Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus.
The New York Times
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions as he returned to the Oval Office in January was signing an executive order aimed at “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship” of US citizens. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that “would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
CNN
As of last week, the Voice of America is silent. The storied broadcaster was launched in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, but two weeks ago president Donald Trump usurped Congress' authority and signed an executive order effectively shutting down the taxpayer funded broadcaster for what the White House calls "radical propaganda."
60 Minutes
Austrian authorities said Monday that they uncovered a Russian-steered campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about Ukraine following the detention in December of a Bulgarian woman accused of spying for Russia.
The Associated Press
Disinformation, misinformation, deception, and traditional propaganda all utilize digital channels and social networks to spread their messages to the public. The challenge and risk is complex, but can technology help? Can it reduce the risk of disinformation?
Forbes
America has 72 percent of the world’s 25 top universities by one ranking and 64 percent by another. But this crucial U.S. competitive advantage is being undermined by the Trump administration’s war on colleges.
The Washington Post
Spending cuts, immigration and Medicaid are at the top of the Washington agenda. That climate provides fertile ground for misinformation and myths to multiply on social networks. Some of the most common are those surrounding immigrants, Latinos and Medicaid.
NBC News
President Trump recently selected Kari Lake as his top adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, the country’s biggest international broadcaster. On March 14 she tweeted—and Elon Musk retweeted—a blistering video from USAGM’s new headquarters in Washington.
Wall Street Journal
Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta Platforms last week said its independent fact-checking program in Australia would help detect and remove false content and deepfakes, as it aims to curb misinformation ahead of a national election due by May.
Reuters
The billionaire leaders of social media giants have long been under pressure to quell the spread of mis- and disinformation. No system to date, from human fact-checkers to automation, has satisfied critics on the left or the right.
Bloomberg
For years, some commentators have called for K-12 teachers to take on fake news, media literacy, or online misinformation by doubling down on critical thinking. This push for schools to do a better job preparing young people to differentiate between low- and high-quality information often focuses on social studies classes.
The Conversation
Utah is poised to abolish its practice of automatically mailing ballots to all voters, handing a victory to President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans who have vilified voting by mail since his 2020 election defeat.
The Washington Post
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal advocacy group, is investigating IU for what it deems participation in the “censorship-industrial complex” by requesting 10 types of records from the university.
Indiana Daily Student
Tara Haelle, Health Beat Leader for Infectious Diseases at the Association of Health Care Journalists, discusses medical misinformation with Stephan Lewandowsky, Ph.D., Chief of Cognitive Science at the University of Bristol.
Association of Health Care Journalists
In a significant move to address the growing threat of AI-generated disinformation, China has joined the ranks of the European Union and the United States by implementing new regulations requiring the labeling of synthetic content on the internet.
Disinformation Social Media Alliance
National Public Radio 'Embedded' host Zach Mack describes his family's own struggles with conspiracy theories for a series, 'Alternate Realities,' reviewing predictions his father made for 2024 that did not come to fruition, and the fallout false narratives can have on close relationships.
Embedded by NPR
A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for "truth" — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard has confirmed.
NewsGuard
In 2020, as COVID-19 began to spread around the globe, theories surrounding the pandemic also started to circulate. One such supposition—as absurd as it might seem—was the idea that there was a correlation between 5G cellular telephone towers and the increased number of infections.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s focus on vitamin A use to combat a growing measles outbreak in Texas is raising concerns among public health experts, who fear he is sending the wrong message about preventing the highly contagious disease and distracting from the critical importance of vaccination.
The Washington Post
Social media companies have defended their content moderation practices to a Parliamentary committee investigating online misinformation, arguing that they already have effective processes and systems in place to deal with the spread of false information on their platforms.
ComputerWeekly.com
