Brendan Nyhan

Month: September 2012

  • Presentation on improving coverage of misinformation

    On Wednesday, I spoke at an Annenberg Public Policy Center event at the National Press Club on “How Can Journalists Increase the Likelihood That the Facts Will Win Out?” For those who are interested, the C-SPAN video of my talk (approximately ten minutes) is here and the slides that I used are here.

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  • New at CJR: Will Obama really “break the fever”?

    My new column at CJR questions President Obama’s claim that his re-election would “break the fever” among Republicans and induce a newfound spirit of cooperation. Here’s how it begins: With the media focused on the horse race (and Mitt Romney’s ongoing tactical miscues), the claims by President Obama and his allies that his re-election would

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  • New at CJR: Jumping the gun on Romney ‘47%’ video

    My new CJR column examines early coverage of a video recording of Mitt Romney’s statements about the 47% of Americans who won’t vote for him at a Florida fundraiser. Here’s how it begins: The video attracted such extensive interest—including a long clip on NBC Nightly News—that Romney was forced to defend his comments in a

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  • The continuing relevance of the Obama Muslim myth

    GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney issued a misleading statement yesterday claiming that the Obama administration’s “first response” to the attacks on the US embassies in Libya and Egypt “was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” Romney’s claim was later echoed by Republicans like GOP

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  • New at CJR: When factcheckers get trigger-happy

    My new column at CJR looks at how factcheckers sometimes fail to select their targets and define their standards appropriately. Here’s how it begins: Is there such a thing as too much factchecking? Factcheck.org described former President Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention Wednesday evening as a “fact-checker’s nightmare” in part because, “with few

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