NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Introducing Comments

Updated (see below)

We're pleased to announce a new feature on NewsTrust: Comments. 

To make NewsTrust more interactive and engaging for our community, we've just opened comments on all our story pages and a couple topic pages. This is a great way to discuss the news with other members, in addition to our reviewing stories on our site.

During our initial beta stage, comments are open to trusted members only-- NewsTrust reviewers with a member level of 3.0 or higher. Trusted Members typically review often on the site, have received favorable ratings from other members, with a positive validation score from NewsTrust staff.

Comments are now open on our Health Care and Climate Change topic pages. To see what our community is talking about, click the "Comments" link at the top of either page, as shown in the screen shot below.

Trusted Members: Add a Comment

If you are already a Trusted Member, try adding a comment today! You can can now comment on any story page (or on topic pages that have the "Comments" link shown above). To add a comment, simply click on the "Comments" link (or scroll to the bottom of the page), then type your notes in the "Add a Comment" box. Check our Reviewer FAQ for the fine details about adding comments, and email us at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Comments are a great way to compare notes with fellow reviewers, pose questions, recommend stories and discuss other issues related to these hot topics. Please keep the conversation civil and constructive. We've created comments to strengthen our community and make it a better place to talk about the news -- and we're counting on you to help make that happen.

How to become a Trusted Member

If you are not yet a Trusted Member on NewsTrust, here are some of the ways you can increase your member level and qualify for that status:

• Review often
Our top rated reviewers review and post stories regularly and thoroughly. Try to review at least a couple times per week and answer as many questions as you can. To review stories on our site, click 'Review' next to any story title; a good place to start is our home page.

• Focus on the journalism 
Here at NewsTrust, we try to rate stories based on the quality of the journalism, not whether we agree with the views presented in these stories. For tips on how to review on our site, check our review guide. 

• Fill your profile 
Take a moment to update your member profile, so other members can get to know you. The more you share about yourself, the higher your member level, and the more your ratings count. Be sure to add a picture if you can.

To find out more about Trusted Members, check our FAQ.

Based on your feedback during this beta phase, we expect to open more pages for comments on our site, and make this feature available to more members. Check out this exciting new feature and tell us what you think!

Enjoy!


UPDATE:  The conversation is already rolling! Since we launched comments last week, our members have started talking about some important issues related to health care and climate change and how the news media cover these topics. Sirajul Islam remarks that opposition to a national health care program has been "organized and powerful" since it was first proposed in 1928, under Calvin Coolidge. And Lynn Caporale and Manfred Ostrowski have offered their advice on where to find recent news about the environment, science and the coming climate change summit in Copenhagen.

Join the discussion -- leave a comment on our Health Care and Climate Change pages, or any story on NewsTrust.

-- The NewsTrust Team

Psychology News Hunt Results

How do we make civic and political decisions? Why is it so hard to empathize with views different than our own? To find answers to these questions and  more, last week we teamed up with the award-winning nonprofit magazine Miller-McCune in a News Hunt for good journalism on Psychology -- with a focus on how it affects our politics. 

Timely stories that related social trends and cultural issues to the science that explains our actions were not easy to come by -- not a surprise, given what the Project for Excellence in Journalism called a lack of editor enthusiasm for science reporting in major newspapers. But below the surface we found an informative sampling of stories from a range of sources that included magazines, mainstream newspapers and niche blogs.

We posted 57 stories in all (36 news and 21 opinion), 29 of which received three or more reviews. Here's a list of some of our top rated stories:

News
God, the Army and PTSD - Boston Review
When soldiers snap - New York Times
Does biased news have a 'time bomb' effect? - Miller-McCune

Opinion
Are there asexuals among us? - Scientific American
Healing our troubled vets - Los Angeles Times

For a full list of our most trusted psychology stories, click here.

The Political Divide
We kicked off our News Hunt last Monday by looking for good journalism about the American political divide and and what's causing America's culture wars.

Miller-McCune reported on a fascinating study by a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science who identified a so-called "time bomb effect" that comes with constant exposure to biased news:

"Michael Bruter, a senior lecturer in European politics at the school, fed a steady diet of slanted newsletters about Europe and the European Union — either all good news or all bad — to 1,200 citizens of six countries over two years.

Over time, Bruter found, and without exception, the readers subconsciously adopted the bias to varying degrees and changed their view of the EU and of themselves as Europeans, a few of them in the extreme. Surprisingly, they didn't register any change right after the newsletters stopped — not until full six months later, when they had obviously let down their guard."

This story also addressed the impact of media bias in the United States, where the politically conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC hold the highest cable news ratings.

In a similar story, an ABC News column discussed a Stanford University study showing that the most outspoken and extreme political pundits are often motivated by the belief that their views are widely held, but are probably wrong.

The Psychology of Temptation
To give our reviewers an alternative to research about the political realm, we compared a few stories about what drives temptation, from Scientific American and Scienceblogs.com. Our reviewers gave high marks to Don't Eat the Marshmallow Yet, a video speech from Ted Talk, which made an important point about the value of delayed gratification -- and was also fun to watch.

The Psychology of Climate Change
On Tuesday we turned to the approaching Copenhagen Climate Conference as an opportunity to learn what influences popular attitudes about climate change. The Guardian's Adam Corner called psychology the "missing link" between policy and action in the debate over how to address climate change:

"The assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have provided the scientific evidence of human impact on the climate, and a glimpse of what the future may hold if we don't act fast. But while the consensus may be growing on the need for changes in behaviour, we're no closer to understanding how we're going to do it. Attempting an unprecedented shift in human behaviour without the input of psychologists is like setting sail for a faraway land without the aid of nautical maps."

Research shows, he added, that many people don't feel threatened by climate change because they don't feel personally vulnerable to it. "People simply don't worry about things they can't see (or even imagine)," he wrote. The solution? Campaigns encouraging lifestyle changes that pay off when undertaken en masse.

Larry O'Hanlon also wrote in Discover News that public impressions about the severity of climate change had delayed action. Many people are not convinced that climate change is as serious as most scientists claim, he said, in large part because scientists have failed to make an effective case that it is a real and urgent issue.

The Psychology of War
The highlight of our News Hunt came with our comparison of stories about the psychology of war and conflict-induced stress, which we featured in recognition of Veterans Day. This theme brought us some of our highest rated stories.

In "God, the Army and PTSD," our top rated story in this News Hunt, a Boston Review writer investigated whether religious pressure had interfered with returning soldiers' ability to get effective treatment for PTSD. In extensive research and interviews with soldiers, the Boston Review found that religious healing, even in an Army where most identify as Christian, prevented some soldiers from receiving medical treatment for this condition:

"the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. ... [Roger] Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

The story of the mistreatment of returning veterans from Iraq is well known and shocking. But the role of religious ideology in that mistreatment—how, inside the government, it was a potent tool in the betrayal of an overwhelmingly Christian Army—is much less known."

The story quoted military officials and caregivers who tried to discredit PTSD, even in the face of soldier suicides (if they "believed in God and country," one official said, "they would not come home with PTSD”).

A New York Times article examined PTSD in the context of the massacre at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The Times looked at the evolution of diagnosing and treating trauma:

"[Major Nidal Malik Hasan's] case invites a look at the long history of psychiatric medicine in war, if only because of his status as a battlefield psychiatrist, and the chance that his own psyche was, on some level, undone by the kind of stress he treated.

Over the centuries, soldiers have often broken under such stress, and in modern times each generation of psychiatrists has felt it was closer to understanding what makes soldiers break. But each generation has also been confounded by the unpredictability with which aggressions sometimes explode, in a fury no one sees coming."

Our community also gave good reviews to an LA Times editorial on the deficiencies of care for traumatized soldiers and an ABC News story on whether Hasan's actions could be considered terrorism or mental illness.

More Psychology Stories
Several other stories from our partners at Miller-McCune received high ratings. "I'd like the same plan better if it was Bill Clinton's" looked at how "implicit racism" affects many Americans' political views, health care reform being the prime example. Another story, "The biggest roadblock to change may be in our minds," explored another side of the health care debate -- how innate mechanisms cause us to cling to the status quo and can make large-scale change unpalatable.

Other noteworthy stories included a Scientific American article on how we make purchases, a Slate report that explained how animal research benefits child psychology, and a Psychology Today post about a study that showed people are more generous when researchers invoked god.

Check out our full listing of stories from this Psychology News Hunt on our Psychology page.

Thanks to our Partners
We're very grateful to our partners at Miller-McCune for their enthusiastic support and active participation in this News Hunt. Thanks especially to Michael Todd, Janice Sinclaire and Tom Jacobs for personally reviewing, posting and recommending stories for this News Hunt. It was a true pleasure to collaborate with you to find quality journalism on this fascinating topic!   

This Week: Who Runs Climate Change?
This week NewsTrust is joining forces with the Washington Post's WhoRunsGov site to find good journalism about lobbying, climate change and the environment. As the debate over a climate change bill begins in CongressWe are looking for quality news and opinion on the Washington lobbyists working to influence lawmakers on these issues, leading up to a U.S. Congress vote on climate change in early 2010. Join our News Hunt by reviewing (or posting) stories on our Lobbying page.

WhoRunsGov features profiles of prominent government officials, lobbyists and experts "who comprise the world of unofficial Washington." We're honored to work with them to bring more transparency to the debate over climate change. After you've reviewed a couple related stories on NewsTrust, we invite you to apply what you have learned to help fill profiles of climate change lobbyists on their site.

-- by Derek Hawkins, with Kaizar Campwala and Fabrice Florin

NewsTrust Member Awards - First Winners

Today, we're pleased to announce the first winners of the NewsTrust Member Awards!

This new monthly program rewards members of the NewsTrust community who make exceptional contributions to our cause (see our original blog announcement).

For the month of October, we're delighted to feature six outstanding reviewers for their leadership in fulfilling our mission, and for their achievements in a variety of categories, such as Top Rated or Most Active Reviewer (see below).

Meet the Winner
s
Here are our Member Award winners for October 2009:

• Top Rated Reviewer - Chris Finnie

• Most Thorough Reviewer - Richard Riehl

• Most Active Reviewer - Dwight Rousu

• Top Rated Post - Patricia Blochowiak

• Most Reviewed Post - Cynthia Gilbert

• Trusted Member of the Month - Jo Bobenhouse Smith

Congratulations to our first round of Member Awards winners! It's a true pleasure to honor your enlightening contributions to our site -- and to the NewsTrust mission. Your participation is an inspiration to us all. 

Here's a breakdown of each winner's contributions this month -- and how they were selected for their award.

Highest Rated Reviewer

The October award for Highest Rated Reviewer goes to Chris Finnie. Chris earned high ratings on her insightful and witty reviews of stories from the Washington Post, New York Times, MinnPost and others. She has once again shown herself to be one fo the most respected members of our community.

The Highest Rated Reviewer award goes to the member whose story reviews have the highest average rating for the month. The member must have completed ten or more reviews and received at least ten ratings from other trusted members.

Most Thorough Reviewer

Richard Riehl took the time and care to answer as many as 20 questions in many of his story reviews, earning him October's Most Thorough Reviewer award. Richard used our review form to the max and added his notes and comments on important stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Beast and more.

The reviewer whose reviews are the most thorough -- filling out most or all fields of the review form -- wins the Most In-Depth Reviewer award for the month. We calculate this by finding the average number of answers a reviewer provides; the reviewer must have done ten or more story reviews to qualify.



Most Active Reviewer

The Most Active Reviewer award goes to NewsTrust NewsHound Dwight Rousu, who reviewed 135 stories in the month of October. That's an average of more than 4 story reviews per day. On top of that, Dwight often had a quip to go along with his ratings.

The Most Active Reviewer is a simple but key award that goes to the reviewer who posted the most story reviews for the month.

Highest Rated Post

Patricia Blochowiak is the winner of the October award for Highest Rated Post, for posting "More is Less," a top-rated podcast from NPR's This American Life, that investigated forces behind rising health care costs. The story garnered an overall rating of 4.6 from NewsTrust members.

The award for Highest Rated Post goes to the member who posted the story that got the most favorable reviews from other trusted members. To qualify, the story must have at least five reviews.



Most Reviewed Post

October's winner for Most Reviewed Post is Cynthia Gilbert, who posted "Tricky o's 'doctored' photo" from the New York Post. Seventeen NewsTrust members reviewed the news report, which got an overall rating of 2.1 (Cynthia gave it a 1.3), earning it a spot as one of the featured stories during our Bad Journalism News Hunt. 



The member who posts the story with the most reviews earns this award for the month. Candidates must have received five or more favorable reviews from trusted members to win this prize. 



Trusted Member of the Month 

Our Trusted Member of the Month is Jo Bobenhouse Smith, whose frequent reviews and thoughtful notes helped our ratings of some of October's most important news items. Since signing up in October, Jo has reviewed well over 100 stories -- thank you for your wonderful contributions, Jo!

The Trusted Member award goes to the member who, through his or her reviews and other activity on the site, best embodies the NewsTrust spirit in the eyes of the editors. Candidates must have done ten or more reviews, and their validation must have increased to a three or more in the past month.

As a small token of our appreciation, we are sending each of this month's winners this NewsTrust mug:

Win a Member Award 

If you are a regular NewsTrust reviewer, you too could win one of our monthly awards. Here are some of the ways you can qualify for a member award and increase your own member level:

• Review often
Our top rated reviewers review and post stories regularly and thoroughly. Try to review at least a couple times per week and answer as many questions as you can. To review stories on our site, click 'Review' next to any story title; a good place to start is our home page.

• Focus on the journalism 
Here at NewsTrust, we try to rate stories based on the quality of the journalism, not whether we agree with the views presented in these stories. For tips on how to review on our site, check our review guide. 

• Fill your profile 
Take a moment to update your member profile, so other members can get to know you. The more you share about yourself, the higher your member level, and the more your ratings count. Be sure to add a picture if you can. 


How Member Awards Work

At the end of each month, NewsTrust editors tally the results for each award and announce the winners in a blog post and email newsletter. Winners can only win one award per year. If they qualify for two awards in the same month, they're awarded the "higher" prize. 

NewsTrust staff editors and directors cannot not qualify for these awards. Member awards will be given through the end of the year, for reviews posted in November and December. Tell us what you think of this new community program. Drop a comment here on the blog -- or email us directly at editors-at-newstrust.net.

Support our Work
This week, we're calling on you to support our work by making a personal donation to NewsTrust. For the past three years, we've provided our free public service thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, the Ashoka Foundation, the Ayrshire Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation, Hap Perry, Mitch Kapor, Craig Newmark and many other generous donors. But the economic crisis has changed everything, and foundation grants or large donations have become very scarce.

So we're turning to valued members like you to support our cause. Our continued growth depends on you. If you find our service useful, please donate today, so we can continue to help citizens find quality news --
and make informed decisions. Your contribution will fund site improvements, new tools, community outreach, news literacy programs and much more. We're independent and nonprofit, which means anything you give goes directly to our cause -- and it's tax-deductible.

Help us promote good, reliable journalism -- make a donation to NewsTrust today!

 

-- by Derek Hawkins, Kaizar Campwala and Fabrice Florin

UPDATED 1/06/2010