

In less than forty-eight hours we've already written close to six hundred reviews of McCain news-related articles. Welcome, new members! Special thanks goes out to the nine OffTheBus members Paul Peete, Harv Roth, Cat Bemis, Andrew Spencer, Ardent Hollingsworth, Andrew Urban, Randy Morrow Pamela Rogers, and Sandy Stone, who each reviewed more than ten stories. We now even have our own blog over at Huffington Post.  You can read my first post here and throughout the week Kaizar and I will be posting updates along with Amanda Michel, Off the Bus's fearless leader, with whom it has been a joy to work.

In her invitation to review McCain stories on NewsTrust, Arianna noted, "The more stories you review, the more clear-eyed our look at the way the media are covering McCain will be." Even as the media has focused on the last Democratic primaries and the implications of Hillary Clinton's continued run, this has been a good time to start a look at Mr. McCain. 

If you take a look at the top picks on  our John McCain News Hunt Results Page, you will see some trends. First, media attention is starting to focus on McCain’s divergence from his image as a reformer. Our top-rated mainstream media piece, McCain Campaign Calls; A Nonprofit Steps In by the Washington Post’s Robert O'Harrow Jr., looks at how McCain’s top veteran affairs advisor also serves on the board of directors for Citizens Against Government Waste; this organization partnered with Northrop to produce "a vitriolic advertising campaign" defending a defense contract that McCain favored -- a contract which had been drawing heat from Democrats and labor.  As Derek Hawkins noted, "What a breath of fresh air it is to see a campaign article with some substance! Amid the daily exchange of fire between the Clinton and Obama camps, this stands out. And it should, because it seems the nuances of McCain's supporters and the senator's relationship with them are coming into the light. I'm surprised Robert O'Harrow Jr. didn't mention the Reform Institute, a nonprofit McCain co-founded. Billed as an independent think tank for influence-free government, the Reform Institute is stacked with former McCain staffers and campaign managers. Ken Silverstein wrote about it in last month's Harper's, calling it "the public-relations arm of his political machine." Now that primary season is over maybe we'll see more of this level of scrutiny for the other campaigns."

Another case in point is Foreclosure Phil by David Corn in Mother Jones, which reports on McCain advisor Phil Graham’s anti-regulatory campaign and its contribution to the mortgage meltdown. One of our newer members, Nicholas Bentley, adds his insight, "A story on former Sen. Phil Gramm and how his 'Commodity Futures Modernization Act' was the key that freed up the Subprime market and led to a global economic meltdown. It goes on to ask if Gramm is the ideal candidate to advise McCain on economics and potentially become Treasury Secretary. The really troubling sub-story for me was how bills such as this can pass through both houses without anyone, including Gramm it appears, understanding what is going on or having any idea of the consequences. There should be more reporting on this side of the story."

Also on this topic, take a look at 2 Senators for McCain Leave Group After Ads by New York Times reporter Michael Luo recounts Lieberman and Graham’s roles on the policy advisory board of a 527 group, Vets for Freedom.  Harv Roth from Off the Bus, writes, " Not to embarrass John McCain Esquires Lieberman and Graham have fled from their designated honorary positions as Vets for Freedom. Somewhat reminiscent of the Swiftboat group in 2004. Something tells me things are bout to get dirty. 1t is a short article and it gets the information out there. It is going to be a long five months."

Another issue has been McCain’s support of the war in Iraq. Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs wrote about McCain's mistaken allegation that the troops had decreased to pre-surge levels in McCain, the Surge, and 'verb tenses', about which Paul Peete of Off the Bus commented, "Like Newstrust is to articles, The Fact Checker is holding the candidates to higher standards in their speeches and campaign statements."

Frank Rich saw McCain's position on Iraq as McCain's McClellan Nightmare. Interestingly, in The National Security Debate, Robert McMahon of the Council on Foreign Relations, finds that "some foreign policy analysts assert there is unlikely to be a dramatic shift in Washington's national security positions regardless of which major candidate wins."

Another emerging story on the the topic of foreign policy concerned John McCain June 2 speech at the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC identifying Iran as what he saw as a major problem. Who Is John McCain?, by Michael Tomasky at the New York Review of Books, looks at McCain’s rhetoric of Iran as a "rogue state."  This is particularly of interest, since while in 2000 George Bush espoused a humble foreign policy, John McCain was advocating "rogue state rollbacks," as I noted back in February in a blog post, "So where does McCain stand on the issues?, which contains links to the website "On the Issues" which catalogs  where McCain  stands versus the other candidates. Interestingly, despite McCain’s efforts to paint Obama as naïve for his willingness to engage enemies in conversation, Foon Rhee at the Boston Globe reports in Americans favor talks with enemies, poll says that the most recent Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans support the president meeting with leaders of countries considered US enemies; 79 percent of Democrats think so, as do 70 percent of independents and slightly less than half of Republicans.

These are just some of the stories and issues we've uncovered so far our John McCain News Hunt. We look forward to working with all to see what the media is reporting (and what it isn't), so that we can learn more about John McCain's character, his views, his campaign and his background -- and make more informed decisions as citizens.

Join our News Hunt on John McCain -- with Huffington Post's OffTheBus

This week's featured topic on NewsTrust is John McCain. Our partner for this 'news hunt' is Huffington Post's OffTheBus, a wonderful 'pro-am' initiative that empowers citizens to make important contributions to campaign coverage. Check our press release on this exciting partnership -- and check this blog for regular updates. UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FIRST RESULTS OF OUR NEWS HUNT, AS WELL AS THE FULL LISTING OF REVIEWED STORIES, FROM JUNE 2 TO JUNE 9.

Think of this 'news hunt' as a scavenger hunt for good journalism on John McCain. All week, from Monday, June 2nd, through Sunday, June 8th, we will collectively review hundreds of news articles and opinions about the candidate, using the NewsTrust review tools. Together, we will rate the news based on quality, not just popularity -- by evaluating each article's fairness, sourcing, context and other core principles of good journalism. This focus on quality information and news literacy can help us all make more informed decisions as citizens, as well as re-build the trust that has been lost between the news media and the public.

Throughout the week, we will prominently feature the top stories, sources and reviewers on the NewsTrust website and in our email newsletters. In a week, we'll announce the results of our news hunt on this blog.

Get involved
Help us find the best journalism on this important topic, by joining forces with NewsTrust and Huffington Post's OffTheBus, to review and submit stories about John McCain.

If you haven't already, please sign up to review some of the recommended stories on our site. To quickly submit new stories on this topic, be sure to get our bookmarklet. For more tips on how to join our news hunt, check our welcome page for new members.

This is a great opportunity to join forces with thousands of other like-minded news readers, and collectively find the best recent coverage about John McCain. Our hope is that our work will stimulate an appreciation for good journalism, and a market demand for high-quality news coverage. Along the way, we will each discover a few new articles (or even sources) to help us better understand our world, learning from each other in the process. And this is a wonderful way to practice our news literacy skills and become more discriminating news consumers in the process.


Thanks to our partners at Huffington Post's OffTheBus
Here at NewsTrust, we're delighted to be working with the trailblazing Huffington Post OffTheBus team, especially Amanda Michel, Arianna Huffington, Betsy Morgan, Mario Ruiz, Marc Cooper, John Tomasic and the rest of the vibrant HuffPo community. We thank them all for their wonderful contributions to this project, and look forward to our next steps together ...



And if you haven't already, check out the last chapter in Arianna's latest book, Right is Wrong, where she shares her insights on how McCain has changed in recent years, from maverick outsider to Washington insider. The rest of the book is illuminating and highly recommended. And hearing Arianna in person is even more inspiring, as attested by the standing room only crowd at this recent book reading in Corte Madera, pictured here.

We're very grateful to Arianna for her gracious support -- and look forward to working with her and the HuffPo community on this exciting 'news hunt' for good journalism on John McCain.

A big thank you as well to our world-class NewsTrust team for leading the charge on this project: Beth Wellington, Kaizar Campwala, David Cohn and David Fox. We appreciate your going the extra mile to help this project happen.

Check our blog for regular updates on this News Hunt. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us by email or post your feedback on our Suggestions page.

Join the news hunt.

John McCain, McCain, Elections