By Ella Lee

Fact-checking has historically been used to debunk urban legends and in newsrooms behind the scenes, ensuring the veracity of reporters’ work. But in this era of viral misinformation, the role of the fact checker has become more public and more vital than ever, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on during an election year.

As a fact checker for USA TODAY, I witness the depth of misinformation online each day. Thousands of unfounded claims — from outlandish conspiracy theories to an intentional tweak to claims otherwise true — percolate online each day, many of which garner millions of views and interactions.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic enveloped the world, the stakes for fact checking were raised. Falsehoods about the virus and the ways in which people should protect themselves from it could do more than spread misinformation — it could kill.

Some of the first false information that spread online had to do with the effectiveness of masks. The mixed signals sent by the federal government at the beginning of the pandemic about whether masks are effective protectants against the virus led to a confused country, unsure of whom to believe as most mask messaging was divided down party lines.

At USA TODAY, we showed homemade cloth masks do offer protection, and confirmed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t say otherwise; reported N95 filters aren’t too large to stop COVID-19 particles; explained HIPAA and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments don’t give business patrons a loophole out of mask-wearing; and that wearing facemasks don’t cause health problems, like hypoxia, hypercapnia or a weakened immune system.

While some of these claims may seem outlandish, each was shared hundreds of thousands of times online, many of the post’s creators and people engaging with the social media posts adamantly believing they were true.

Even more dangerous misinformation soon began to spread as talk of cures began to seep into the mainstream conversation.

Claims that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure to the coronavirus began to make rounds on social media this summer, after President Donald Trump lauded it as potentially one of the “biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” The drug does not work — not here, nor abroad — and some studies have found that it might be dangerous when used on COVID-19 patients.

Like in that case, the falsehood-fighting cause isn’t helped when the country’s leaders are often where the misinformation begins. A study by researchers at Cornell University found that the “single largest driver” of coronavirus misinformation is President Donald Trump.

In addition to claiming some drugs are miracles before scientists have backed that up, the president has often pushed a false narrative about the severity of the virus, grossly misinterpreting CDC data as recently as last month. And, of course, pointing out those falsehoods only deepens the partisan divide which already exists in America. That it’s an election year adds fuel to the fire, too.

That’s not to say misinformation hasn’t also come from across the aisle. A talking point frequently repeated by the Biden campaign, and mentioned by Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the Sept. 7 vice presidential debate, is that Trump’s administration fired the White House’s pandemic response team in 2018. That’s not fully true — the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was disbanded under Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, but Trump didn’t fire them. Some resigned and others moved to different units.

It’s clear that 2020 has cemented the need for fact checkers around the globe. But the scope of the fact checker’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet fully known.

-30-

By Marin Scott

As a previous editor once told me, “if you wanted your job to love you, you went into the wrong profession.” I find myself facing this statement often—after a long day of breaking news, endless documents from FOIA requests, even having to transcribe an hour-long interview at the last minute. It’s in those moments when you think, when will it all just stop?

While every journalist can relate to this sentiment, there is no one more in love with journalism than The New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, Yaffa found himself working in Russia, a surreal country for those in the U.S. While there he was hooked by the spectacular life of a journalist, one that he would later come to embody through his reporting for publications like The Economist, The New York Times and Bloomberg Business. Along the way he found time to write a book, Between Two Fires, about the ambitions and dreams of those living under Russia’s governing eye.

At the time of this conversation, our award-winning journalist sat in a chair drenched in sunlight, patiently answering each of my questions from a remote part of Karelia, Russia. There was talk of politics, the state of American news and objectivity in journalism. But most importantly, Yaffa articulated what drives him—what drives all of us—to keep reporting.

Here’s a peek into that conversation.

 What about journalism first hooked you and when was this?

I was living in Russia in the years after college, so this would have been the mid-2000s, and I was first doing some State Department related scientific exchange work. I was thinking about what I wanted to do next. I had thought that the diplomatic or policy track might be the thing that would interest me, and that’s what I was interested in college. But somehow, as I was getting prepared to come back to the States after spending a couple of years in Moscow… something about journalism just grabbed my attention. It’s hard to explain or remember exactly what. It seemed like a way to indulge and pursue the interests and curiosities and wanderlust I had without subjecting myself or without turning myself over to large bureaucracies that would be harder for me to control.

Is it difficult to find everyday Russians who are interested and willing to talk to a journalist?

No not really. I mean, it’s hard for me to compare. To your first part of your question, I know from talking with colleagues, I have way less access to official and government sources here than say friends who work as political journalists in Washington where being cozy with the press and saying things off record, developing relationships– that’s just part of the culture and ecosystem of Washington. That doesn’t exist here. But when it comes to getting the stories and experiences and opinions of, as you say, everyday Russians, I don’t feel like that’s so difficult.

I feel like you have a great deal of access to the rare, interpersonal stories you’re able to tell.

People seem motivated to tell [their stories]. But, I think, to your point, people here can often be motivated to get their story across to a foreign audience, knowing that that perspective isn’t always transmitted to American readers.

Konstantin Ernst says in your book that journalism isn’t the civic duty that it has been made out to be, but rather a game where everyone has a stake in the outcome. Do you believe that this is true?

I mean, like all good propaganda claims, what makes it so maddening is that it contains this kernel of truth that it would be foolish to deny or argue with. So, you can’t just sort of tell him he’s 100% wrong because that’s not believable, and you don’t necessarily believe it, and you look foolish, and it’s not convincing.

There is, especially in the age of Trump, we can talk about the American media– and this really comes in the chicken or the egg problem. I do sort of blame, in quotes, Trump by making the press the enemies of the people. That adversarial tone comes from Trump rather than it coming from the media but nonetheless, three years into the presidency, we are left with a situation where the press has an even more adversarial position vis-à-vis the Trump administration than any other administration where good political journalism should be adversarial to those in power– regardless of who they are– but there’s something particularly personal, it feels like, between Trump and the press. Now, I don’t know if you call that an agenda, but it’s when your job is to be a faithful truth teller and you’re dealing with someone who is a veteran liar.

What keeps you invested in reporting?

It’s just so fun! Reporting is just this totally gleeful excuse to indulge in all sorts of curiosities and interests. What other excuse could you have for calling up these fascinating people and saying you want to sit with them and have them tell you their stories, or even better to go to wild, far-flung or just interesting places rich with history or the kind of intensity of current events– it’s just such a joy to be able to have that sort of built into your job…

It’s just the best job there is.

-30-

From a college radio station to national networks: a conversation with Kate Snow

 By: Erica Carbajal

As Senior National Correspondent and anchor of NBC’s “Sunday Nightly News,” Kate Snow is often on-air multiple times a day. Now in the COVID-19 era, Snow reports and anchors from her basement that’s been converted to a temporary news studio set. To this, add raising two kids and a case of the novel virus in her household.

Through all of this, Snow has continued delivering news updates, many related to the way this pandemic has ravaged nursing home centers.

Some of the stories became personal, as Snow found herself giving updates on how her husband, Chris Bro, was fighting a COVID-19 infection, and how her family was navigating this unnerving experience. Fortunately, he’s since fully recovered.

“It’s been a challenge,” Snow said.

Yet, it’s her strong foundation in the field (and now, help with her family at home as camera operators) that’s made it all possible.

As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Snow worked as a radio reporter for a local station, WVBR. After completing her graduate degree in international studies at Georgetown, Snow landed a job as a producer and booker for CNN in Atlanta.

“After doing that behind the scenes job for two years, I really wanted to be a reporter again,” she said. “I sent out about 100 tapes and got three offers.”

Snow ended up taking the offer for her first television news reporting job in Carlsbad, New Mexico at KOAT.

That meant taking chances, a lesson many young reporters sometimes need reminding of.

“I ditched a good life in Atlanta, left a boyfriend and all my friends and moved across the country,” Snow said.

From there, she made her way to the KOAT headquarters in Albuquerque before climbing her way to national network life. Before joining NBC News, Snow reported for ABC’s Good Morning America as a White House reporter.

With this background and having covered a multitude of sensitive issues like suicide and sexual assault, Snow was prepared to cover another problem a lifetime—coronavirus, even if she didn’t know it.

Adapting to remote video reporting even has its positives, helping to foster a more natural feeling interview, Snow said.

“Doing interviews by Zoom or Skype took some getting used to, but I appreciate that it’s a direct conversation and without a camera crew, lights and huge set-up,” she said. “Sometimes the conversations feel even more personal and authentic.”

COVID-19 has been a difficult thing to grapple with, and Snow reiterated part of what it means to be a journalist amid times of crisis, even if you, the reporter, are feeling new levels of anxiety.

“I’ve certainly said many times, to grieving families that what is most important is that they control their own story,” Snow said. “We are providing an outlet right now for people to remember and honor lives lost.”

In 2018, Snow had the first interview with Andrea Constant after Bill Cosby was found guilty of sexually assaulting her. Earlier in 2015, she interviewed 27 of Cosby’s accusers in a hotel ballroom.

“It took a lot of work to study all of their individual stories, understand the context, see patterns between their stories and reach out for Cosby’s response to each of them,” Snow said. “I was armed with a lot of information and research prior to sitting down.”

Whether she’s covering sexual assault or COVID-19, Snow said there are parallels in all stories.

“I’m a bit of a type-A preparation freak,” she said. “I always want to study and read a ton of background before any project, the same goes for this pandemic.”

Snow has covered and continues to cover many peoples’ stories. Perhaps all because she took that chance and moved across the country.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

-30-

By Hannah Mitchell

As protestors in Michigan demonstrate their frustrations over the stay-at-home order and parts of the state begin to reopen, Detroit broadcast reporter Jenn Schanz, shares how she curbs the spread of misinformation and the importance of local news in the times of COVID-19.

“In the early onset of the pandemic, this was one of the hardest-hit areas,” she said. “Metro Detroit has seen how serious this is from the get-go. I reported on the need for additional space for morgues. And that was like sort of a really sobering story to do because that put it in context as well.”

As Michigan’s COVID-19  fatalities are the fourth highest in the nation, Schanz has transitioned into a role as a gatekeeper of misinformation. A role she assumes as her civic duty as a local news reporter.

“When it first started, people either weren’t aware of how serious it was or wanted to downplay it,” she said. “Something common in Michigan is ‘Oh, it’s just the flu. It’s not as bad as the flu.’ It was one I think a lot of people were comfortable with sharing. Every time we talk to experts, and we have doctors on the air and they are saying ‘Hey, it’s not just like the flu and here is why it’s not just like the flu’, we could give people that information just so they can digest it themselves.”

Schanz’s Detroit Metro team received backlash from these reports.  She said that certain people were very angry because they had connected with a narrative that made them comfortable and they didn’t like contesting information.

“They didn’t like hearing different and I think I definitely know where that comes from,” she said. “There’s been so much anger and people are frustrated, and people are out of work. And people aren’t doing well. And the economy is tight. You’re gonna have people looking for someone to blame. And that’s definitely happening in Michigan.”

With 44% of Americans getting their news from Facebook, social media is a big player in how people perceive the news. According to Schanz, viral videos circulating in Michigan claimed the origin of COVID-19 was a lab in China and the virus was intentionally implanted by the Chinese government to hurt the United States.

“A lot of people are now getting their news from Facebook quickly,” she said. “We know that’s the truth. So, the danger is that if people are constantly treating Facebook as their source and people are sharing conspiracy theories and misinformation, you run the risk of a huge portion of your community not happy with that.”

As a local news reporter, she deals with accusations of being called ‘fake news’ by social media hecklers. Although not a daily occurrence, it is a phrase she said that has been very common during the pandemic.

“I’ve been called fake news and harassed on social media. And that’s not unique to me. That is not like my story. I think that’s several reporters’ stories.”

According to a Statista survey, 65% of North Americans trust traditional news outlets to provide general news and information, with 10% reporting to knowingly share fake news on social media.

In order to curb the spread of misinformation, Schanz has set personal guidelines with how she responds to inaccurate comments on her social media accounts.

“I always respond if the person is spewing misinformation, commenting, and commentating something that potentially someone could read and believe true, I immediately correct it,” she said. “I feel that is my responsibility.”

Along with correcting false information, Schanz supplements her corrections with resources to factual information.

“If someone wants to share a conspiracy theory, I immediately comment and say, ‘That’s not accurate. Here is the information if you want to see more on the facts of the situation.’”

The survey also reported that 40% of Americans rely on local news to stay informed. Schanz takes this seriously and said that her role in halting the spread of misinformation and clearing confusion in Detroit emphasizes the importance of local news.

“That’s why I think local news is so important, it’s always been important, but it’s especially important right now,” she said.

-30-

Correspondent Clarissa Ward makes foreign reporting feel relatable, finds untold narratives

by Brita Hunegs

Clarissa Ward has ridden in cars with Jihadi fighters. She’s walked the rugged terrain of Afghanistan with the Taliban and illegally crossed the border into Syria from Turkey to sit and talk with anti-regime forces. As a foreign correspondent covering global conflicts, she’s been in the crosshairs of some of the most politically consequential theatres of the 21st century, writing and broadcasting stories that few others have the tenacity to excavate. Still, Ward does not consider herself a political person.

“I like to travel to places that no one else in the world can get to make connections and find common ground and try to understand things better.” said Ward, now chief international correspondent for CNN.

Born in London in 1980 and raised between the United Kingdom and New York City, Ward cultivated an appreciation for dynamic conversation as a young child, listening in on the dinner party conversations of her parents’ multi-national cohort of friends.

In 2001 Ward was in her senior year at Yale University, studying comparative literature. Her passion for multiculturalism began when her father gave her a copy of Anna Karenina as a child. Her passion for the news, however, began after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 when she realized journalism was the tool to “trying to understand what was going on and why it was happening and trying to get to the root of dysfunction and miscommunication,” Ward said.

She began her career at the Moscow bureau of CNN, and eventually covered the Iraq War, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, from the ground, for Fox News.

Speaking seven languages and having lived in countries around the world including Russia, Lebanon, China, the United States and Britain, Ward is in a prime position to track common threads of humanity that have helped her cover all the various people and cultures she’s documented as a journalist, while maintaining an appreciation for the nuances that punctuate every stitch.

“There are things that you realize bind people all over the world, curiosity about the other,” Ward said. “When you experience that you understand that there is a lot more that joins us than which differentiates us, which is not to gloss over the very real differences in cultures and values and education and upbringing.”

Ward is excited by illuminating the lives of the people affected by conflict, “The goal is really to try to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice and let their stories be told.”

However, she’s careful not to conflate her journalism with activism. She sees herself as a vessel for people’s experiences, holding onto them until they can be handed over to the public.

“Your job is not to prescribe policy or to come up with solutions for some of the world’s worst problems. Your job is to shine a light on those problems, and present people with an accurate fair and in-depth assessment and understanding, both intellectual and emotional,” Ward said. “Then people can make their own decisions.”

Her reporting is helping policy decisions be made at the highest levels of government. Ward even addressed the United Nations in 2016, relaying her experience covering the battle over the Syrian city of Aleppo.

“We both understood in that moment that we were absolutely powerless to protect ourselves,” she told the Security Council of being under the siege of a bombing campaign with her colleagues and Syrian civilians.

In her pursuit of gathering all of the information, she’s become a target of disinformation. In 2019, her comprehensive investigation about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private military groups in the Central African Republic sparked such vitriol within the Russian government, a propaganda outfit launched a smear campaign against Ward and the news package. A 15-minute video they released revealed she had been tracked and filmed while producing the story.

“On one level it’s sinister and quite frightening… but on another level it’s somewhat satisfying because it’s made it clear that our reporting is hitting a nerve and we’re telling a story that some people would rather not see told,” Ward said in an interview on CNN.

Though she’d had vast experience in international journalism, and all that comes with it, there was still something new Ward wanted to do and it had intimidated her for a long time– writing a book, “Usually if something scares you that much it’s probably worth trying to do,” Ward said. In September, On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist, will be released.

Ward says she also wrote the book for her son, who was born in 2016, so he could “have a record of his mom before she was his mom.”

Above all, Ward advocates for listening, “Otherwise you get into this dangerous territory of echo chambers that I think we have, you know, perilously close to, particularly in the US, but all over the world,” said Ward.” Just because you listen to someone else’s ideas, it doesn’t mean it has to be a point of weakness.”

Ward is now based in London and, while we spoke on the phone, she was navigating the avenues of the city, heading to Downing Street to cover the news of the day. Pregnant with her second child, she’s covering the COVID-19 crisis from her home front, admittedly a different phenomenon for her. She’s continuing to report on and investigate from unique angles.

“I keep my goals pretty humble; keep telling the stories that need to be told that people aren’t hearing, and that other people aren’t telling, ideally. If I can get to a story that no one else is getting to then that’s great,” Ward said.

-30-

By: Bella Michaels

It’s NFL Draft Day. Rather than sitting in his broadcast studio wearing a suit and tie, CBS sportscaster Greg Gumbel is sitting at home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., wearing a blue Under Armour t-shirt and a white ball cap.

“I’m coping,” Gumbel said. “Spring was a bit strange without March Madness. I’ve been doing that every year since I returned to CBS in 1998.”

In a world without live sports, the three-time Emmy Award winner keeps himself busy with swimming, chasing lizards in his backyard and rocking to his theme song “Brown Sugar” by his favorite band, The Rolling Stones.

While sports are on pause, journalism isn’t.

But Gumbel doesn’t quite consider himself a journalist.

“I would consider my brother more of a journalist than I am,” said Gumbel. “He does those things like dig deep down and get into the backgrounds of people and sometimes things that aren’t very pleasant.”

His younger brother, Bryant Gumbel, is most known for his fifteen years of co-hosting the “Today Show.” He currently hosts the HBO investigative series “Real Sports.”

“I think [Bryant] is superb at what he does,” said Gumbel. “But I don’t want to watch a college quarterback, who threw for four-hundred yards last week and then go back and learn that his maternal grandmother is the one that taught him how to pass because his parents left him all alone.”

He cares about what happens on the field and why it happens. He focuses on accurately relaying, to viewers and listeners, what he sees on the field.

Gumbel says sports journalists need to improve the intent and focus of their work.

“There are far too many people in my field who are more concerned about nailing someone to the wall than they are about getting information,” said Gumbel.

He’s not a big fan of sports talk radio. “There are a few who do it intelligently,” Gumbel said. “Most do it to be argumentative.”

Raised in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago, Gumbel grew up in a family that highly valued education.

“The fact that it was a racially diverse neighborhood was terrific,” said Gumbel. “I miss Chicago, and I thought that it was as integral to me growing up as my dad was. My dad was a hell of an influence on me and my brother.”

His late-father, Richard Gumbel, was a probate judge and also served through an illness in the Philippines during World War II. He marched forward despite having both his tonsils removed in the midst of it all.

“My dad, if there was one thing he was vehement about, was to be educated,” said Gumbel. “His mandate was to listen carefully, think clearly and speak distinctively.”

But many in sports talk radio don’t do those things, and that’s why Gumbel wanted out after two months working at a radio station.

He was hired on a three-year contract to be the first morning man on WFAN radio, the first all sports radio station in the U.S.

“I go back to sports talk radio because they’re the ones with the biggest mouths and trying to make the most noise,” Gumbel said. “But the fact is, they’re trying to make a name for themselves more than delivering information.”

This also applies to insiders– reporters that specialize in getting and giving out information before anyone else.

“They all want to claim to be the ones who broke the story,” said Gumbel. “Not once, when I’ve heard any piece of breaking news in the sports world, did I ever say ‘Gee, I wonder who had that first…’ It just doesn’t seem that important to me. But it is important to them, and apparently to the people who hire them. But that’s not me.”

He believes sports journalism is straying away from the most important thing: the game.

Sports shows these days have many hosts that sit around and talk for several hours leading up to the game.

“It’s a problem because I think you could talk something out to the point where I’m not interested anymore,” Gumbel said. “If you watched all of that, by the time you get around to kick off, you’re almost tired of the game.”

Now in a pandemic, there is no game.

Would Gumbel refuse to call a game that didn’t have fans? No. Does he think it would be tremendously different? Absolutely.

“If you don’t have [the fans], then I would worry about going out of my way to create excitement– which I hate,” said Gumbel. “What I do on air– my reaction– is not rehearsed. It’s genuine.”

-30-