 | |
Former names | Modern Media Institute |
|---|---|
| Motto | Democracy needs journalism. Journalism needs Poynter. |
| Type | School of Journalism |
| Established | May 29, 1975 |
| President | Neil Brown [1] |
| Location | , , U.S. |
| Website | poynter |
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. [2] [3] It also operates PolitiFact. [4]
The school began on May 29, 1975, [5] when Nelson Poynter, the owner and chairman of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) and Times Publishing Company, announced that he planned to start a small journalism school called the Modern Media Institute. [6] (The name of the school was changed to the Poynter Institute in 1984). [5]
In 1977, Nelson Poynter willed ownership of the Times Publishing Company to the Institute so that after his death the school would become the owner of the St. Petersburg Times. [6] Poynter died on June 15, 1978, at the age of 74. He had become ill in his office just a few hours after he helped break ground for the new St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. [7]
At that point, the Institute began to grow into the larger school that exists today. The second president, Robert J. Haiman, moved the institute in 1985 to its current building. [8]
Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) is a board member of the Poynter Foundation and donated $1 million to it in 2015. [9] [10] In 2015, Poynter received $382,997 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to influence news coverage of global health initiatives. [11] In 2017, the Poynter Institute received $1.3 million from the Omidyar Network and the Open Society Foundations in order to support new projects in three main areas: fact-checking technology, impact tracking, and financial awards through innovation grants and crowdfunding matches. [12]
In 2018, the Poynter Institute began a cooperation with the content recommendation network Revcontent, to stop misinformation and fake news in articles [13] [14] [15] supplying Revcontent with fact-checking provided by their International Fact-Checking Network. [16] January 11, 2018, the Charles Koch Foundation's Director of Free Expression, Sarah Ruger, stated in an American Society of News Editors news release that "The foundation supports many grantees committed to press freedom, including The Poynter Institute, the Newseum and Techdirt's free speech initiative." [17] On February 12, 2018, the Tampa Bay Times, the for-profit branch of the nonprofit Poynter institute spun off the Pulitzer Prize–winning PolitiFact website to form an independent division within Poynter. [4] In March 2018, Google.org appointed Poynter Institute as the leader of their MediaWise program to equip middle and high school students to better differentiate online news and information. Google funded this with a $3 million grant. [18]
Since 2019, The Washington Post has been partnering with the Poynter Institute to increase diversity in media, with the goal to expand Poynter's annual Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media training journalists to become founders, top-level executives and innovators. [19] [20] Other sponsors are CNN, the Scripps Howard Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and TEGNA Foundation. [21]
Poynter published a list of over 515 news websites that it labeled "unreliable" in 2019. The author of the piece used various fake news databases (including those curated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Merrimack College, PolitiFact, and Snopes) to compile the list and called on advertisers to "blacklist" the included sites. The list included conservative news websites such as the Washington Examiner , The Washington Free Beacon , and The Daily Signal as well as conspiracy outfits including InfoWars. [22] After backlash from both readers of and contributors to some of the included publications, Poynter retracted the list, citing "weaknesses in the methodology". [23] Poynter issued a statement, saying: "[w]e regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication." [24] Reason pointed out that the author was a freelancer hired by the Institute who typically works for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Reason drew parallels between the accuracy of the list with SPLC's own work on hate groups. [22]
In 2020, after receiving funding from Facebook, the Poynter Institute expanded the MediaWise program with a national media literacy program called MediaWise Voter project (#MVP). Its goal was to reach 2 million American first-time voter college students, helping them to be better prepared and informed for the 2020 elections. [25]
The Poynter Institute received $737,400 in federal loans from the Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 pandemic. President Neil Brown noted that this was not the first time the institute received government funding, noting past training contracts with Voice of America. [26]
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Poynter receives funding from corporations, philanthropic organizations and government agencies. Major donors since 2015 include: [27] [28] [11]
Poynter provides media training for media and communications organizations. Clients include the American Society of Business Publication Editors, Community Newspaper Holdings, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Danish School of Media and Journalism, Google, Media24, National Public Radio, NBC News, Newsweek, Penske Media Corporation, Pinellas County School District, Raliance, Tegna, United States Agency for Global Media, University of South Florida St. Petersburg, USA Today, and the Washington Post. [27]
News University (NewsU) is a project of the Poynter Institute that offers journalism training through methods including e-learning courses, webinars, and learning games. NewsU is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. [29]
In 2015, the institute launched the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which sets a code of ethics for fact-checking organizations. The IFCN reviews fact-checkers for compliance with its code, and issues a certification to publishers who pass the audit. The certification lasts for one year, and fact-checkers must be re-examined annually to retain their certifications. [30] Google, Facebook, and other technology companies use the IFCN's certification to vet publishers for fact-checking contracts. [31] [32] [33]
The IFCN and the American Press Institute jointly publish Factually, a newsletter on fact-checking and journalism ethics. [30] [34] The IFCN also organizes Global Fact, a yearly conference on fact checking. [35]
Since 2015, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism has been awarded by the Poynter Institute. Winners include:
In 2023, the News Leaders Association transferred stewardship of the NLA Awards to the Poynter Institute, who will administer the contest from 2024 onward, and the awards were renamed to The Poynter Journalism Prizes. [45] That same year, Poynter announced the creation of a new prize in honor of Roy Peter Clark called The Roy Peter Clark Award for Excellence in Short Writing. [46]
Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.
The Tampa Bay Times, called the St. Petersburg Times until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school directly adjacent to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus.
Craig Alexander Newmark is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Prior to founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for IBM, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab. Newmark served as chief executive officer of Craigslist from its founding until 2000. He founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2015.
RMIT's School of Media and Communication is an Australian tertiary education school within the College of Design and Social Context at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, located in Melbourne, Victoria.
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times, with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact.com website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem as accurate to "Pants on Fire" for claims the journalists deem as "not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim".
The Conversation is a network of nonprofit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis. Articles are written by academics and researchers under a Creative Commons license, allowing reuse without modification. Copyright terms for images are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. Its model has been described as explanatory journalism. Except in "exceptional circumstances", it only publishes articles by "academics employed by, or otherwise formally connected to, accredited institutions, including universities and accredited research bodies".
Africa Check is a non-profit fact checking organisation set up in 2012 to promote accuracy in public debate and the media in Africa. The organisation's goal is to raise the quality of information available to society across the continent. Africa Check is an independent organisation with offices in Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, Dakar and London, producing reports in English and French testing claims made by public figures, institutions and the media against the best available evidence.
Angie Drobnic Holan is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network and editor for PolitiFact and was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team of journalists noted for their fact-checking of the 2008 presidential elections in the United States.
Vera Files is a non-profit online news organization in the Philippines, known for its institutionalized role in fact-checking false information in the Philippines, and as one of the news organizations most prominently targeted by intimidation and censorship due to its critical coverage of the Philippine government. It is part of the International Fact-Checking Network of the Poynter Institute and is one of Facebook's two Philippine partners in its third-party fact-checking program.
Kallxo is an online platform for reporting corruption, fraud, conflict of interest, and other related cases of misuse of official position, negligence and including cases on hampering the Kosovo citizens’ rights.
Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is an American website founded in 2015 by Dave M. Van Zandt. It considers four main categories and multiple subcategories in assessing the "political bias" and "factual reporting" of media outlets.
Climate Feedback (CF) is a web-based content annotation tool that allows qualified scientists to comment on stories online, adding context and noting inaccuracies. It is one of three websites under the Science Feedback parent organization that fact-checks media coverage. Science Feedback is a non-profit organization registered in France.
The Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica is a Latvia-based non-profit organization founded in 2011. It is based in Riga.
The StopFake website is a project of Ukrainian media NGO Media Reforms Center. It was founded in March 2014 by Ukrainian professors and students with the stated purpose of refuting Russian propaganda and fake news. It began as a Russian- and English-language fact-checking organization, and has grown to include a TV show broadcast on 30 local channels, a weekly radio show, and a strong social media following.
The Trust Project is a complex international consortium involving approximately 120 news organizations working towards greater transparency and accountability in the global news industry, including The Economist,Folha de São Paulo, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, Mic, Italy's La Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, and La Stampa. The Project was started in 2014 by Sally Lehrman, a journalist and former director of Santa Clara University's journalism ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and launched in November 2017.Richard Gingras, head of Google News is a co-founder. The Project is funded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s Philanthropic Fund, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the Markkula Foundation and Facebook.
OpIndia is an Indian right-wing news website known for frequently publishing misinformation. Founded in December 2014, the website has published fake news and Islamophobic commentary on many occasions.
Military Veterans in Journalism (MVJ) is an American nonprofit organization established in 2019 to support military veterans and their family members pursuing careers in journalism. Founded by two military veterans, MVJ aims to bridge the gap between military service and the journalism industry by providing mentorship and job opportunities for veterans seeking news careers.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)The Poynter Institute, which owns the Tampa Bay Times, hosted one such event on March 31.
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