Looking at how journalism has changed over time, this book explores how the long-standing and untrustworthy conventions developed. It examines why reliable standards of objectivity and accuracy are critical not just to a free press but to the democratic society it informs and serves. It offers an account of how journalism and truth work.

This book bridges a gap between discussions about truth, human understanding, and epistemology in philosophical circles, and debates about objectivity, bias, and truth in journalism. It examines four major philosophical theories in easy to understand terms while maintaining a critical insight which is fundamental to the contemporary study of journalism. The book aims to move forward the discussion of truth in the news media by dissecting commonly used concepts such as bias, objectivity, balance, fairness, in a philosophically-grounded way, drawing on in depth interviews with journalists to explore how journalists talk about truth.

Truth qualities of journalism are under intense scrutiny in today's world. Journalistic scandals have eroded public confidence in mainstream media while pioneering news media compete to satisfy the public's appetite for news. Still worse is the specter of "fake news" that looms over media and political systems that underpin everything from social stability to global governance. This volume aims to illuminate the contentious media landscape to help journalism students, scholars, and professionals understand contemporary conditions and arm them to deal with a spectrum of new developments ranging from technology and politics to best practices. Fake news is among the greatest of these concerns, and can encompass everything from sarcastic or ironic humor to bot-generated, made-up stories. It can also include the pernicious transmission of selected, biased facts, the use of incomplete or misleadingly selective framing of stories, and photographs that editorially convey certain characteristics. This edited volume contextualizes the current "fake news problem." Yet it also offers a larger perspective on what seems to be uniquely modern, computer-driven problems. We must remember that we have lived with the problem of people having to identify, characterize, and communicate the truth about the world around them for millennia. Rather than identify a single culprit for disseminating misinformation, this volume examines how news is perceived and identified, how news is presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. It considers social media's effect on the craft of journalism, as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content-production regimes. As an edited collection, this volume gathers leading scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies, philosophy, and the social sciences to address critical questions of how we should understand journalism's changing landscape as it relates to fundamental questions about the role of truth and information in society.

Amidst "alternative facts" and "post-truth" politics, news journalism is more important and complex than ever. This book examines journalism's evolution within digital media's ecosystem where lies often spread faster than truth, and consumers expect conversations, not lectures. Tthe 2016 U.S. presidential election delivered a stunning result, but the news media's breathless coverage of it was no surprise. News networks turned debates into primetime entertainment, reporters spent more time covering poll results than public policy issues, and the cozy relationship between journalists and political insiders helped ensure intrigue and ratings, even as it eroded journalism's role as democracy's "Fourth Estate." Against this sobering backdrop, a broadcast news veteran and a millennial newshound consider how journalism can regain the public's trust by learning from pioneers both within and beyond the profession. Connecting the dots between faux news, "fake news," and real news, coauthors Madison and DeJarnette provide an unflinching analysis of where mainstream journalism went wrong—and what the next generation of reporters can do to make it right. The significance of Donald Trump's presidency is not lost on the authors, but Reimagining Journalism in a Post-Truth World is not a post-mortem of the 2016 presidential election, nor is it a how-to guide for reporting on Trump's White House. Instead, this accessible and engaging book offers a broader perspective on contemporary journalism, pairing lively anecdotes with insightful analysis of long-term trends and challenges. Drawing on their expertise in media innovation and entrepreneurship, the authors explore how comedians like John Oliver, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee are breaking (and reshaping) the rules of political journalism; how legacy media outlets like The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The New York Times are retooling for the digital age; and how newcomers like Vice, Hearken, and De Correspondent are innovating new models for reporting and storytelling. Anyone seeking to make sense of modern journalism and its intersections with democracy will want to read this book.

Over the past decade, American outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Cited across social and national news media, these verdicts can rattle a political campaign and send the White House press corps scrambling. Yet fact-checking is a fraught kind of journalism, one that challenges reporters' traditional roles as objective observers and places them at the center of white-hot, real-time debates. As these journalists are the first to admit, in a hyperpartisan world, facts can easily slip into fiction, and decisions about which claims to investigate and how to judge them are frequently denounced as unfair play. Deciding What's True draws on Lucas Graves's unique access to the members of the newsrooms leading this movement. Graves vividly recounts the routines of journalists at three of these hyperconnected, technologically innovative organizations and what informs their approach to a story. Graves also plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution from the blogosphere, reflecting on its revolutionary remaking of journalistic ethics and practice. His book demonstrates the ways these rising organizations depend on professional networks and media partnerships yet have also made inroads with the academic and philanthropic worlds. These networks have become a vital source of influence as fact-checking spreads around the world.

This volume deals with the varied forms of shame reflected in biblical, theological, psychological and anthropological sources. Although traditional theology and church practice concentrate on providing forgiveness for shameful behavior, recent scholarship has discovered the crucial relevance of social shame evoked by mental status, adversity, slavery, abuse, illness, grief and defeat. Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have discovered that unresolved social shame is related to racial and social prejudice, to bullying, crime, genocide, narcissism, post-traumatic stress and other forms of toxic behavior. Eleven leaders in this research participated in a conference on The Shame Factor, sponsored by St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Lincoln, NE in October 2010. Their essays explore the impact and the transformation of shame in a variety of arenas, comprising in this volume a unique and innovative resource for contemporary religion, therapy, ethics, and social analysis.

Rumours of the death of investigative journalism have been greatly exaggerated. This book is proof enough of that. Examples from the corporate and alternative media across the globe highlight the many imaginative and courageous ways that reporters are still "kicking at the right targets". Edited by - and contributed to - by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, the burden of the book is both how much more important investigative journalism is in an age of so much disinformation, and what techniques and approaches are needed now in a fast-changing information world. In his Foreword, Peter Taylor, the award-winning reporter who has been covering terrorism and political violence for 45 years, says of investigative journalism: "It makes headlines, sells newspapers, gets viewing figures and tells the public things they do not know but have a right to know. It speaks truth to power."Donal MacIntyre, another award-winning reporter and documentary director, hails the Channel4/Observer Cambridge Analytica probe, in his Afterword, for confronting "the most significant threat to democracy in the last 50 years".Brian Winston takes us on a whistle-stop history of investigative journalism from as far back as the fifth century BCE. Rachel Oldroyd argues that if long-term investigative journalism serves the public then the public should be persuaded to pay for it. And Mark Daly tells of his many attempts to get at the truth over the killing of Stephen Lawrence 25 years ago. James Oliver, of the BBC's flagship investigative series, Panorama, highlights the ways in which journalism is rapidly changing. Just a few years ago, leaks would be handed over discreetly in a smoke-filled pub or arrive suddenly in a parcel through the post. Now, you'd need a lorry for the number of documents involved. A big one.The second section puts the spotlight on international cases. Tatenda Chitagu reports on how a brave tradition of reporting survives - just - in Zimbabwe. Hanna Liubakova shows how journalists in Belarus are finding ways to circumvent censors. Antonio Castillo focuses on Ojo Público (Public Eyes), the Peruvian muckraker, which has revolutionised Latin American investigative journalism. The best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winner, David Cay Johnston, argues that the most important scandals are right in front of the journalists but - for reasons that he explains - they often miss them. And Richard Lance Keeble examines in depth the work of the Australian activist journalist Antony Loewenstein.