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Disinformation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It feeds on times of crisis and when authoritative information is needed faster than trusted messengers can get it out. This couldn’t have been more obvious last week as police departments raided college campuses and pro-Palestinian protests across the country.
That’s why I invited my colleague, senior politics writer Vittoria Elliott (hey Tori!), to cowrite today’s newsletter. In this issue, we speak with student journalists across the country about their work amid an overwhelming amount of disinformation.
Let’s talk about it.
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Politics has never been stranger—or more online. WIRED Politics Lab is your guide through the vortex of extremism, conspiracies, and disinformation.
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The Truth and Fiction of Campus Protests
As campus protests reached new peaks last week, student newspapers like the Columbia Spectator at Columbia University were not only tasked with covering their peers but also the false and alarming narratives being spun up about and around them.
“None of us saw all of this coming, in terms of the national attention,” Esha Karam, managing editor at the Columbia Spectator, told us. “It was definitely unprecedented and took us by surprise when things started to pick up.”
Karam and her colleagues were some of the few journalists allowed on campus last week when the New York Police Department raided the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia. With outside reporters mostly unable to enter campus, the Spectator staffers were essentially on their own and forced to contend with the conspiracies swirling around the protests and resulting crackdown.
Misinformation has been everywhere at Columbia: NYPD officers suggested that the large chains and locks used to secure the doors to Hamilton Hall were evidence that the protests were being led by outside agitators. (Actually, the locks were the same ones recommended on the school’s website as a bike lock chain.) The stated number of arrested students also fluctuated depending on whether the information came from the police or school administration. Earlier in the week, conspiracists claimed that malevolent billionaires were supplying the students with tents.
“I think the way that people saw the protest was completely different from how we observed it on campus. It wasn't as rowdy as had been depicted. It was actually quite peaceful,” says Katrina Ventura, a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, which runs the Columbia News Service. “The coverage was closed off to the press, and they only had a few moments inside campus, so it was easy for [media] to make mistakes … It was ripe for disinformation in that sense.”
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One of the big topics of dissension was the issue of “outside agitators,” a narrative spread by both the Columbia administration and the NYPD that the protests were filled with protesters from outside of the campus community. Student journalists have been forced to deal with this too: In a story on the protests, Ventura and a classmate found that most of the 13 outside agitators identified by the university were either alumni or people associated with organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which has a chapter at Columbia. Karam told WIRED that the Spectator is still trying to verify these numbers. Despite their reporting to the contrary, New York mayor Eric Adams still said in a statement last week that Columbia’s protests had “basically been co-opted by professional, outside agitators.”
Similarly, Leon Orlov-Sullivan, a reporter at the City College of New York publication The Campus, told us that the school’s statements didn’t make clear what it meant by “outside” protesters. City College is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, meaning that students from other CUNY schools are often able to access the City College campus with their IDs.
“Media reporting and messaging from the administration wasn't clear about how many people were affiliated with the CUNY system as a whole,” says Orlov-Sullivan. “Whereas I would say that while I was at the encampment, the vast majority of people were somehow affiliated with a CUNY system.”
In another story, Columbia News Service’s Ventura mapped out where on campus the protests were actually taking place, in part, she says, to help readers understand that while the encampments dominated headlines externally, they actually only took up a small portion of the campus.
Stories from student journalists at the Spectator underwent intense editing and fact-checking knowing that they would be read by an audience larger than just the student population. Every protest report went through seven rounds of edits with copy editors fact-checking each line, Karam said.
Other schools where protests were happening prioritized live updates as opposed to debunking false claims. “We don't feel like we necessarily have the resources or institutional backing to do full-blown fact checks,” Cat Carroll, a reporter for the University of Wisconsin’s Badger Herald newspaper, told us. “We're the only ones here reporting live updates and providing information day in and day out.”
Elea Castiglione, a student reporter at the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that the police did not arrest students at her school’s protests, and the encampment was peaceful. “Each school is unique,” she says. “And I think that the college papers specifically have done a really good job focusing on what is actually happening at our schools and not fitting our schools perfectly into a broader narrative of student activism right now.”
At a time when trust in media is painfully low, student journalists managed to demonstrate the kinds of skills necessary to build trust within a community and to push back on sensationalized narratives and disinformation—even when it was coming from people and institutions with a lot more power.
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—Makena and Vittoria
The Chatroom
How have you been following the news coming out of the pro-Palestinian campus protests as of late? Have you seen any troubling falsehoods being reported by national media or across social media?
This week, I want to hear more from you on all of this! Leave a comment on the site, or send me an email at mail@wired.com.
💬 Leave a comment below this article.
WIRED Reads
The Affordable Connectivity Program Has a Lifeline in the Senate: Ben Ray Luján, a senator from New Mexico, came out with a new measure to fund the Affordable Connectivity Program that started to wind down last month. It has some serious bipartisan support.The Answer to Election Deniers Is in an Idaho County Website: In 2020, election deniers overwhelmed officials in a small Idaho county with countless data requests. Now, officials have created a new online tool to provide them with the data they’re after on demand.A (Strange) Interview With the Russian-Military-Linked Hackers Targeting US Water Utilities: A hacking group called the Cyber Army of Russia has targeted US utility facilities. WIRED’s Andy Greenberg spoke to them. Or, at least their AI spokeswoman named “Julia.”
Want more? Subscribe now for unlimited access to WIRED.
What Else We’re Reading
🔗 CISA, FBI Resuming Talks With Social Media Firms Over Disinformation Removal, Senate Intel Chair Says: Last year, the US Supreme Court took up a case that could ban the federal government from alerting social media companies to ongoing disinformation campaigns on their platforms. A senator told reporters this week that those conversations have started up again, pending a ruling. (NextGov)
🔗 Why Would America Ever Want to Emulate China’s Internet Laws?: TikTok critics have asserted that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, serves its users only educational content rather than Tide pod challenges. Louise Matsakis spent a few hours scrolling through the app and found it didn’t look too dissimilar from its American counterpart. (The Atlantic)
🔗 Trump Super PAC Brings "MAGA" to TikTok: Donald Trump’s biggest super PAC, MAGA Inc., joined TikTok on Tuesday and is posting news clips and Dan Scavino tweets. (Axios)
The Download
One last thing! I’m back on the podcast this week with Vittoria and our editor and host, Leah Feiger. This week, we’re talking about—you guessed it—how student journalists are handling the disinformation consuming the coverage of their school’s protests. Plus, David Gilbert joins in the second half to discuss his reporting on how a Russian influence operation is exploiting the situation.
You can hear it wherever you listen to podcasts! Download, share, tell your mom.
That’s it for today—thanks again for subscribing. You can get in touch with me via email, Instagram, X and Signal at makenakelly.32.
