Every day now, we hear about the woes of readers unable to distinguish between “fake news” and real news, as if undependable news reporting is anything new. Readers and fact investigators have always needed to know how to figure out for themselves what to believe and what to question further.
I am proud to have
This blog may be one of the few publications in the Western world that has never written the word “Kardashian,” but that has now changed. In the stories about the robbery in Paris of Kim Kardashian we found numerous issues that touch on the work we do.
After my recent book The Art of Fact
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
–Joni Mitchell
Today’s decision by the Second Circuit that Microsoft did not have to hand over data stored on its server in Ireland should remind us all that information isn’t just “out there.” As with printed information so it is sometimes with electronic
What lesson does the Brexit vote hold for anyone conducting or contemplating fact investigation?
Don’t let confirmation bias muddy your thinking.
One of the key “Investigator’s Enemies” identified in my book, The Art of Fact Investigation, confirmation bias is what many of us tend to do when looking into an issue: we find what
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal about “Why the Virtual Reality Hype is About to Come Crashing Down” makes the simple point that computers haven’t caught up to all the permutations of real life to make a “virtual reality” headset experience resemble a genuine experience.
A short demo is one thing, but life goes
Due diligence is all about following up on red flags, but if you don’t find them, there’s nothing on which to follow up.
Thus, our tireless refrain: turn over every piece of public record information you can about a person, and don’t leave it to others.
We were reminded of this by the story this
The next time an investigator tells you he can legally “ping” someone’s cell phone to figure out where they are going, run away fast.
We’ve written before about the illegality of getting a friendly phone company employee to help out with cell phone tower signal data that helps to locate people. As we wrote in
“TelexFree is already creating MILLIONAIRES and now is YOUR turn.” So read the now defunct website of TelexFree Inc., which U.S. officials ordered to be taken down earlier this month. Massachusetts company TelexFree Inc. held itself out as a low-cost internet telephone company. In reality, its founders were allegedly running a billion dollar global
Yesterday, a judge in Spain named Princess Cristina, King Juan Carlos’s youngest daughter, as a suspect in an ongoing money laundering and tax fraud case involving the Princess’s husband, Inaki Urdangarin. The judge alleges that the Princess and her husband participated in a scheme to embezzle approximately $8 million in public funds, which
Now that 60 Minutes has apologized for airing a false eyewitness account of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, what can investigators, journalists and others who deal in facts learn from the incident, well summarized by the Columbia Journalism Review here?