Should journalists have to disclose when they take money from companies to “report” on issues? As this type of fake journalism becomes more common, one judge appears to have had enough.
Taking money to plug a company is a cardinal sin of journalism and can even be against the law. Yet, astro-turfing — spinning paid opinion as popular sentiment — remains a thriving trade all the same.
Researchers at Indiana University have set up a research project called Truthy to track and analyze what appear to be fake trends or memes on Twitter, and they have found some suspicious activity from a number of dummy accounts leading up to today’s mid-term elections.
