It is not often that cold, hard facts determine what people care most about and what they believe. Instead, it is the power and familiarity of a well-told story that reigns supreme. Whether it’s a heartfelt anecdote, a personal testimony or a meme echoing familiar cultural narratives, stories tend to stick with us, move us and shape our beliefs.
The Conversation
In late February, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters presented the State Board of Education with a 400-page revision of the state’s social studies standards—just hours before a scheduled vote. The changes, which included highly politicized revisions about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, blindsided board members and ignited bipartisan criticism from lawmakers and educators across the state.
The Integrity Project
In spring 2022, model Lori Harvey casually revealed in a TikTok video that after gaining “15 pounds of relationship weight” she lost it by eating “maybe 1,200 calories in a day, max” alongside twice-daily workouts. The clip went viral — reproduced by outlets from Yahoo News to the Daily Mail — and ignited a firestorm. Nutrition experts and viewers alike pounced on the advice.
The Integrity Project
The Independent and other media outlets have recently reported on the Trump administration’s cuts of over $1 billion in federal research grants, with a significant portion targeting programs that studied misinformation—particularly those examining how falsehoods spread online and the role of social media in amplifying them.
The Integrity Project
Health authorities across Mexico are scrambling to contain the nation’s biggest measles outbreak in decades. Cases have been concentrated in the Mennonite community — long skeptical of vaccines and distrustful of authorities — in the northern border state of Chihuahua.
The Associated Press
A first-of-its-kind study from researchers at Michigan State University reveals that individuals who experience the most distress and impairment in daily functioning from social media use are more likely to believe fake news.
Michigan State University Today
Misinformation is legion in the 21st century, polluting our politics, corroding public trust, and making it harder to have honest, fact-based conversations. We all know it’s a problem, but many of us don’t admit we ourselves might be contributing to it.
The Integrity Project
Many of us may have friends and family who have fallen down the information rabbit holes of intense partisanship, conspiracy theories or deeper holes of extremism. With both sides of the political aisle falling victim to these rabbit holes, now is as good of a time as any to help our friends and family.
The State Press
The publisher of The New York Times is warning about what he says is a trend of misinformation permeating public discourse and an increasingly hostile posture toward the press taken by leaders around the world.
The Hill
At the 2025 SXSW EDU conference, a panel of experts discussed the evolving importance of media literacy education amid rising misinformation and political polarization.
The Integrity Project
Voice of America (VOA) is planning to partner with One America News (OAN), according to Kari Lake, who serves as the senior adviser at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
The Hill
Health officials are raising alarms over the spread of misinformation amid a growing measles outbreak across the United States, with Georgia falling short of herd immunity thresholds.
WANF / Atlanta News First
Five years after the start of COVID-19 pandemic and the communications challenges, divisions, and false claims that followed, less than half of the public say they have at least some confidence in the federal government’s health agencies like the CDC and the FDA to carry out many of their core responsibilities.
KFF Health News
Decades of psychological research suggest that authoritarian leaders and their admirers consistently share one thing in common: they twist the truth. To accomplish this, such leaders frequently follow a common playbook of attacking truth tellers and truth-telling institutions as a prelude to controlling information infrastructure and a broad-scale decimation of scientific programs.
TIME
A global group of broadcasters and publishers is calling on artificial intelligence developers to make sure their technology serves the public by helping to counter misinformation and protect the value of fact-based news.
The Associated Press
The Indian government has recently banned 16 Pakistani YouTube channels, citing their role in spreading provocative, communally sensitive content and misinformation targeted against India. The decision, announced Monday, comes just days after a terrorist attack April 22 in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, which left 26 civilians dead.
The Integrity Project
As an immunologist who works in biomedical research, I know misinformation and pseudoscience about cancer is not only frustrating but also extremely dangerous. And if any of you watched the recent Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, let me tell you: that is only scratching the surface of dangerous lies that circulate in wellness spheres.
Skeptical Inquirer
Power in the 21st century is no longer confined to ships and boots on the ground. Increasingly, it tweets, trolls, and manipulates. As the line between truth and fiction continues to blur in the digital age, misinformation and disinformation have emerged as potent weapons in their own right in the geopolitical arsenal—a destructive force that never needs to eat, sleep, or reload, silently bypassing borders and fences to target our hearts and minds.
The Integrity Project
‘The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.’ So wrote Thucydides in the ‘History of the Peloponnesian War,’ and the Greek historian’s cold-eyed observation still holds.
The Conversation
In the ongoing battle between fiction and reality, fiction — much of it created by Russia’s robust disinformation machine — appears to be winning. A national YouGov survey commissioned by NewsGuard found that one third of Americans believe at least one false claim being spread by Russian media outlets.
NewsGuard
