Media & Politics Must Reads, March 24, 2017

Our weekly roundup of news found at the intersection of media, politics, policy and technology, from the Shorenstein Center and from around the web.

This Week at the Shorenstein Center

Dean Doug Elmendorf: Understanding the Congressional Budget Office. Doug Elmendorf, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School and former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009-2015, discussed why the CBO exists, how it works, and how the media reports on its findings, in a conversation at the Shorenstein Center. In March, the CBO forecasted that the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would result in 24 million fewer people being insured. Read more and listen to audio.

How Medicaid and Medicare influence income inequality, from Journalist’s Resource.

News from Fellows

Washington media veteran: Trump has made journalism’s mission clear. Jackie Calmes, spring 2015 fellow, says that “while there’s a trepidation among reporters who are having to cover [President Donald Trump] on a daily basis, it’s also energizing because this is what we got into it for.”

Why People Continue to Believe Objectively False Things. Adam J. Berinsky, current Joan Shorenstein Fellow, is cited in an article about the challenges of correcting false information.

The Trump Administration and the Media

• Tracking the special treatment media get when they play nice with the White House, from The Washington Post.
• Trump Escaped ‘Wiretap’ And Russia Questions In Local TV Interviews, from Huffington Post.
• Rex Tillerson’s Hope for a Media-Free Bubble May Burst, from The New York Times.

Data and Politics

• Trump’s quiet war on data begins, from Engadget.
• How competitive politics sharpened data tools and tactics, from Axios.

Public Media

• Public radio’s ‘Indivisible’ looks for common ground in post-Trump political climate, from Current.
• “My goal in public media”: How 16 producers worked to create more community-focused journalism, from Nieman Lab.
• US public broadcasting, target of Trump cuts, found its voice amid presidential scandal, from Columbia Journalism Review.
• ‘This is the most serious threat we’ve seen’: Public radio prepares to fight Trump’s funding cuts, from Business Insider.

Media Diversity

• The gender gap persists at many top news outlets in the U.S., and it’s reflected in how stories are reported, from Nieman Lab.
• This Isn’t the Diverse Newsroom You’re Looking For: How managers can go beyond acknowledging the problem and start making a real difference, from Source.

Social Media

• ‘Who shared it?’: How Americans decide what news to trust on social media, from American Press Institute.
• ‘Disputed by multiple fact-checkers’: Facebook rolls out new alert to combat fake news, from The Guardian.
• Can Silicon Valley’s autocrats save democracy? From The Conversation.
• I studied how journalists used Twitter for two years. Here’s what I learned, from Poynter.
• Twitter nixed 635k+ terrorism accounts between mid-2015 and end of 2016, from TechCrunch.

The Digital Divide

Digital divide persists even as lower-income Americans make gains in tech adoption, from Pew Research Center.

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