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Quick summary:

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, navigating falsehoods becomes increasingly critical. This essay explores the dangers of misinformation, highlights efforts to combat it by URL Media news partners and provides strategies to help you to discern and think critically when evaluating news sources this election season, with reporting from Capital B, Documented, AsAmNews, TANTV Studios, Outlier Media, Prism, WURD Radio and Epicenter-NYC.

With less than 110 days until Election Day, we’ve been told endlessly that this is the most crucial election of our lives. Yet, no amount of political forewarning could have prepared us for this tense political moment. In recent weeks, our timelines and news feeds have been saturated with conspiracy theories and misinformation as calls for Biden to abandon his re-election bid grow louder within the Democratic Party. We’ve also witnessed an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and a fatal police shooting near the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee.  

With all that is happening, URL Media wants to provide readers of this newsletter with a game plan to push back against false and misleading information this election season, especially in a year when researchers say misinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the U.S. Have you decided who you’ll be voting for — or whether you’ll be voting at all? This newsletter includes tools to help you critically evaluate what you see, hear and read in the media and online, helping you separate fiction from fact.

At URL Media, our partners are doing the good work of holding elected officials and mainstream media outlets accountable for misinformation and disinformation, including falsehoods that further harm marginalized communities, incite fear among the public and manipulate voters. But first, here’s a bit about why misinformation and conspiracy theories are dangerous — and why people believe them.

Research shows that the more people hear falsehoods, the more likely they are to believe them. Why? Because repetition is powerful — and a claim repeated over time is often perceived as more truthful than new information. (This may explain why some elected officials and political groups persist in claiming that “illegal” migrants cause more crime even when data shows otherwise.) 

Psychologists suggest that the best way to debunk false information is by explaining why it’s false and providing accurate alternatives. This is the approach taken by URL Media partner Capital B, a nonprofit national news organization reporting for Black communities across the country, while reporting on the weeklong RNC that ended Thursday night. Partnering with *PolitiFact, the outlet has delivered readers fact checks on claims made about the economy at the convention.

For example, on the first night of the RNC, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene claimed that the Biden Administration says “our economy is thriving, yet hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years.” PolitiFact, through its independent fact-checking process, deemed this statement mostly false. They provided more accurate information, comparing the employment numbers of foreign-born and native-born Americans since Biden took office in early 2021 to debunk her claim. (Employment rates for native-born Americans have, in fact, increased during the current administration.) This debunk showed how a statement, without added context, is misleading.

The following day, PolitiFact fact-checked more claims about crime, immigration and national security. Of those statements they fact-checked, only one given by a California mother proved to be factually true: “We have seen the highest number of fentanyl deaths during the Biden-Harris administration.”

Plus: What the GOP is saying about Black votes and Black jobs (Outlier Media)

Recently, two URL Media partners, AsAmNews and Documented, called out the NYPost for falsely reporting that the gunman involved in Saturday’s Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania was Chinese. The shooter, who attempted to assassinate the former president, left two people critically injured and was killed by Secret Service agents. Both partners revealed that the original NYPost inaccurately identified the 20-year-old shooter’s racial identity. The AsAmNews report included a screenshot of the article’s error, which the daily tabloid had retracted Saturday night. 

But the retraction comes a little too late for Chinese community representatives and groups who are outraged by the false report, saying for them it echoes the early days of the pandemic when the community faced increased hate due to COVID-19.

“What the New York Post did was incredibly dangerous,” the nonprofit organization Stop AAPI Hate said in a statement cited by AsAmNews. “Yes, the Post issued a retraction. But the shooting of a former president is, frankly, a shocking moment for it to have engaged in such reckless misreporting. It’s hard to believe the New York Post did not realize what was on the line when it published that false claim – the safety of Asian American communities.

Plus: Your ultimate New York voting guide for the 2024 elections (Epicenter-NYC)

In a polarized election season, where some voters are considering sitting out, it’s important to critically evaluate online news and sources to make informed decisions. This means being vigilant about the accuracy of the information you consume, as misinformation can significantly impact your understanding of candidates and their platforms this election season.

Here’s a short checklist of questions you can ask yourself when verifying online information this election season (developed by the Stanford History Education Group):

  1. Who is behind this information?
  2. What’s the evidence?
  3. What do other sources say?  

I also urge you to seek news from a variety of sources, including independently-owned publications like those at URL Media. And don’t just stick to news that aligns with your existing views — explore sources you wouldn’t normally consider. From J.D. Vance’s political trajectory covered by TANTV Studios to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 reported by Prism and WURD Radio’s public letter following President Biden’s appearance on its radio station earlier this month, our 35 news partners offer diverse and multifaceted perspectives on the election season for readers across the country.

We’ve also ramped up our own coverage this election season focusing on voting communities of color who might otherwise be overlooked — with a dedicated page on our website, as well as the following stories.

Please read and share responsibly:

*Owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute, PolitiFact is run by a team of editors and journalists who monitor transcripts, speeches, news stories, press releases and campaign brochures and decide what statements to fact check every day.

Ariam Alula (how to say it) is URL Media’s first audience manager. She works closely with URL Media’s Editorial Director and leads the network’s social and newsletter content while further developing and executing the brand’s strategic audience goals. Alula who was born and raised in The Bronx had this to say about her work upon joining the network in the fall of 2022.

“I'm committed to helping our audience understand how issues in their own backyard impact other BIPOC communities. Also, I believe that our network's content amplification and original reporting should fully reflect and affirm the customs and cultural norms of our multicultural, multidisciplinary, and geographically diverse audiences. As BIPOC communities have and continue to be grossly misrepresented by the mainstream media, this part of the work can’t be overstated. Also growing up as a child of immigrants, community is an integral part of my identity, and it's something I bring to URL Media every day.”

Before joining the network, Alula sharpened her range of skills and interests in newsletter curation and editing, audience strategy and research, and measuring and tracking impact. In recent years Alula has worked for many organizations in the journalism support space, such as Coda Story while based in the Republic of Georgia and U.S.-based organizations like the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Public Square Team at Democracy Fund, Online News Association and Women Do News. She has also written for the American Press Institute’s Need to Know newsletter.

Alula is also a proud graduate of the engagement journalism program at the Craig Newmark Journalism School at the City University of New York, where she spent 16 long, insightful and experimental months working with family caregivers of people with autism in New York City.