The Alabama Public Radio news team addressed an international delegation with the U.S. State Department. The subject was how APR teaches student interns how to avoid news disinformation. News director Pat Duggins represented the team before an audience of journalists, educators, and cybersecurity experts from Europe, Central Asia, the Balkans, and the Baltics. The delegation is here in the United States through the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.
“Our group is in the field of tackling disinformation,” said Iglika Ivanova, a board member of the Media Literacy Coalition in Bulgaria. “Almost all of us people from 20 Different countries from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, are working in nongovernmental organizations, or in journalism, like fact checking organizations.”
APR mentors students from the University of Alabama on how to interview newsmakers, and how to write for broadcast news. This work takes place on behalf of UA’s College of Communication and Information Sciences. APR interns write about sixty percent of the stories that are used during 107 minutes of statewide newscasts each week. The newsroom’s graduates currently hold jobs with media companies in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and throughout the southeast.
APR also told the delegation about one technique taught in the APR newsroom, called the public radio “two source rule.” If a reporter uses information from another news organization, he or she must have two completely independent versions of the story from different news outlets featuring the same facts. APR’s presentation also dealt with “where” young people get their news. A study by the Pew Research Center says 50% of Americans get their news coverage from social media. Both conservatives and liberals complain of having their posts censored by major internet sites.
One elusive topic was what to do about news disinformation globally. APR explained what is false information to one person is the right of free speech to another. The news team's international audience was made of people on the “front lines” of combating disinformation, especially among young people.
“We have a very big problem,” said Tamara Bajcic of the group Demostat in Serbia. “Because more than 80% of our people in Serbia actually are pro Russians. They support Russia in this war, and they support Putin. They also do not check and recheck news and they just go to read what they want to hear and what they want to see. So that is actually a big problem. So we're trying to teach them how at least a little bit to check things and how to recognize disinformation.”
Delegation members also represented sixteen nations, including Poland, Kosovo, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Europe Parliament. Today’s talk was Alabama Public Radio’s third such invitation from the U.S. State Department. The news team was asked to speak about its fourteen-month investigation into human trafficking before an audience representing thirteen nations from Africa. APR’s second presentation for the Agency was on the team’s yearlong project on rural health before a group of Fulbright scholars and alumni of the Peace Corps.
The International Visitor Leadership Program is considered the State Department’s premiere professional exchange program. Emerging international leaders are flown to the United States to speak, and forge ties, with Americans with similar interests, concerns, and areas of expertise. Former IVLP participants who went onto to become world leaders includes Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, the late Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias of Costa Rica.