CINCINNATI – The Scripps Howard Foundation is providing a $3.8 million grant to fund the “Disarming Disinformation” project with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The three-year project will empower journalists and journalism students to fight disinformation in the news media.
“Disarming Disinformation” will operate under ICFJ’s Pamela Howard Forum for Global Crisis Reporting, which connects journalists in the U.S. and around the world with experts to strengthen their reporting. The forum honors ICFJ vice chair Pamela Howard, a Scripps Howard Foundation trustee emeritus, and her decades of leadership and contributions to journalism.
Thousands of journalists and journalism students, including those from the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University, will receive training on topics such as fact checking and verification and digital security.
The project will fund research into new tools to combat disinformation and will allow journalists worldwide to collaborate on investigations into misinformation and disinformation campaigns. The goal will be to produce and share resources, including case studies on the solutions revealed by the research and any lessons learned.
“From Russia’s war on Ukraine to the global COVID-19 pandemic to assaults on democracy in the United States and elsewhere, we’ve seen how these lies can have fatal results,” said ICFJ President Sharon Moshavi. “Every journalist in the world must become a disinformation reporter, and Disarming Disinformation will help address that urgent need.”
“Journalists face an uphill battle with inaccurate and false information spreading at an alarming rate,” said Liz Carter, president and CEO of the Scripps Howard Fund and Scripps Howard Foundation. “This approach will not only help journalists detect misinformation and disinformation but will also expose them to practical solutions to combat this issue, which is undermining trust in journalism across the globe.”
The initiative will begin with a series of training webinars followed by in-person workshops. The grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation will help fund the project until 2025.
Founded by members of the Scripps and Howard families, the Scripps Howard Foundation was recently joined by the Scripps Howard Fund as the philanthropic organizations of The E.W. Scripps Company.
Media contact: Molly Miossi, The E.W. Scripps Company, 513-977-3713, [email protected]
About the Scripps Howard Fund
The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports philanthropic causes important to The E.W. Scripps Company (NASDAQ: SSP) and the communities it serves, with a special emphasis on journalism education, excellence in journalism and childhood literacy. At the crossroads of the classroom and the newsroom, the Fund is a leader in supporting journalism through scholarships, internships, minority recruitment and development and First Amendment causes. The Scripps Howard Awards stand as one of the industry’s top honors for outstanding journalism, and the Fund’s annual “If You Give a Child a Book …” childhood literacy campaign has distributed thousands of new books to children in need across the nation. In support of its mission to create a better-informed world, the Fund also partners with Scripps brands to create awareness of local issues and support organizations that help build thriving communities. The Scripps Howard Foundation, an affiliated organization with the Scripps Howard Fund, supports Scripps’ charitable efforts through its endowment, key assets and major donations.