Brendan Nyhan

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.

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 “break the fever” or pop “the blister” of steadfast GOP opposition in Congress have received relatively little attention. But with the incumbent now a 3:1 favorite in betting and futures markets, his fanciful suggestions that being re-elected will convince Republicans to compromise with him deserve far greater scrutiny.

For more, read the whole thing.

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 rare evening press conference.

The story continued to receive widespread coverage this morning. Here in New Hampshire, which overlaps several media markets, it was covered on all the local or network morning shows in Boston and Burlington, Vermont, as well as on WMUR in Manchester, and by two major print outlets. So how did the media do in covering the story? Two key failures emerged—a failure to provide sufficient policy context in reporting and a presumption that the video revealed Romney’s true self.

Read the whole thing for more.

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 chairman Reince Preibus and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But as ABC's Jake Tapper points out, the statement in question, which originated in the US Embassy in Cairo, actually was released before the attacks, not afterward.

The statement underscores the continuing relevance of the Obama Muslim myth. To be clear, we can't know Romney's motives or those of Preibus and Palin. The primary intention is surely to attack Obama as weak or feckless in foreign policy. But the way in which the statement was worded (accusing Obama of sympathizing with Muslims killing Americans) is likely to resonate with members of the public who cling to the still widespread belief that President Obama is a Muslim, which has persisted since the 2008 campaign. In particular, numerous pundits and politicians have used coded language to suggest that Obama has dual loyalties or is not loyal to this country. Here are just a few examples from prominent Republicans:

May 2009: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alleges on "Fox News Sunday" that there is a "weird pattern" in which Obama administration officials were "prepared to take huge risks with Americans in order to defend terrorists" and suggests that the Obama administration was proposing "welfare" for terrorists. He then claims on "Meet the Press" that the Obama administration's "highest priority" is to "find some way to defend terrorists."

June 2009: Senator James Inhofe calls Obama's Cairo speech "un-American" and says "I just don't know whose side he's on."

February 2010: During a conference call with conservative bloggers, Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accuses the Obama administration of having a "a terrorist protection policy" and conducting a "jihad to close Guantanamo."

By contrast, no prominent Democrats attacked the Bush administration for sympathizing with Muslims when it condemned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that Muslims found offensive. The line of attack didn't resonate because Bush was seen a conservative Christian. Obama has in some ways been more aggressive and successful than Bush in killing suspected terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden, but he is still treated differently. It's hard to escape the conclusion that misperceptions about his religion are part of the reason why.

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 exceptions… his stats checked out.” Rather than concede that it had little material to work with, however, The Associated Press manufactured a “fact check” of Clinton that focused far too heavily on omitted context and possible counter-arguments to his opinions rather than untruths or errors—and even managed to work in a gratuitous Monica Lewinsky reference that invoked Clinton’s reputation for factual slipperiness.

Journalists have also struggled to define an appropriate standard for factchecking in the case of Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee.

Read the whole thing for more.