CBSSports.com blogger Adam Jacobi was fired for publishing an erroneous tweet that prematurely reported the death of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, according to Poynter. Jacobi tweeted the false news of Paterno's death, without citing his information source.
One year after the Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona that prompted NPR and other media outlets to incorrectly report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed, Poynter looks back at how so many journalists got it wrong. Poynter even named the false reports of Giffords' death the worst error of 2011.
A potential opposition presidential candidate and former state governor in Venezuela, Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, was convicted July 13 of “spreading false information” in a March 2010 interview with Globovisión, The Press and Society Institute and The Associated Press report.
In what the Miami Herald calls a “bold if not brazen move,” Cuban authorities have urged Spain’s government to give $155,000 to a program to counter “daily lies” in European media.
The Journalistic Ethics Tribunal of the National Press Association in Bolivia reprimanded the editor of the newspaper La Voz, in Cochabamba, for an article, based on rumors, about the supposed failure of the Banco de Crédito de Bolivia, one of the country's principal banks, reported La Prensa. The story provoked alarm and prompted a run on the bank.
Two Twitter users -- a 35-year-old woman and 41-year-old man -- were arrested last week in Venezuela, accused of using the social network site to spread "false rumors" in an attempt to "destabilize the national banking system" after the take-over of Banco Federal for liquidity problems, reported El Nacional and EFE.
Maurício Machado, journalist and owner of Jornal Atualidades in Marília, São Paulo, was granted pretrial release after spending six days in prison under charges of extorting a federal deputy, O Estado de S. Paulo reports. Prosecutors say the journalist planned to publish false stories about the deputy to force him to buy advertising at the paper.
Venezuela's new minister of communication and information, Tania Díaz, swore in the first 75 "communication guerrillas," members of school youth groups formed to “democratize” information and counterattack “the power of private media." See stories (in Spanish) by El Universal and El Nacional.
Brazilian media literacy and anti-disinformation projects decided to leave newsrooms and seek allies outside the journalistic bubble, with courses for digital influencers, teachers and students, employees of the Judiciary and companies in the most varied sectors, from banks to health plans. Many of these projects, which have emerged in recent years, start from the basis […]
In a joint session of Congress on the night of Aug. 28, deputies and senators overturned Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's veto of an article of law criminalizing the spread of false news in the context of elections.