On his first day as an assignment editor for CNN, David T. Z. Mindich was told that a fire in a welfare hotel does not have the same news value as a fire in the Waldorf Hotel.  This provoked a decades-long investigation of news values, including how journalism is impacted by national identity, bigotry, and what Mindich calls “cultural proximity.”  The author of a book on journalistic objectivity, Mindich will outline how battles between “fake news” and truth played out in the coverage of lynching in the 1890s, pitting mainstream journalists against the crusading reporter Ida B. Wells.  These issues are still current today, in the era of BLM, George Floyd, and the calls to tell more inclusive and truthful stories.

If you have a student group that would like to meet with David during the day on Wednesday, Nov. 3, please contact Christine.E.Monigle@Dartmouth.edu

Learn more about the Wright Center for the Study of Computation and Just Societies working group, Fake News, Propoganda, and Narrative Force.