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Truthsquad Results: How to Fact-Check the News

How can citizens learn to fact-check the news online? To find out, NewsTrust created a new service called Truthsquad and invited our community to fact-check controversial quotes from politicians and pundits, with professional guidance. (see earlier blog post)

Our first pilot ran for a week, from August 2nd to 8th, 2010, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute and our advisors at FactCheck.org -- and with the generous support of Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation.

Our Truthsquad editors included: Kelly McBride, director of Poynter's Sense-Making Project; Steve Myers, managing editor for Poynter Online; Fabrice Florin, NewsTrust's executive director; and Jon Mitchell, our new managing editor. Throughout the pilot, Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org provided helpful tips and advice.

Here are our findings from this experiment in community fact-checking.

Overview
We created Truthsquad to help expose misinformation on the Internet -- and to give people new tools to fact-check the news, with professional oversight. Our hybrid 'pro-am' approach leverages the expertise of a few experienced journalists to show citizens how to tell fact from fiction in the news.

Each day during our pilot, our editors featured new quotes to research, and asked our community whether they were true or false. These short quotes were excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our editors and advisors.

Each quote page included links to factual evidence supporting or opposing that quote. We invited our community to review these links before giving a final answer. Editors actively searched for (and linked to) new evidence for their assigned quotes, monitored the community's answers and wrote a verdict based on the factual evidence we dug up together. We also held lively discussions of the quotes in our comments sections.

In all, we fact-checked twelve quotes as a community, with 528 answers from 307 participants. Each participant gave answers of "True," "False," or "Not Sure," with an average of 44 total answers per quote. Together, we posted 132 links to related evidence, which received 241 NewsTrust reviews. Participants were welcome to change their answers at any time, if they came across new factual evidence. As a result, participants changed their answers 57 times (which we view as a positive sign).

Truthsquad has generated more interest than any of the other pilots we hosted in 2010, and web traffic was also higher than usual. Over the week, we logged 12,801 pageviews for Truthsquad, and we estimate that at least 3,723 unique visitors checked it out, whether they participated or not.

In general, our community's responses were consistent with verdicts from our four Truthsquad editors. We were also pleased that comments from participants were civil, and that they seemed genuinely engaged in this communal quest for credible information.

Check it out for yourself. If you haven't already, try to fact-check some of the quotes on the Truthsquad overview page. Our final verdicts are posted on our earlier blog post (as well as on each quote page).

Based on this favorable response, we would like to offer Truthsquad on an ongoing basis, and we are now seeking donations and foundation support to provide it as a regular feature of our news curation service.

Report Contents:
• Quotes
• Featured Quotes
• Stats
• Survey Responses
• Thanks
• Next Steps


Related Stories about Truthsquad:
• GigaOm's Article on NYTimes.com
• Kelly McBride's Report on Poynter

Quotes
Here are the twelve quotes we fact-checked for this Truthsquad:

• "87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage" by Obama's health care plan
  By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator - 119 answers (featured below)
• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant - 105 answers (featured below)
• "Crime is totally out of control" in Phoenix
  By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News - 86 answers (featured below)
• "Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same" under the Affordable Care Act
  By Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services - 67 answers (featured below)
• "The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause of America's structural deficit."
  By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post - 65 answers (featured below)
• Environmental impact of the oil spill "much less than everyone feared."
  By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist - 33 answers (featured below)
• "CIA and Google investing in "a company that monitors the web... to predict the future."
  By Noah Shachtman, Wired - 19 answers
• "Warren Buffett called Greene's scheme 'financial weapons of mass destruction.'"
  By Kendrick Meek (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate - 17 answers
• "There's no evidence of any significant concentration of oil that we haven't accounted for."
  By Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - 15 answers
• "Meek lobbied for big tobacco against children's healthcare."
  By Jeff Greene (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate - 14 answers
• "Norton pushed the largest tax hike in Colorado history."
  By Americans For Job Security - 12 answers
• Obama's choice for budget chief "received more than $900,000 from Citigroup"
  By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times - 9 answers

The first six quotes above are featured below, with more findings. To see our verdicts for all twelve quotes, check our earlier blog post.

Featured Quotes
Here are more detailed findings on the six quotes which we featured during this pilot.

"87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage"
by Obama's health care plan
By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator
Our verdict: FALSE
119 answers

Our investigation of this quote from Sen. Orrin Hatch led to some of the best collaborative fact-checking in this pilot. With 123 answers, this quote was the most active of the week, and 105 of these answers agreed with our verdict that Senator Hatch's statement was "False" (eight said "True," and ten were "Not Sure"). This strong consensus may be due to the great teamwork of Truthsquad editor Steve Myers and NewsTrust member Gerald Zuckier, who jointly dug up the actual text of the health care regulations and helped produce an impressive verdict.

From Steve Myers' verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"This quote wasn't easy to fact-check, for several reasons: Hatch doesn't provide a source for his figures or much of a clue as to what he's talking about. A Republican member of Congress issued similar talking points that provided an incorrect link to the federal regulations he's referring to. And while Hatch says this with certainty, the regulations only predict what could happen in the future. (...)

Score one for crowdsourcing, though: NewsTrust contributor Gerald Zuckier found the right set of regulations, read them and concluded that Hatch misstates what the regulations say. After reading the regulations, we agree."
See full verdict »

Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession,"
not enforcement
By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE
105 answers

For the two weeks before this pilot, we hosted an Immigration News Hunt with USA Today, so we were well prepared to research this quote about illegal immigrants. Morris' statement proved controversial; out of the 107 respondents, 54 found it false, while 36 answered true.

Contributing edior Derek Hawkins, after consulting the linked sources, concluded that "enforcement appears to have played at least as great a role" as economics, answering "False." Randolph Selig found the statement "True," contending that "the big draw is jobs." Still others, such as TC Reg, were "Not Sure." Reg thought that "it's impossible to say for sure as no scientifically valid studies have been conducted on the subject."

Eventually, the Truthsquad editors ruled that the statement was "Mostly False." The verdict was based on two major studies of immigration patterns on the U.S./Mexico border from credible sources. The linked sources that opposed the quote received an average NewsTrust rating of 3.4, slightly higher than the 3.1 average for sources that supported Morris.

From Jon Mitchell's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"Downward economic trends... must have had an effect, but both studies point out that rates of legal immigration remained constant as illegal immigration dropped. Though illegal immigration comprises most of the traffic, and economics are clearly a factor, the constant rate of legal immigration suggests that some other factor makes it harder for people to enter the country illegally."
See full verdict »

"In the capital city Phoenix, crime is totally out of control."
By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
Our verdict: FALSE
86 answers

Our members posted evidence from a wide range of sources that disproved this quote. While some other participants posted links to support O'Reilly's assertion, the group found those far less trustworthy. The sources that opposed O'Reilly's statement received an average NewsTrust rating of 3.7, a strong indication of credibility, whereas the sources that supported O'Reilly only merited a 2.6 rating.

At first, it seemed that this statement might be too subjective to fact-check. "Out of control" is not an easily measurable quality. However, the data showed that crime in Phoenix has been dropping for several years, a trend which the editors felt was sufficient to debunk O'Reilly's claim.

From Jon Mitchell's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
This statement would have been difficult to fact-check, if the data had been more ambiguous. O'Reilly's statement that crime is "out of control" would ordinarily be open to subjective interpretation. However, the only sources that corroborated O'Reilly's statement seemed clearly biased, and trustworthy sources, including the Phoenix Police Department and the FBI, indicated that crime in Phoenix has been dropping steadily for years. ... Bill O'Reilly's assertion that crime in Phoenix is "out of control" would require at least a measurable increase in crime to be considered factual."
See full verdict »

"Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same"
under the Affordable Care Act.
By Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Our verdict: HALF TRUE
67 answers

Links to some related articles suggested that Sebelius' statement was technically true, and many of our participants agreed. Jim Lang wrote that "the term 'guaranteed Medicare benefits' allows it to be true." Indeed, no Obama administration spokesperson we came across discussed this point without appending the word "guaranteed," which editor Kelly McBride considered "slippery." Lynn Caporale clarified the meaning of this buzzword, pointing out that only "the extra subsidies to the Medicare Advantage plans" will be cut, which Barry Parr contends "are clearly not 'Medicare' under any reasonable definition." Thanks to the word "guaranteed," many people felt Sebelius was in fair territory. But other members rejected the administration's claims entirely. Morriss Moore wrote that "the health plan will limit health care, second opinions, and will have 'panels' to determine the amount of care one receives."

Due to the lack of clarity in Sebelius' wording, Truthsquad editors could not consider the statement to be true. Fabrice Florin wrote in his verdict on behalf of editors that "because this quote is partly misleading, we give it a rating of 'Half True'. We think the Obama administration could have been clearer and more forthcoming on this point."
See full verdict »

"The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause
of America's structural deficit."
By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
Our verdict: TRUE
65 answers

This quote proved contentious, and some members vehemently disagreed with 48 who voted "True." Zakaria's claim is not a neat statement of fact. The tax cuts may be the largest component of the deficit, but that does not necessarily make them the cause.

As a result, answers to this Truthsquad seemed to be partly influenced by the political views of some participants. For Tyson Emmett, the operative word in Zakaria's statement was "cause." He argued, "Spending causes deficits. The underlining cause of every deficit is needing more than you have." On the other hand, Chris Strosser asked, "How can Republicans complain about deficit when the Bush tax cuts are the largest chunk?"

Rather than inflame a political debate, the editors focused on the data. A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that, if the loss in revenue due to the tax cuts is measured as a cost, it dwarfs all other structural programs in the budget, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the tax cuts are an elective part of the budget, the judges concluded that Zakaria's statement is "True."
See full verdict »

The environmental impacts of the BP oil spill "have been
much less than everyone feared."
By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist
Our verdict: MOSTLY TRUE
33 answers

This was one of the hardest quotes to fact-check, because it is not a statement of fact, but "an opinion about an opinion." Many participants pointed out the ambiguity of this quote, and over a third of the 33 respondents selected "Not Sure." In their answers, people highlighted three major reasons for withholding a verdict. Eric Yendall succinctly summarized one with a question: "Who exactly is 'everyone?'" Another problem with the statement is that, as Steve Myers pointed out, "it's too early to tell." Finally, in Joey Baker's words, "we have no idea what impacts everyone feared."

However, after reviewing the evidence, the editors declared a verdict of "Mostly True," accounting for the ambiguity of the statement, acknowleging that the outcome is not yet certain, but pointing to a range of scientific opinions that damage from the spill has been less than expected, compared to previous undersea oil disasters.

From Kelly McBride's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"It appears true that many scientists and other experts say out loud that they are pleasantly surprised by the resiliency of the gulf, the beaches and the wetlands. There have been hundreds of oil-soaked birds, not thousands. Oil on the beaches has washed up in much smaller amounts than predicted. Very few injured or dead mammals have been recovered. The oil appears to be breaking down and evaporating more quickly that was thought possible. ... So the environmental impact of the spill is in fact not as bad - at this point in time - as experts thought it would be. However, almost every respectable expert qualifies that statement by cautioning a wait-and-see attitude."
See full verdict »

Stats
Here are some of the quantitative results of the weeklong Truthsquad pilot, from Aug. 2 to Aug. 8th, 2010.

Traffic:

• Pageviews for Truthsquad: 12,801
• Unique visitors: 3,723 (est.)
• Most viewed quote: Dick Morris on Immigration (960 pageviews)
• Most answered quote: Orrin Hatch on Health Care (119 answers)
• Most active day: Monday, 8/2 (197 answers)

Participation totals:

• Total participants: 307
• Total answers: 528
• Total links posted: 132
• Total links viewed: 572
• Total links reviewed: 241
• Total changed answers: 57
  (people who changed their minds based on new factual evidence)

Participation averages:

• Average answers/quote: 44
• Average answers/person: 1.81
• Average views of links/person: 1.76
• Average reviews/person: 0.79

Survey Responses
On Tuesday, Aug. 10th, we sent out a survey to all Truthsquad participants to seek their feedback. Early survey responses were generally favorable. In the first day after our survey went out, most survey respondents found the service useful or very useful -- and nearly half picked Truthsquad as their favorite service from NewsTrust this year.

Here are some sample quotes from these early responses:

• "Good oversight, with backup info on both sides. Liked the mix of liberal and conservative statements."


• "It gave a sense of mission - perhaps more so than regular NewsTrust reviewing."


• "I like that we - the people - are reviewing the statements versus 'journalists'."
  
  
• "Enjoyed having my cognitions tested. Checking stories takes a lot of time."
  
  
• "As far as politics go, I don't see how anyone can get at the truth other than to do their own factual research."
  
  
• "I was hoping that people would contribute and comment on matters they are either experts in or have direct knowledge of."


• "Not interested in being a journalist, editor, or fact checker. I just want a service that helps me find good journalism. Rating an article after I've read it is quick and low-cost to me. But fact checking is too much like real work."


• "The editors' section was quick, well-written and to the point. I also liked that participants were also checking ... the editors."


• "There are some people with the time and enthusiasm to undertake the work, and they should be compensated for that effort. I am not one of them, and have no problem contributing a few $$/month to fund that activity."
  
  
• "I'm totally won over by TruthSquad - I think it has a LOT of potential."

Thanks to our partners and advisors
We're deeply grateful to our amazing partners at the Poynter Institute and advisor at FactCheck.org for their invaluable contributions to this project. 

In particular, we would like to thank Kelly McBride, Steve Myers and Julie Moos at Poynter Institute -- as well as Brooks Jackson at FactCheck.org. Heartfelt thanks to you all for making this project possible!

We asked our partners and advisors to share their general observations on why they participated in this pilot, what they learned from this experiment, what they found most and least useful about this approach -- and any other insights about this project.

Here are FactCheck.org director Brooks Jackson's personal comments about Truthsquad:

"FactCheck.org participated in this project because ordinary citizens need more help than they're getting from traditional news media to sort through the vast amount of disinformation to which they are exposed via the Internet and 24-hour cable talk networks. So far I would say the experiment is off to a solid start. The "verdicts" of the Truthsquad editors seem to me to be reasonable and based on good research. I'll be interested to learn how much of the research is the work of the "crowd" and how much comes from Truthsquad's paid staff.

One important observation. Even this brief initial experience has produced some pretty dramatic evidence of the limitations of crowd sourcing. The experience checking the Washington Times statement regarding a CitiGroup bonus shows that amateurs searching the Internet sometimes can't match the results obtained by an experienced staff reporter using old-fashioned shoe leather. In that case, one call to the reporter (or to Lew) might have produced the documentation needed to prove the accuracy of the claim."

Kelly McBride offered these thoughts as one of our editors on Truthsquad:

"It seems based on this pilot that citizens can learn fact-checking skills quite easily. The challenge is to motivate them to do this occasionally.

Some people love to do this stuff, but most are simply too busy. Adding more social gaming elements so folks accumulate points and prizes and compete against their friends - that might inspire some people."

Read Kelly's own report on Poynter: Truthsquad Shows We Can 'Crowdfight' Culture of Misinformation

Steve Myers also shared his reflections on being a Truthsquad editor:

"The Truthsquad showed the opportunities and challenges of crowdsourcing. It's possible to fact-check many of the statements that are made every day in the media. But will people go to the effort to dig it up? Some will; some won't.

Many of the users seemed to respond based on their preconceptions -- who said it, how the statement aligned with their political views and what news outlet published it. Some people were upfront about this; they said because Bill O'Reilly said this or the Washington Times reported that, that is why they ruled the way they did.

And yet some people did take an interest and dug in to find the material online. When I ran into a roadblock in researching something, someone else picked up where I left off and found the correct document, read it, and drew a conclusion that I ended up agreeing with.

In writing a couple of verdicts, I was acutely aware of the judgment calls I was making -- what was the underlying fact that had to be proven or disproven, for instance. The most important judgment call: how much weight should I assign to something that was perhaps grammatically or technically correct but misleading? These quotes proved the cliche that there's a grain of truth in every untruth."

Thanks to our funders
This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which funded a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to the MacArthur Foundation and our other funding partners at Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

The Ford Foundation also contributed indirectly to this project, through its support of Poynter's Sense-Making Project, which led to the participation of Kelly McBride and Steve Meyers.

Thanks to our participants and team
Our deepest thanks go to all our participants in this Truthsquad, as well as thousands of new visitors -- and hundreds of new members who signed up during our pilot. These new participants came from across party lines and seemed to integrate well with the NewsTrust community. Many thanks as well to our contributing editors Joey Baker, Kaizar Campwala, Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins, Jim Lang and many more for their inspiring participation in this project.

Last but not least, we are very grateful to our worldclass web development team, for their wonderful work in building Truthsquad: Subramanya Sastry, Caleb Waldorf, David Fox, created another great application of the NewsTrust platform in just a month, with the support of our staff editors Jon Mitchell and Kaizar Campwala. We're very lucky to have such a great team!

Next steps
This first pilot has given us a sense of what's possible -- and introduced our community to the discipline of factual verification, under the guidance of professionals from Poynter and Factcheck. Going forward, we will be posting new quotes to fact-check every Wednesday for the next few months (suggestions welcome: email us at truthsquad-at-newstrust-dot-net). But we can do better. Based on the positive response to this pilot, we would like to offer the Truthsquad service on an ongoing basis (we own the truthsquad.com domain).

To that end, we are looking for additional funds to provide Truthsquad on a daily basis this fall, through the mid-term elections. If you would like to support this project, please consider a donation to NewsTrust. Your contribution will help fight the rising tide of spin and misinformation on the Internet, as well as train citizens to evaluate the credibility of the news and information they find online.

We hope that Truthsquad can provide a useful fact-checking solution to the public, as well as help us all become more discerning about the news we consume.

Thanks for checking out Truthsquad!

-- by Fabrice Florin and Jon Mitchell, for the NewsTrust Team

 

Photo Credits: Fox News, News One, Associated Press, Good and Getty Images

Immigration News Hunt Results

Here are the results of our Immigration News Hunt, which NewsTrust hosted with our partners USA Today and their On Deadline blog, from July 19 to August 1, 2010. (see earlier blog post)

During the past two weeks, our community looked for good journalism on Arizona's controversial immigration law and its impact on local and national politics. NewsTrust hosts for this immigration topic were Kaizar Campwala, Kristin Gorski, and Jon Mitchell. Kaizar Campwala was managing editor and Fabrice Florin was executive editor.

Overview
Immigration has long been a heated political issue in America. It's tied to issues of security and economic prosperity, and raises many questions about national identity and citizenship.

Most recently, the immigration debate was rekindled with the passing of Arizona's new immigration bill, SB 1070, in April 2010. Among its provisions, the act "makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents, bars state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal aliens." (Wikipedia)

To sort through the political spin and develop a fact-based understanding of the Arizona bill and immigration issues, NewsTrust members teamed up with USA Today readers for two weeks. Together, we reviewed over 162 stories on immigration, posted 684 reviews, and fully rated 105 stories. We've highlighted some of the best of these stories below, with our take on how they inform and clarify the immigration debate.

Recommended Stories
Here are some of our top rated stories for this News Hunt:

NEWS

• The All-American Canal - 60 Minutes
• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Immigration law author claims 60 percent of Arizona Hispanics support the measure - PolitiFact
• The 'Dangerous' Border: Actually One of America's Safest Places - Time
• Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration - New York Times
• Illegal immigrant profiles hard to discern from legal residents - Arizona Republic
• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• What's a Little Marriage Fraud Between Amigos? - Village Voice
• Arizona's immigration law isn't the only one - Los Angeles Times
• Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform - ProPublica

OPINION

• In the fight over Arizona's immigration law, everybody loses - Washington Post
• Arizona, rogue state - Economist
• Borderlines - New Yorker
• Adios, Democrats - Slate
• Time for Obama to Put Up or Shut Up on Immigration - Pajamas Media
• No Win in Arizona - American Prospect
• Humane tweak to immigration enforcement - Dallas Morning News

For more recommended stories, check our full listing for this News Hunt.

News Comparisons
To highlight some of the important themes that emerged during the News Hunt, we compared stories on four different aspects of immigration: the legal and political debate surrounding Arizona's controversial new law, the economics of immigration, law enforcement and policy proposals for immigration reform.

Arizona Immigration Law: Legal and Political Debate
 On July 28th, a day before Arizona's controversial immigration law was due to go into effect, a federal judge issued an injunction that blocked key provisions of SB 1070. In a lawsuit between the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Arizona, Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the law would risk putting “a distinct, unusual and extraordinary” burden on legal resident aliens in Arizona. This decision provoked a frenzy of opinions about the role of the federal government in controlling illegal immigration.

Supporting the judge's ruling, the reliably left-of-center Nation gave readers their analysis of Arizona's SB 1070 law, arguing that all "[Judge] Bolton really did was to assert one of the most basic principles of Constitutional law: that the federal government gets to set immigration policy." Reviewer Thomas Rees gave the story a low rating, finding "its lack of real data negates its ability to inform the undecided or contrary thinker. It exists solely to stoke the fires of those who already believe in this particular point of view. Mr. Hearst would be proud."

Heather MacDonald writing in the National Review offered a dissenting perspective on what she deemed a fictitious ruling. "The real threat posed by S.B. 1070," MacDonald asserted, "was that it would disrupt the de facto amnesty that the executive branch has accorded to the vast majority of illegal aliens. It would start to implement congressional mandates and the public will that the immigration laws be enforced. For that reason, it had to be stopped." Not all NewsTrust reviewers were convinced by her arguments, as exemplified by William Gordon, who wrote "like many pundits she focused on the details of the law, if it were legal and misses the reason why it is not legal. She wholly misses the point of preemption in our federalist society in order to find demons in the Obama Administration."

While The Nation and National Review garnered mixed reactions, The Economist's Lexington column offered an opinion that was appreciated by most reviewers. The column cut through the rhetoric, writing that "at bottom the argument between Arizona and its critics is political. The stated aim of 1070 is to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, mainly by enforcing federal laws which local politicians accuse the federal government of neglecting. Although Mr Obama is in fact deporting more illegals (a total of about 400,000 a year) than George Bush did, that cuts little ice in Arizona because people know his eventual hope (or at least the one he dangles in front of Hispanic voters) is to give illegals a pathway to citizenship, not kick out as many as possible. Mr Obama’s policy was also Mr Bush’s, and is probably the only humane way forward. But in Arizona “amnesty” has been turned into a dirty word."

Economics of Immigration
 The immigration debate is inextricably tied to economic issues. High unemployment and strained government budgets have inflamed the conversation, with many Americans questioning the role illegal immigrants play in the U.S. economy. News media coverage of this issue varied greatly: some news outlets stoked the public's fears, while others worked to help citizens better understand the economics of immigration.

In a report that received mixed reviews on NewsTrust, The Arizona Republic, the state's largest newspaper, explores how illegal immigrants are often forced to operate in a 'shadow' economy. Though reviewer Gordon Oliver found the story "scattered" and "imprecise," other reviewers found the report commendable because it investigates a question that repeatedly surfaced during the News Hunt: "... whether illegal workers are a net boon to the economy because of the labor they contribute, or a drag because of the medical, education and other services they require?"

A number of news outlets focused on the role played by U.S. employers in providing jobs to illegal immigrants. The Wall Street Journal argued that employers are to some degree the victims, on one hand getting sanctioned for hiring illegals, and on the other facing Justice Department probes "for allegedly violating anti-discrimination laws by demanding too many identity documents from applicants who aren't U.S. citizens."

To address these competing pressures, two different sources, Truthdig and The Week, published opinion stories advocating for the expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. As explained by Will Wilkinson in The Week, "By establishing a common labor market in which Americans and Mexicans (Canadians too!) may range freely, living and working where they please, we can channel the commercial energy of integration while maintaining distinctly separate citizenship." Longtime reviewer Patricia L'Herrou found the piece "thoughtfully based on reason, and a viable model in the EU."

History has shown that people will migrate to find better economic opportunity. In a story that reviewer Alice Lake felt gave "a glimpse of both sides of migrant worker reality," the New York Times took a step back to explore the phenomenon of migration from a global perspective. The piece highlighted the difficulty in trying to stem the tide of migration, explaining that "from the Arizona Statehouse to Calabria, critics warn that porous borders hurt native workers, threaten local cultures and increase crime. But even a downturn of rare magnitude did less than expected to slow the flows, revealing instead the persistent forces that keep migrants venturing abroad."

Law Enforcement
 Much of the news coverage we reviewed examined the real challenges of enforcing immigration laws. The Village Voice featured an intimate look at how “some young, assimilated illegal immigrants” married U.S. citizens, also Hispanic and often friends, in an attempt to become legal.

To gain perspective by looking at the past, an Arizona Republic article on the state's recent history with racial profiling warned that, in implementing SB 1070, police departments had to be careful to “never violate the public trust again.”

Looking at what could be a massive influx of newly arrested illegal immigrants, reporters at the Arizona Capitol Times constructed an insightful multimedia piece on how sheriffs and local government predicted how they would shoulder its cost; this piece showcased many different viewpoints in an unbiased way, and this successfully illustrated how complex the law's enforcement could be.

Not all articles were clarifying, however. An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle about sanctuary cities didn't explain what they were and didn't clearly show how SB 1070 would affect them. And an interview on Fox News veered from a more factual, reasoned conservative source to focus on right-leaning political commentary, thereby losing points on credibility, balance and information quality.

Another law enforcement issue which surfaced during our search is the federal “Secure Communities” program, a national fingerprint-database program that's already in effect. The Associated Press wrote a well-sourced, factual and informative piece on this program, pointing out that it doesn't rely on racial profiling and results in used effectively to arrest and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration Reform
Most of the stories we reviewed on this theme observed that SB 1070 has provided lawmakers with a strong impetus for passing national legislation to fix the country's broken immigration system. But when it came to discussion of the means and rationale for enacting sweeping immigration reform, agreement was far thinner.

The Texas Observer, an independent bi-weekly from Austin, argued that Texas, which has the longest international border of any U.S. state, should take a leadership role in reshaping the country’s immigration policies. It took a three-pronged approach: build a stronger social and economic relationship with Mexico; acknowledge that the U.S.-Mexico border can’t be “secured” and stop spending money to seal it; and redefine what makes an immigrant legal or illegal.

The Miami Herald, meanwhile, contended in an editorial that the case for immigration reform is as strong as it has ever been and that good ideas already exist -- what’s missing is leadership. The paper compared President Barack Obama’s calls for reform to those of his predecessor, saying the country has only grown more impatient since former President George W. Bush made the drive for immigration overhaul and failed. “In short,” the Herald said, “the delay has cost us money, created ill-will with our neighbors and produced bad laws -- without fixing the problem.” The problem, it concluded, is that lawmakers are too afraid of political backlash if they try to tackle the issue.

The Economist picked up on the same theme, but painted a somewhat bleaker picture. "President Obama and Democratic leaders are killing any chance of Congress approving an immigration reform bill by alienating Republican legislators whose support is crucial," The Economist said. "And the Justice Department’s lawsuit over SB 1070 only made matters worse," it added, confusing the roughly 60 percent of the country that approves of the new law. Obama’s plan -- which contains calls for a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants -- risks failure if Democrats continue to make it an issue for the midterm elections.

Other stories departed from the politics behind reform and offered different perspectives on what measures would be most beneficial to the United States and immigrants alike.

The Sun Sentinel said a guest worker program should be an essential aspect of reform, and attempted to dismiss claims that such a program would take jobs away from American citizens.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed took a more focused view, saying the United States should prioritize talent and special skills in the individuals it allows into the country. “The point is to attract more individuals with the potential to enhance American innovation and competitiveness, increasing the odds for economic prosperity and rising living standards for all down the road,” author Darrell West wrote. Immigration reform has failed so far because reform’s advocates have not convinced a skeptical public that newcomers contribute to the country’s prosperity, he said. “Instead of viewing immigration as a brain gain,” West said, “ordinary folks see the economic and social costs as broad, and the benefits as narrow.”

In a major departure from other sources, Newsweek said immigration could very well fade as a hot-button issue in the next decade, making reform unnecessary except for the short term. Declining fertility rates in Mexico could dramatically decrease the need for Mexicans to come to the United States to seek work because they can’t find it in their own country. “All this angst may be an overreaction,” it said.

Findings by Medium
Each day during the first week of this Immigration News Hunt, we compared stories from different media: news reports from major print publications and wire services on Monday, national broadcast media on Tuesday, online and blogs on Wednesday and local Arizona media on Thursday. Here are examples of noteworthy stories from each group: (see more in our earlier blog post)

National Print Media (Newspapers, Wires, Mags.)

• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Farmers Tackle Immigration Issues - Wall Street Journal

National Broadcast Media (TV and Radio)

• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• Ariz. Immigration Law Roundtable - CBS News

Online and Blogs

• Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Preempted? - Balkinization
• Should the U.S. Restrict Immigration? - Cato Institute

Local Arizona Media

• Open season: Arpaio plans massive sweep, tent city expansion - Arizona Capital Times
• SB 1070 Lawsuit Preview - KJZZ

For more stories by medium, check out our previous blog post on Immigration, or filter our full story listing on Immigration.

Bad Journalism
As part of our educational mission, we try to highlight examples of bad journalism in News Hunts like these. As we searched for great journalism on immigration, we also looked for news and opinions that seemed particularly superficial, biased or irresponsible on this topic.

On the top of our list was an opinion news clip of MSNBC host Ed Schultz's commentary against Fox News: as USA Today reviewer George Horen points out, Schultz "says nothing about the subject but is critical of other news reporting. He is just like a lot of the news people that sit in a chair and read some one else's writings." We also found plenty of bad journalism from the other side of the political spectrum, such as this Fox News clip using immigration to score political points in their case against the Obama Administration.

Here's a sampling of some of the worst offenders:

• Malkin defends immigration law - MSNBC
• Arizona law was already working - Glenn Beck
• What Arizona Ruling Means for Obama - Fox News
• Illegal Aliens Getting Away With Mayhem and Murder - Right Side News

For more questionable stories on immigration, check our least trusted stories for this News Hunt.

Thanks to our partners
We'd like to thank the wonderful team at USA Today for partnering with us for this News Hunt. In particular, we're very grateful to these individuals for their special contributions to this project: Doug Stanglin, editor of the On Deadline blog, as well as Anne Willette, Desair Brown and Chet Czarniak, to name but a few. Together, they went beyond the call of duty to promote this experiment widely on USAToday.com, from home page badges to special blog posts, emails and widgets. We really appreciate their great advice, initiative and inspiring commitment to this cause.

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which funded a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation, Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

Thanks to our reviewers
We're also deeply grateful to all our reviewers for participating in this Immigration News Hunt. We welcomed hundreds of USA Today readers who signed up for this investigation. These new members added valuable new perspectives to the NewsTrust community, and seemed to share our belief that good journalism is critical to maintaining a vibrant democracy. Our deepest appreciation goes to our great community hosts Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins, and staff host Jon Mitchell for their thoughtful posts and reviews about immigration. We would also like to credit them here for their individual contributions to this report: Kristin wrote about Law Enforcement, Derek wrote about Immigration Reform. Managing editor Kaizar Campwala wrote about Law and Politics, and the Economics of Immigration -- and also wrote and edited this blog post, along with Fabrice Florin. Thank you all for your great insights!

This News Hunt and partnership with USA Today was a great opportunity to test our evolving "trust network" platform, which enables citizens and journalists to collaboratively curate the news. This project demonstrated the effectiveness of this 'pro-am' approach, as we all worked closely with each other to learn more about immigration. In the process, we became more informed and engaged citizens, and can now make better decisions about this important and complex issue. We look forward to expanding our news curation platform in coming months, and hope to work with you all again very soon!

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

Join the Truthsquad!
How can you tell fact from fiction on the Internet? Join the Truthsquad, a community fact-checking experiment led by NewsTrust, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute and our advisors at FactCheck.org.

The week of August 2nd, our community is fact-checking controversial quotes from politicians and pundits, and we hope you participate as well. Each day this week, our editors are posting daily quotes to research, and asking our members whether they think they are true or false. These short quotes are excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our advisors and partners.

Give Truthsquad a try. Here's one particular quote we fact-checked earlier this week, which will let you practice what you learned from our Immigration News Hunt:

• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
  True or False?

Read more about Truthsquad on the NewsTrust blog. Enjoy!

NewsTrust Receives Grant from Omidyar Network

Today we're happy to announce that Omidyar Network (ON) has awarded a $100,000 grant to NewsTrust, to help people distinguish fact from fiction in news reporting.

We're very grateful for this opportunity to get people more informed and engaged in democracy using our tools. Omidyar Network’s funding will enable us to expand our social news platform, test five new programs and form new partnerships.

Over the next six months, we'll experiment with new ways to find good and bad journalism online -- creating special tools to help you filter the news, evaluate information quality and share trusted content with others.

Check out the press release on the Omidyar Network site, and this great quote about why they invested in NewsTrust:

"Omidyar Network is excited about NewsTrust’s mission as well as its innovative use of technology to create a community of engaged news readers," said Stacy Donohue, Director, Investments, Omidyar Network. "Discerning trustworthy information sources is critical to improving our political process and our government. NewsTrust is providing novel ways for people to participate in the news process while also enabling greater transparency in reporting."

Throughout the spring, we will run five pilots testing different tools and techniques that citizens can use to tell fact from fiction. Pilot programs under development include:

•  MyNews – a personal news-filtering tool;
•  Local News Hunt – rating the news on a local topic;
•  Global News Hunt – rating the news on an international topic;
•  TrustNetworks – group pages for our members and partners; and,
•  TruthSquad – a community fact-checking service.

In coming weeks, we will blog more about these pilots, two of which will start later this month. If any of you would like to join our beta for MyNews, or participate in our Local News Hunt in New York City at the end of this month, please email us.

This generous support from Omidyar Network means a lot to us, as it comes from a highly selective leader in philanthropic investments, with a special focus on social media, marketplaces and government transparency.

We would like to thank the many people at Omidyar Network who helped make this grant possible. Special recognition goes to ON’s Stacy Donohue, who spearheaded the effort and Matt Halprin and Todor Tashev, who gave us invaluable advice about growing our citizen initiative.

Last but not least, our heartfelt thanks to Pierre and Pam Omidyar, whose vision and commitment to social change are an inspiration to us all.

We're deeply honored by this vote of confidence and look forward to learning from Omidyar Network and innovating together in coming months.

Stay tuned for more about this exciting project!



Fabrice Florin
Executive Director,
NewsTrust Communications

Top Stories on Climate Change

 As world leaders convened last week in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, NewsTrust teamed up with Link TV to focus on the issues behind the talks -- from climate change science to economic development. 

Our Climate Change News Hunt, which ran from Dec. 3 to 13, covered these issues and the first week of the conference, where international delegates worked to negotiate an international treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol in 2012. 

Rather than trying to stay ahead of breaking news about the talks, we looked at a wide range of topics that help put the Copenhagen conference in context.

Top Stories
During this ten-day News Hunt, we posted 144 stories in total, 34 of which received a NewsTrust rating. Here are some of our top rated stories:

News
• "ClimateGate" - FactCheck.org
• Africa: Cash for Climate Change? - Link TV
• Dutch approach to climate change: Adapt - Washington Post
• On climate, lost decade now leads to final chance, 'last' decade, scientists say - Associated Press
• Senate Poses Obstacles to Obama’s Climate Pledge - New York Times
• Crisis Guide: Climate Change - Council on Foreign Relations (Multimedia)

Opinion
• An Affordable Truth - New York Times
• Environmentalist says 'going green' is a waste of time - National Public Radio (NPR)
• Naked Copenhagen - Wall Street Journal
• Copenhagen: What would success look like? - Mother Jones
• The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it's working - The Guardian
• The Story of Cap and Trade - Story of Stuff (Multimedia)

Copenhagen: Building a Consensus
As talks began in Copenhagen, we started the News Hunt by reviewing early analysis of the conference. Mother Jones examined what success in Copenhagen would entail, calling a binding treaty impossible but outlining likely positive outcomes. The Economist was less optimistic, saying the most the world can hope for is a framework for a future deal. The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported on the Netherlands' efforts to prepare for inevitable climate change.

Individual Action
What can individuals do to address climate change? While Scientific American debated investing in solar power and an Independent columnist said change had to be society-wide, a longtime environmentalist told NPR individual attempts to live a carbon-friendly lifestyle are inconsequential without top-down change. All three were highly rated by our community.

Other Climate Change Themes
Our partners at Link TV posted one of our top stories, "Africa: Cash for climate change?", which rounded up coverage of Africa's calls for reparations from the industrialized world's contributions to climate change. The Associated Press ran a narrative of the scientific community's warnings about global warming. And the Council on Foreign Relations offered its own multimedia climate change "Crisis Guide."

Climate Science vs. Skepticism
The debate over whether human activity causes climate change was one the most discussed issues in the stories we reviewed. Two weeks before the conference, hackers circulated several thousand emails stolen from a prominent climate research lab, some of which included exchanges about withholding information and adjusting measurements. Climate change skeptics seized upon the emails as "smoking guns," proof that scientists have fabricated global warming data and overstated the impact of human involvement in temperature changes.

The controversy, now known as "climategate," brought us some of our best -- and worst -- stories of this News Hunt.

"They [the emails] don't provide proof that human-caused climate change is a lie or a swindle," the Washington Post reported, continuing:

"But they do raise hard questions. In an effort to control what the public hears, did prominent scientists who link climate change to human behavior try to squelch a back-and-forth that is central to the scientific method? Is the science of global warming messier than they have admitted?"

The New York Times wrote that the emails had ushered in a "revival of skepticism" on the eve of the conference:

"as representatives of about 200 nations converge in Copenhagen on Monday to begin talks on a new international climate accord, they do so against a background of renewed attacks on the basic science of climate change."

The Times on the same day wrote in an editorial that although the emails were a "windfall" for skeptics, they do not undermine the science itself.

Later in the week, FactCheck ran an in-depth analysis of "climategate." Our top rated story for this News Hunt, FactCheck called skeptics' claims "far wide of the mark":

"The e-mails (which have been made available by an unidentified individual here) do show a few scientists talking frankly among themselves — sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks. Whether they show anything beyond that is still in doubt... many of the e-mails that are being held up as 'smoking guns' have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics eager to find evidence of a conspiracy. And even if they showed what the critics claim, there remains ample evidence that the earth is getting warmer."

Views from skeptics were represented in our News Hunt, but were generally not well received by our community. Other views from the right fared better, such as this opinion from the Wall Street Journal, which agreed that the earth is warming, but opposed mandatory carbon emissions cuts from western nations:

"An expensive effort to reduce Western emissions sets a worthless example. Only emissions cuts that provide measurable economic benefit to the developing nations will be adopted by them. If the 80% U.S. emissions cut winds up hurting the U.S. economy, it guarantees China will never follow our example."

An op-ed by Thomas Friedman seemed to bridge the gap. He offered a potential solution:

"If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull's-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent."

For a full listing of the stories we reviewed for this News Hunt, check our Climate Change News Hunt listings. And for more recent stories on this topic, check our Climate Change topic page.

Thanks to our Partners at Link TV
We'd like to give a big thanks to our partners at Link TV for joining us in this News Hunt. Our kudos go to Kim Spencer, David Michaelis, Evelyn Messinger, Heidi Blobaum, Hannah Eaves, Erin Coker and the rest of the stellar team at Link TV. It's been a true pleasure to partner with you again. 

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

Photo: Getty/NYT

NewsTrust Teacher Guides

Today it gives us great pleasure to announce an important development in our educational outreach: the NewsTrust Teacher Guides.

Our new teacher guides are designed to help educators teach their students how to recognize good journalism, by bringing NewsTrust review tools into the classroom. They extend our current offering of News Literacy Guides for the general public.

Today's students have unprecedented access to worlds of knowledge other generations could hardly have imagined. To effectively use this knowledge and make well-informed decisions as citizens, they must first learn to be discerning news consumers.

But the critical skills and healthy skepticism necessary to recognize quality journalism do not develop overnight. To help educators instill these news literacy skills in their students, our teacher guides include interactive lesson plans that will show students how to identify good and bad journalism -- and determine if they can trust the news they watch, hear and read everyday.

Our New Guides
We offer both printed guides for classrooms without Internet access -- and Internet guides for classrooms with Internet access -- as well as a growing list of additional resources for follow-up activities.

Printed Guides

• News (No Internet - PDF) – This guide will help you teach students how to identify journalistic flaws in a news report. Download it here.
• Opinion (No Internet - PDF) – This guide will help you teach students how to identify misinformation in an opinion piece. Download it here.

Internet Guides

• News (Internet) – This guide will help you teach students to identify journalistic flaws in news reports. View it here.
• Opinion (Internet) – This guide will help you teach students to identify misinformation in opinion pieces.  View it here.

Additional Resources

• More Stories – This page lists more sample news reports and opinions which you may substitute for the sample stories in the guides above, or use in follow-up assignments. View it here.
• More Activities – This page offers opportunities for students to take what they've learned by reviewing stories on NewsTrust and apply that knowledge in other fields. View it here.
• Educational Resources – This page offers an extensive list of educational resources, with more information and ideas about teaching news literacy and core principles of journalism. View it here.

Thanks to our Team
These teacher and student guides were written by Fabrice Florin and Kristin Gorski, a NewsTrust editor and former English and history teacher – with the help of Derek Hawkins, Kaizar Campwala, David Fox and other NewsTrust team members. 

Our teacher and student guides support our news literacy mission, and are inspired by these NewsTrust consumer guides: Think Like a Journalist, by Iowa State University professor Michael Bugeja, and Crap Detection 101, by Stanford professor Howard Rheingold. We would also like to thank other members of our news literacy committee who consulted on this project: John McManus, Frank Baker and Jim Lang. 

Lastly, we are very grateful to our many educational partners, who helped us refine this curriculum by bringing NewsTrust into their classrooms over the past couple years. They include: Howard Rheingold, Ann Grimes and Fred Turner at Stanford University; Donica Mensing, David Rye and Jerry Ceppos at the University of Nevada, Dan Gillmor and Christopher Callahan at Arizona State University; Dan Kennedy at Northeastern; Howie Schneider and Jim Klurfeld at Stony Brook University, and Sally Lehrman at Santa-Clara University, to name but a few. We look forward to many more productive collaborations with them and other educators.

If you have any questions or comments, or would like to share your feedback about our teacher guides, please contact us at [email protected].

NewsTrust in the Classroom
In the past few years, educators around the country have used NewsTrust's review tools to teach their students how to recognize good and bad journalism. In a recent assignment, Professor Sally Lehrman asked her journalism students at Santa Clara University to spend an entire quarter using NewsTrust to monitor a traditional news site, an ethnic or community news site and a blog. Each week, students posted stories from their chosen sources and reviewed them on NewsTrust, along with stories posted by other members. At the end of the quarter, students wrote reflections based on their experience, which NewsTrust editors have just had the pleasure of reading.

We'd like to thank all the students who participated in this interesting experiment (including Morgan Doherty, Brandon Jones, Ada Onuegbe and Tom Schreier, who all wrote thoughtful reflections on their experience). We would also like to highlight one student in particular, Krista Kelley, for writing insightful reviews and bringing a couple new sources to our attention. Krista reviewed stories from the New York Times, Pam's House Blend and Curve Magazine (the last two publications cover issues in the LGBTQ community and had not yet been featured in our database). 

She had this to say in her reflection:

This assignment has informed me about different sites that give news reports for all communities. I can now recognize what makes journalism good or bad from the practice I have had reviewing articles on NewsTrust. I would recommend people to go to the NewsTrust site because of all the options on what outlet and type of news they may be looking for.

Special thanks to Krista and her fellow students for their outstanding participation in this experiment -- and to their teacher Sally Lehrman for developing this great new educational application of NewsTrust with her class!

We invite other educators to try their own experiments as well, starting with our NewsTrust Teacher Guides -- and adapting them to fit your needs. Please let us know how we can support you and develop new activities to help more students get the news literacy skills they need in the digital age. 

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

(Photo: Journalism students at Northeastern University review a news story on NewsTrust. Teachers: Dan Kennedy, Mike LaBonte)

Climate Change with Link TV

UPDATED (see below)

This week, we're teaming up with our partners at Link TV for a ten-day News Hunt to find quality journalism about climate change.

This Climate Change News Hunt is centered around the UN Climate Change Conference, which begins this Monday in in Copenhagen. World leaders will convene in the Denmark capital for over a week to negotiate an international treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol in 2012. During that time, they will try to set global emission standards -- as well as discuss sustainable growth, adaptation funding to developing countries, and other topics related to global warming.

How are the news media covering the many issues related to climate change? What do we know about the science of climate change? what can we learn from skeptics? What can we expect from the talks? Is a globally enforceable deal possible? How will industrialized nations and developing nations reconcile their interests? What will happen if negotiations collapse? What can we do individually to address these issues?

News Hunt Calendar
To help answer these questions and more, we're breaking down our News Hunt into daily themes. Here's what we'll be featuring day by day:

• Friday 12/4 - Developing World: Africa
• Saturday 12/5 - ClimateGate
• Sunday 12/6 - Global Warming: Key Issues
• Monday 12/7 - Copenhagen: Building a Consensus
• Tuesday 12/8 - Climate Change Science: What do we know?
• Wednesday 12/9 - Individual Action: What can you do?
• Thursday 12/10 - Developing World: China and India
• Friday 12/11 - Climate Change Skeptics
• Saturday - Bad Journalism on Climate Change
• Sunday - Final Analysis

Join the News Hunt
Join our Climate Change News Hunt and help get the facts about this important and controversial issue. You can start today by reviewing this featured story from our partners at Link TV's Global Pulse:

"Africa: Cash for Climate Change?"

Also be sure to check our Climate Change topic page for the latest updates.

You can post a story there, or share your thoughts about climate change in our new comments section.

Lastly, check our partner LinkTV's Climate Change page for more information on this topic -- and links to actions you can take as an individual to address this global issue.

UPDATED: News Comparisons
Below are the news comparisons we've featured so far in this News Hunt. Help us rate them by adding your review:

Copenhagen: Building a Consensus

• Dutch approach to climate change: Adapt - Washington Post
• Searching for harmony - Economist
• What would success look like? - Mother Jones

Climate Change Science

• On climate, lost decade now leads to final chance, 'last' decade, scientists say - Associated Press
• Fighting to keep above the waves - Aljazeera
• This decade is warmest on record, 2009 ranks fifth - Bloomberg

Individual Action

• Should you get solar now or wait? - Scientific American
• Environmentalist says 'going green' is a waste of time - NPR
• What on Earth? The concerned citizen's guide to global warming - Independent

China and India

• Setting the pace on India's climate change - Riding the Elephant
• In Copenhagen, U.S. pushes for emissions cuts from China, developing nations - Washington Post
• India's Copenhagen conundrum - World Politics Review

Climate Change Skeptics

• Climate of uncertainty heats up - Wall Street Journal
• Why the historical warming numbers matter - Climate-Skeptic
• Putting 'Climategate' in perspective - New York Times

Who Runs Climate Change?
We recently completed a week-long News Hunt on environmental lobbying, in partnership with the Washington Post's WhoRunsGov. From November 16 through 23 we asked: Who runs climate change? Our top stories covered the environmental, energy and business lobbies, and a range of issues related to climate change legislation. Check out the results of this unique partnership on the NewsTrust Blog.

Photo: NTV/LinkTV

Who Runs Climate Change? - News Hunt Results

We recently completed a week-long News Hunt on environmental lobbying, in partnership with the Washington Post's WhoRunsGov. From November 16 through 23 we asked: Who runs climate change? We focused on the lobbyists working to influence climate change legislation in the U.S. Congress. Our search covered the environmental, energy and business lobbies, and a range of environmental issues to be discussed in coming months, once Congress resumes its debate on Climate Change in early 2010.

WhoRunsGov, a new website from the Washington Post, features profiles of lobbyists, government officials and experts that the public can research and edit collaboratively, wiki-style. For this project, they asked readers to help fill in the profiles of a range of lobbyists who hold sway in the climate change debate, based in part on some of the best journalism we could find on this issue. Among the individuals profiled during this News Hunt were Steve Miller, President of the American Association of Clean Coal; David G. Hawkins, of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Jay Timmons, of the National Association of Manufacturers; and many more.

For a full listing of the lobbyists profiled on WhoRunsGov, check their Who Runs Climate Change page. Although our News Hunt has ended, we encourage you, if this project interests you, to help flesh out these profiles on their site. Your contributions will help bring transparency to the climate change debate.

Top Rated Stories
To find good journalism about the top environmental lobbyists, we had to dig deeper than usual. Recent stories on this topics were scarce and many lost relevance when Congressional leaders announced early in the week that they would postpone debate over climate change legislation until spring. Nevertheless, we turned up a sampling of stories that our community gave high marks to. Here's the best of what we found:

• "A case of lowered expectations" - Center for Public Integrity
Our top-rated story, this extensive report detailed the workings of some 2,800 lobbyists, many of them former government officials, attempting to sway lawmakers on climate change legislation.

• "Environmental groups debate new tack in climate change fight" - Washington Post
The Post looked at recent environmental campaigns that have softened their message on climate change to focus on jobs rather than doomsday scenarios.

• "NAM speaks softly on climate change -- does it carry a big stick?" - ClimateWire
Why has the National Association of Manufacturers, known for criticism of global warming, suddenly fallen silent on climate issues? This story sought answers.

• "Chamber's Donohue keeps cash coming after PG&E, Apple defect" - Bloomberg
This story covered the latest efforts of Tom Donohue, the pugnacious president of the Chamber of Commerce, to counter bad publicity about the group's opposition to a climate change bill. In a similar story, the New York Times profiled Donohue.

• "Chevron's lobby campaign backfires" - Politico
Politico reported on Chevron's attempts to lobby against a pollution case in an Ecuadorian court.

• "US climate legislation and lobbyists" - GRIID
This blog post rounded up critiques of the House's American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

Check our full listing of top rated stories and all posts from this News Hunt -- and feel free to review or submit more recent stories on our Lobbying topic page.

Thanks to our partners
We'd like to give a big thanks to WhoRunsGov for joining us in this fascinating partnership -- and for the excellent work they do on a daily basis profiling the "unofficial Washington." It's an honor to be associated with such an important project. This collaboration would not have been possible without Rachel Von Dongen, Mary Duncan and Amanda Erickson of WhoRunsGov. Thank you for inviting our community to combine efforts with yours -- we all learned a lot in the process.

Next week: Climate Change with Link TV
This Friday we're teaming up again with our partners at Link TV to continue our search for quality journalism about climate change. From December 7 through 18, world leaders will convene in Copenhagen to negotiate cuts in emissions and address other issues related to global climate change. What can we expect from the talks? Is a globally enforceable deal possible? What concessions are the United States and China likely to make? What will happen if the negotiations collapse? Help us get this important News Hunt rolling early by reviewing (or posting) a story on our Climate Change topic page today.

 

- by Derek Hawkins, with Kaizar Campwala and Fabrice Florin

Election News Hunt Results

"What needs to change so that citizens can participate more effectively in our democracy?"  Our indefatigable hosts Chris Finnie and Mike LaBonte kept that question in mind as they led our Election News Hunt from June 30 through July 14, scouring the internet for journalism on what works and what doesn't in our current election system. They were joined by their fellow NewsTrust hosts and reviewers, as well as new members from our partners at PBS Engage and the documentary series P.O.V.  To find out more about our Election News Hunt, check our press release, blog announcement and last week's update.

Top Stories

Here are some of the top rated stories we found during our Election News Hunt. They were collectively selected by our community from 231 submissions on the 2008 Presidential Election topic, with 117 stories receiving a quality rating from our reviewers.

Top Rated News

• Tax Tally Trickery - FactCheck
• Election Day - P.O.V. / PBS
• Election Protection 2008 Primary Report: Looking Ahead to November - National Campaign for Fair Elections
• Obama and the Black Church - The New York Review of Books
• Barack by the books - Salon
• State Poll Roundup: Zogby's 50 State Polls - 3BlueDudes
• Election Day Reality: no Registration = No Vote (in most states) - The National Voter
• How Chicago shaped Obama - New Yorker
• McCain Plan to Aid States on Health Could Be Costly - New York Times
• President Remains A Skilled Fundraiser - Washington Post

Top Rated Opinion

• The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters - Salon
• The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes - Huffington Post
• Just Democracy - The Nation
• Jesse Helms Was No Hero - Wall Street Journal
• McCain Pledges Allegiance to NAFTA - Huffington Post
• Barack Obama and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments - FindLaw
• How the Republicans claimed the "patriotism" mantle in presidential politics - Slate
• The GOP's Carter Moment - Ross Douthat's blog at Atlantic Monthly
• Defending Wes Clark - Huffington Post
• What Patriotism Is - Campaign for America's Future

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

Election Reform Coverage
We started our investigation with Katy Chevigny's P.O.V. documentary, Election Day, which gave us a glimpse at voters, poll workers and poll watchers from eleven locales on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight. In an interview on the P.O.V. site, Chevigny explained why she had made her film:

I would love to see more Americans interested in trying to improve the electoral system. If we were to pressure our political leaders to pay some real attention to this, we could see some changes.

Disparities in the quality of the voting experience, a key issue in the film, varied between low-, middle- and high-income neighborhoods. This appeared to still exist in 2006 and may not be resolved for 2008. Some new state laws may further complicate the system. Some argue such laws were passed to disenfranchise voters. In Florida, whose voting irregularities in 2000 became the justification for the passage of the federal Help America Vote Act, the legislature has passed a "no-match, no-vote" law, which Steven Rosenfeld writes of in a highly rated story from AlterNet, "Florida's 2008 Election Landscape Looking More Like 2000":

Allows county officials to reject new voter registration applications if the names on the forms do not match other state databases. Voter advocacy groups sued the state, claiming that database errors can cause applications to be rejected -- through no fault of would-be voters.

Rosenfeld starts with a quote from Leon County election supervisor Ion Sancho talking about the states "It really penalizes voters through no fault of their own...It strikes me as absolutely Kafkaesque."

In her review, Elizabeth Reynolds, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, notes that the author had already written a book about problems in Ohio and that his article serves to "get their registration corrected (if necessary) asap."

While Mike LaBonte found flaws in the the Florida Times Union story, "Voter law threatens to cloud elections" by Dierdre Conner, it does cover the suit brought by the Brennan Center for Justice on behalf of the League of Women Voters which maintains that state law serves to discourage voter registration drives.

On a positive note, states are taking the lead on improving voting machines.  The Oakland Tribune noted in "Feinstein wants to reform electronic voting" that the Senator from California has re-introduced federal legislation requiring a paper trail for machines.  While it would be surprising if any major changes take place before elections, voting activist Avi Rubin, a professor of  computer science at Johns Hopkins University, notes that most states have switched to paper records in an interview, "Q&A: E-voting activist more optimistic about voting systems," by Computerworld's  Todd R. Weiss. 

Meanwhile, the state of the U.S. economy, this week's featured topic, may have an effect on voting, as revealed in a story by Robert Vitale in the Columbus Dispatch, "Foreclosed-on voters using old addresses could snag election."

In Columbus, across Ohio and in other key presidential battlegrounds, more people losing their homes means more registered to vote from addresses where they no longer live.

Although federal law ensures that most still will be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4, Ohio voters with outdated addresses risk pre-election challenges and trips from polling place to polling place. They're also more likely to cast provisional ballots that might not be counted.

And, the problem of the influence of money on campaigns continues. The Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Williamson reports in "Housing Industry Ramps Up Political Donations" that

The housing industry already has given more money in political contributions this election cycle than in the entire previous cycle, while winning favorable provisions in an emergency housing bill moving through the legislature. 

from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners....

Obama is drawing criticism for abandoning public financing of his campaign. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnam reported in "McCain Allies Find Finance-Law Holes: Governors' Fund Recruits Big Donors; Bid to Catch Obama" that

Allies of Sen. John McCain have found new loopholes in the campaign-finance law he helped write ...In one method, a Republican Party fund aimed at electing governors has started marketing itself as a home for contributions of unlimited size to help Sen. McCain.

Disturbingly, they report that

the pitch is aimed at individuals, including many top contributors to the controversial Swift Boat group that targeted Sen. Kerry. Texas developer Bob Perry, the largest financial backer of the Swift Boat group, also is the largest individual donor to the governors group, at $250,000. Carl Lindner, a retired insurance executive in Ohio and another top Swift Boat financier, has contributed $100,000 to the governors' fund. The campaign-finance lawyer for the Swift Boat group in 2004 now serves the same role for the governors association. The McCain campaign and the individual contributors all declined to comment on their involvement.

The problem of smears, made famous by the "swift-boating" of John Kerry has raised its head in another form:  an Internet rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim. In "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," the Washington Post's Matthew Mosk looks at scholar Danielle Allen's attempts to determine how the rumor started.  He notes,

By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year.

During that time, polls show the number of voters who mistakenly believe Obama is a Muslim rose -- from 8 percent to 13 percent between November 2007 and March 2008. And some cited this religious mis-affiliation when explaining their primary votes against him.

Walter Cox notes in his review that he appreciated the article because he had received the emails and notes how it will be of use:

...when I e-mailed those who sent them (well-educated, normally well-informed relatives), informing them that the e-mails were false and requesting that they correct the record, I ran into quite a lot of resistance--one even claiming that "those Snopes people are all under Obama's spell." So the next time I receive one of these e-mails I will also be able to link to this article, which effectively discusses their genesis.

After reading that story, I was happy to discover the work of Michael Cornfield, a political scientist who specializes in the study of the media and American politics and directs research for Pew's Democracy Online Project. He writes a brief analysis of Obama's efforts to counter the rumors in his blog post for the Century Foundation, "The 'MyBarackObama" Experiment." The problem of course, is that an attempt to counter a rumor may actually strengthen it. He proposes that increasing online literacy revealed in the Pew study "The Internet and the 2008 Election" may yield a solution:

using the net to consider, first, the source of a disputed and/or disturbing truth-claim (via Google); second, the prevalent pattern of interpretation (partisan/bipartisan, easily scanned for national news via Memeorandum), and, third, the best available evidence (a matter of recognizing authenticated documents). Truth claims anchored in viewable evidence and attributable to a source acknowledged as credible on a bipartisan basis stand a decent chance of being valid.   

In an interesting turn, Obama's own computer platform, MyObama.com has been used by activists to try to influence his vote to grant immunity to telecom companies which cooperated with the Bush Administration to conduct warrentless domestic eavesdropping. Chris Finnie recommends  Micah L. Sifry at TechPresident who writes in "The FISA Protest and myBO: Can We Talk? Can They Listen?" that

The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here. There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters AND THEN seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position. Indeed, while the net is inherently a two-way, many-to-many medium, no politician has yet used it to listen to his supporters as a group. Yes, the Obama campaign has asked its supporters to share their stories about their health care woes, and some of those anecdotes have made it into the campaign's blog or policy papers. But we have no norms for a collective, public discussion--even though we now have the capacity for one.

It has been posited that the 2006 elections marked not an end to disenfranchisement, but its overpowering effects on the election outcome.  And thus, I'll close with two articles in the League of Women Voters magazine, The National Voter.  The first is a 2006 article, New Barriers to Voting, brought to my attention by Project Vote.  The second, "Election Day Reality: no Registration = No Vote (in most states)"  by Shirley Tabata Ponomareff, Jeanette Senecal, points out

registering voters just as important as getting voters to the polls...in the majority of states, "no registration" is equivalent to "no vote."... seven states (Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming)...allow Election Day (same-day) registration, and... [in] North Dakota...no registration is required. .... In the three previous presidential elections, more than 80 percent of all registered voters went to the polls.

I hadn't realized that such a high number of those registered vote. I'm not sure it follows logically that increased registration will increase those getting to vote  to the extent they say, but it certainly can't hurt.

Thanks to our Partners: P.O.V. and PBS Engage

For this Election News Hunt, the NewsTrust community had the pleasure of collaborating with the documentary series P.O.V. and PBS Engage.

P.O.V. is the longest running showcase for indy film on television and has won numerous awards including three Oscars, 18 Emmys, 36 Cine Golden Eagles and 11 Peabody Awards. NewsTrust is honored to have worked with the folks at P.O.V. who make this excellent series possible. In particular, we would like to thank Theresa Riley, Catherine Jhee, Cathy Fisher, Cynthia Lopez, Jessica Lee, Anne del Castillo and Simon Kilmurry for all the time and resources they dedicated to spreading the word about this News Hunt.

PBS Engage is the Public Broadcasting Service's social media lab. Engage explores how social media can help PBS fulfill their mission of delivering high-quality, non-commercial content "that fosters knowledge, public dialogue and civic engagement." Thanks to Jayme Swain, Christopher Baker, Kevin Dando, Amy Baroch, Laura Hertzfeld, Craig Stoltz, Jonathan Coffman, Kenneth Dykes and Betty Alvarez for their wonderful promotion of the partnership on both PBS Engage and on the PBS homepage.

Join our next News Hunt on the U.S. Economy
This week's featured topic is the U.S. Economy. The Federal bailout of government-sponsored mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is only the latest in a series of troubling events this year for the world's largest economy. Help us find good journalism on this important topic, then review stories on our U.S. Economy topic page.

And if you'd like to help host the topic, write us at editors-at-newstrust-net.

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

Election News Hunt Update

A week after we started our Election News Hunt with our partners PBS Engage and P.O.V., we have collectively found some great coverage of electoral issues from mainstream and independent media -- even though this was a slow week, due to the 4th of July holiday.

Kudos to our new members and our regular NewsTrust reviewers for this fine start! We particularly wish to thank our News Hunt co-hosts, Mike LaBonte and Chris Finnie for leading the charge. Thanks for being such wonderful hosts!

Top Stories
Here are some of the most interesting stories we've found so far:

News

Election Day
P.O.V. / PBS - By Katy Chevigny - Jul 2, 2008 (Special Report)

Tax Tally Trickery
FactCheck - By Lori Robertson - Jul 3, 2008 (Special Report)

Lack of funds hobbling the 'Republican attack machine'
McClatchy - By Steven Thomma - Jun 30, 2008 (News Report)

Obama and the Black Church
The New York Review of Books - By Darryl Pinckney - Jul 6, 2008 (News Analysis)

Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying
The Nation - By Ari Melber - Jun 30, 2008 (News Analysis)

Davis: Leveling rich candidates' speech unjustified
First Amendment Center - By Tony Mauro - Jun 30, 2008 (News Analysis)

Q&A: E-voting activist more optimistic about voting systems
Computerworld - By Todd R. Weiss - Jul 7, 2008 (Interview)

Opinion

How the Republicans claimed the "patriotism" mantle in presidential politics
Slate - By David Greenberg - Jul 3, 2008 (Opinion)

Losing the Latino vote
Weekly Standard - By Matthew Continetti - July 9, 2008 (Opinion)

High hopes abroad for a new U.S. president
Christian Science Monitor - July 2, 2008 - (Editorial)

Just Democracy
The Nation - By Katrina vanden Heuvel - Jul 7, 2008 (Opinion)

The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters
Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul 5, 2008 (Opinion)
( see also Part II of Greenwald's piece)

What Patriotism Is
OurFuture.org - By Michael Winship - Jul 3, 2008 (Blog Post)

Our Findings

Among the most prominent electoral issues covered in our selections are concerns over how efficiently this year’s election will be carried out. The P.O.V. documentary “Election Day,” which aired July 1 on PBS, laid the groundwork, drawing high ratings for its examination of the complexities and challenges of the election process, as experienced by American voters in 2004. (If you haven’t caught "Election Day" yet, you can watch it on the P.O.V. Web site, where it is running until the end of July.) NewsTrust Reviewer Denise Clendening called it "a great way to teach civics and remind people of the importance of each and every vote by showing different voting experiences across the country. The film inspires and subtly challenges everyone to get involved in the process. "

In a more explicit piece on election reform Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, outlines steps she feels need to be taken to reform elections and revive American Democracy, which she says is in “decline.” Vanden Heuvel’s commentary has proved one of the top-rated stories so far, earning praise from several members -- including Jack Dinkmeyer, who said this:

Heavy going, but everything one ever wants to know about what's wrong with our election system and suggestions about repairing it is in this article. . . . What neocons fail to grasp is the depth of America’s outrage about the last eight years, and business as usual isn't going to hack it.

Fred Gatlin, however, disagreed, and offered this critique of Vanden Huevel's proposals:

The key to democracy is a well informed voter. I find nothing in this article that considers voters often vote with little or no information. I also find nothing that discusses the need for more a better easily available information about candidates. Also in my state and I suspect in most if voters vote regularly they do not need to register again unless they move, change their name or change parties. This article fails to discuss any of these important issues.

Harking back to voting irregularities and complications at the polls in the 2000 and 2004 elections, the reliability of different voting methods has been called into question in several articles, op-eds and blog posts. Johns Hopkins professor and activist Aviel Rubin puts the risks and advantages of electronic voting in perspective in a highly-rated interview with Computerworld Magazine. Chris Finnie, co-host of the election News Hunt, found Rubin’s input helpful:

Because this is an interview, it really only presents the point of view of the interviewee. But, because of his credentials, it's still a valuable and interesting viewpoint. I am glad to hear we've made so much progress on the issue and feel heartened by the new information he presents. A must read for anybody interested in the topic.

Independence Day prompted two opinion pieces that examine the role patriotism has played in the 2008 election and in past political campaigns. In a two-part commentary, David Greenberg of Slate looks at American electoral history to analyze how Republican figureheads redefined the concept of “patriotism” and used it to the party’s advantage in nearly every major election since WWII. A similar but separate op-ed from PBS writer Michael Winship asks what “patriotism” really is and who embodies it. Winship’s article struck a chord with Norman Farrell, who dubbed it a thoughtful piece:

In this fine article, Winship explores true patriotism. He refers to Obama's speech about the nature of patriotism but expresses strongest admiration for Air Force Reserve Major David J.R. Frakt, who argued for a tortured young detainee at Guantanamo. That an air force reserve major could speak truth to power, without fear of retribution, is an example of America's true greatness.

The campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain have come under intense criticism in the past week -- Obama for what some perceive as his shifts on domestic spying and foreign policy; McCain for failing to differentiate his policies from those of George W. Bush and for what one publication charges as inaccurate attacks on Obama.

Obama came under fire from Salon's Glenn Greenwald, among others, for saying he would back a bill that would expand the federal government's domestic spying powers and provide immunity for telecommunications companies currently accused of allowing such surveillance. Greenwald's piece, "The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters," received more than a dozen reviews and has remained one of the top-rated stories since it appeared July 5.

In another report well-regarded by the NewsTrust community, the nonpartisan Web site FactCheck called the McCain camp's claims that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes "inflated and misleading," presenting a detailed analysis on why the publication found that charge incorrect. News Hunt co-host Mike LaBonte called it "a typical excellent analysis from FactCheck, and Naomi Isler lamented that the issue hadn't received more attention: "Where's the rebuttal and why isn't this on page one of some newspaper of general circulation, or TV screen during prime time?"

The Election News Hunt will continue through Monday, July 14. Now that the holiday is over, be sure to submit more stories on this important topic! To join the hunt, go to the 2008 presidential election home page and review some of today's stories. For additional tips on how to participate, check our Election News Hunt welcome page. And if you haven't already, please sign up to review stories on NewsTrust.

Derek Hawkins, Assistant Editor -- with the NewsTrust Team

Best Stories on Afghanistan | Election News Hunt Results

Here are early results of our Election News Hunt -- along with some of the best stories from last week's Afghanistan News Hunt. We're also pleased to introduce our new team member, Assistant Editor Derek Hawkins, who wrote this report. Welcome aboard, Derek! -- Fabrice and the NewsTrust Team

Best Stories on Afghanistan

Last week's featured topic on NewsTrust was the war in Afghanistan. Called "America's forgotten war" by some media critics, it is an elusive topic. Even with violence and U.S. troop deaths on the rise in the past month, media coverage of Afghanistan remains low. However, using the NewsTrust review tool, our community unearthed some great journalism on this topic from a variety of American and international news outlets. Here's a sampling of the best stories:

American Media

Al-Qaeda's Growing Online Offensive – Washington Post

Is Al Qa'ida in pieces? – The New Republic

Afghanistan: A War That's Still Not Won – Time

Marines Try to Improve Image in Taliban Stronghold – National Public Radio

In Afghan police training, US aims to curb corruption – Boston Globe

Year of the Taliban – LinkTV

Foreign Media

Crisis in Pakistan-US relations – The News International

Warlord: My encounter with Taliban mastermind – The Independent

Managing Pakistan-U.S. relations – The Hindu

Kabul kids master the flip tricks as skateboarding invades the streets – The Guardian

Afghanistan: Legality Of 'Hot Pursuit' Into Pakistan Debated – Radio Free Europe

After an assault by the Taliban on a prison in Kandahar in mid June, news reports of the insurgent group’s reemergence were among our top rated stories from Afghanistan. LinkTV aired an overview of the Afghan and Pakistani governments’ struggle to contain the Taliban, which drew positive feedback from several reviewers, including Elizabeth Reynolds. She said:

LinkTV and Reporter, Jamal Dajani, have provided a very informative picture of Afghanistan that is unique in the usual media news. This report is sorely needed for U.S. citizens (and others) to understand what is really happening there. I would have liked to have seen/heard more sources and info about their trustworthiness, however. Overall, I highly recommend this report and also LinkTV for its news coverage.

Reports on the terrorist organization al Qaeda, which has its roots in Afghanistan, took a back seat to coverage of the Taliban. But a New Republic feature on the declining influence of al Qaeda’s central leadership proved an eye-opening read. Tom Maertens gave this assessment of the story:

These are reputable anti-terrorist writers who seem to have the story right: al-Qaeda's willingness to kill civilians, particularly Muslim civilians, is undermining their support around the world. The question is whether AQ has morphed into a Leaderless Jihad, as Marc Sagemen contends, or remains a centralized organization as Bruce Hoffman believes. The two have contended in public on the subject and the answer is not clear who is right. This article tends to downplay the future threat; its central thesis, that AQ has alienated moderate Muslims, may well be true in much of the Muslim world, but doesn't seem to hold in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Early Results from the Election News Hunt

For the next two weeks, NewsTrust is joining forces with our partners PBS Engage and the documentary series P.O.V. to find great journalism on the presidential election in our two-week 2008 Election News Hunt.

Earlier this week, P.O.V. aired its new documentary “Election Day,” which hones in on the street-level experiences of American voters who took part in the 2004 election. Shot from the perspective of 11 groups of people -- from first time voters to election officials -- the 74-minute documentary combines the stories of Americans throughout the country into one narrative. If you didn’t get a chance to see it on your local PBS station, check it out on the P.O.V. “Election Day” website, where it is running through the month of July.

Mike LaBonte, who’s co-hosting the News Hunt with Chris Finnie, reflected on his own work as an election official in his review of "Election Day." He said:

As an election official I find this to be very cool. Journalistically this has lots of evidence, sources and viewpoints. In some scenes the meaning of what is happening may not be clear to all. This isn't surprising, since elections can be confusing to everyone involved. For balance it might have been good to also follow a Democratic field manager. The true value of this is seeing things that we usually only read about.

Other early highlights from the News Hunt included an op-ed from FindLaw on Barack Obama’s vague position on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) law and warantless wiretapping. Elizabeth White-Nadler had this to say about the op-ed, which was written by former Richard Nixon counsel John Dean:

This piece is remarkable, intriguing, even astonishing. I assume that John Dean is accurate in his legal scholarship; and he certainly should be familiar with the legal precedents to immunity and criminal prosecution of government officials. If Obama really intends to pursue criminal prosecutions if elected, that would explain his seemingly inexplicable reversal on the FISA expansion. I don't understand why this has not received more coverage.

News and commentary on John McCain’s family’s wealth has also garnered attention, as has his trip to Colombia and Mexico, which began yesterday. A blog post from Politico compared investigations into the personal wealth of McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain, to similar inquiries made in 2004 of the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Chris Finnie, co-host of the presidential election News Hunt, held it in high regard. “Comprehensive and well-researched,” she wrote, “this piece lays out a fuller view of the McCain family finances than I've seen in any other single article.”

The Election News Hunt will continue through July 14. To get started, check out 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 -- and be sure to focus on the quality of the journalism, rather than whether you agree or disagree with the viewpoints expressed in each story.

For additional tips on how to participate, check our Election News Hunt welcome page. And if you haven't already, please sign up to review stories on NewsTrust.

Happy Fourth of July!

Derek Hawkins, Assistant Editor -- with the NewsTrust Team