Here’s how we’re fighting election misinformation.

Insurrectionists scale the walls of the Capitol Building from the West Front on Jan. 6, 2021. (Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)

Dear Reader,

If the 2020 election taught us anything, it’s that misinformation can travel fast on the internet, and news organizations need to be prepared to keep up with its pace.

We at PublicSource are not waiting until autumn to get started. As PublicSource’s local government reporter, I have already begun investigating what is happening in our region around election administration and what’s coming next for some of the most prominent actors of 2020.

In March, we uncovered a GOP faction’s scheme to purge tens of thousands of names from Allegheny County’s voter rolls. We were the only news outlet in the region to publicize the plan, and we pressed the county’s Elections Division for details on what it means for the voters involved.

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In May, we revisited one of the most virulent pieces of disinformation from 2020 — the false claim by former President Trump that mail-in ballots were the target of fraud in that election. We found that local Republican leaders want their supporters to vote by mail this year to boost their chances of success, but many of the party’s members are still skeptical of the voting method, apparently still convinced by the former president’s lies.

Reporting on disinformation is an evolving science. We met with Pitt’s Disinformation Lab in March to discuss the best approaches, including how to decide when to publicly expose a lie, and when doing so would give false theories more oxygen and do more harm than good. These are hard choices, but the discussion reinforced for me how important our role is, this year more than usual.

We’re committed to making sure our region has accurate, fact-checked information before, during and after this fall’s election — but we can’t do this work without support from readers like yourself. If this topic matters to you, please make a donation to PublicSource today and your gift will be fully matched by our generous match pool donors.

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Thank you for your readership and support.

Sincerely,

Charlie Wolfson
Local government reporter
PublicSource

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