Participants in the 2024 Politico Journalism Institute outside SOC's McKinley Building

The Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Reveal published "40 Acres and a Lie," a major investigation that identifies more than 1200 formerly enslaved. Alexia Fernandez Campbell (a former IRW fellow and an SOC graduate) was the lead reporter on the project. SOC graduate student Audrey Hill and IRW undergraduate fellow Elijah Pittman (Howard University) contributed research to the project, which was edited in part by IRW executive editor Wesley Lowery.

SOC's Charles Lewis fellow Katherine Hapgood published an enterprise article looking at disparity in voter turnout and participation between low income voters and high income voters, partnering with Washington City Paper. SOC faculty member and IRW data editor Aarushi Sahejpal contributed data reporting to this project, which was edited by IRW executive editor Wesley Lowery.

Kurt Braddock has been named an affiliated faculty member of the AU SIS Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology. Through his affiliation with CSINT, Kurt will be exploring research funding opportunities with Professor Samantha Bradshaw, whose research focuses on the technological drivers of disinformation production and consumption.

Kurt was also interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the Fiserv Forum in Wisconsin. Specifically, he was asked about the inclusion of Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones on the forum, and the potential for their inclusion to cultivate conspiratorial beliefs and extremism.

Claudia Myers recently directed the feature film, "The Bad Guardian," starring Melissa Joan Hart and La La Anthony. It had its national broadcast premiere on Lifetime May 18th garnering high ratings, and it has aired twice more since then. The movie is described as, "a riveting thriller about one woman's fight to save her father from the clutches of a corrupt and greedy court-appointed guardian." The film is now available on Amazon Prime.

Claudia Myers and Laura Waters Hinson's immigration-themed short documentary "The Test" screened at several film festivals in the last couple of months including FilmFest DC, The Home Is Distant Shores Festival, The Hill Country Film Festival, and most recently DC/DOX. The film was DP'ed by recent FMA grad Amin El Siwi (shown below in FilmFest DC Q&A), and associate-produced by FMA grad Heather Brumley.

From the top: (1) Laura Waters Hinson and Claudia Myers with a poster for The Test; (2) Amin El Siwi during a Q&A at Film Fest DC; (3) Claudia Myers at DC/DOX

Aram Sinnreich was quoted extensively in Newsweek about Beyoncé’s new album and the CMA awards.

A new review for Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert’s The Secret Life of Data was published in CyberNews.

John C. Watson was quoted in an article published by Politifact, the fact-checking website of the Poynter Institute, and helped debunk the claim that President Ronald Reagan made Fox News possible by eviscerating the “Fairness Doctrine.” Reagan worked to eliminate the doctrine, but numerous other factors led to the creation of Fox News.

John was also interviewed by media reporter Dominick Mastrangelo of The Hill about the journalism ethics violations associated with the secretly recorded and recently released comments of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Watson was critical of the undercover liberal activist Lauren Windsor as well as the mainstream news organizations that publish her disclosures. “In journalism, using deception to get information is inherently unethical. However, if the information is absolutely important for the public to have and there’s no other way to get it [deception may be warranted] … I have yet to see anything she has done that reaches that threshold.”

Jane Hall was interviewed for her take on the June 27 presidential debate in media and politics, before the debate, by a number of media outlets, including: the Wall Street Journal and CBS News. She was also part of an AU media a briefing session for journalists in advance of the debates.

Emeritus professor Joe Campbell addressed the run-up to the Biden-Trump presidential debate in two international publications this week. Le Devoir, a French-language newspaper published in Montreal, interviewed him for a pre-debate assessment of the candidates and the proceedings. Campbell suggested that Biden, as a surprising effort at conciliation, might consider asking New York’s governor, a fellow Democrat, to pardon Trump’s recent felony convictions in New York. Campbell also wrote an op-ed article on the historic 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate for The Conversation. He noted that commentary published in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy-Nixon encounter differ markedly from what has become conventional wisdom about that debate.