In this chaotic information age, what news sources can you trust? How can you tell which news organizations are sound and factual and which are unreliable?
For this episode, Sarah and David talk with James Warren, former Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune and media columnist for Poynter Institute. Jim is now executive editor of NewsGuard, a new rating system for thousands of online news sources from The Washington Post to Breitbart to essential small-town online newspapers. Billed as a type of "JD Powers or Consumer Reports" for objective evaluation of news sites, the rating system works as an extension to any web browser. Jim talks to us about how Newsguard evaluates sites - as well as its revealing examinations of Russian propaganda and health hoaxes regarding Covid-19. Sarah asks Jim and David about the value of the presidential press briefings that devolve into propaganda and the standards for using anonymous sources when covering an administration prone to leaks and hostility to the press.