In 1898, on flimsy evidence, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal ran a banner headline, “Destruction of the Warship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy,” and the paper offered a $50,000 reward for any information about the maritime explosion.  Headlines such as that, termed “Yellow journalism” at the time, helped propel the United States into the Spanish-American War.

One hundred and twenty years later, the widespread distribution of lies, propaganda, mistakes and exaggeration is not limited to media titans.  In the internet age, everyone has the ability to reach thousands of people, and what we used to call “yellow journalism” now goes by other names, such as “fake news” or, more recently, “information disorder.”  With a grant from the National Science Foundation, the University of Wisconsin is working to help dispel information disorder, in concert with Wisconsin Watch.  Wisconsin Watch reporter Phoebe Petrovic is one of the leads in the new project, and she joins us now to tell us more.

To find out more about the information disorder project, go to wisconsinwatch.org

Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

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