Professor Amanda Sturgill

a thinking smiley face has a hand on its chin ALT: a thinking smiley face has a hand on its chin

Today in Detection Deception: Equivocation

It's expected you get a war declaration before you start dropping bombs.

Argument I'm seeing:

We're not at war because we haven't declared war. Therefore we don't need to declare war.

Come on.

Spent Monday looking at applicants for a research seminar to look at AI & teaching/learning. I'm glad my university is investing in this. At the same time, I feel like the questions are numerous and weighty, but we're looking for a gun while the target is shrinking & zipping around at light speed.

💯

I voted. It was cool. Will do it again.

As an NC resident, it truly was horrendous the extent to which FEMA left the people in the western part of the state to fend for themselves.

I'm not at all a fan of congressional hearings being used for grandstanding, but it needed to be said and wasn't getting heard elsewhere.

Screenshot for Epstein files with information on how to contact Howard Lutnick.

Why did the Access Hollywood tape fade out while the Epstein files have staying power? The media, politics and the audience interact to keep some scandals around. I get into the how and why on this week's UnSpun

Here, or where you pod.

bit.ly/4a6GJWg

4/

Community:

Supply chain/rising prices due to fuel issues overall

Gas prices and effects on

*Local business

*Individuals

*Public transit

*Schools

Do local Muslims/Jews feel unsafe

Iranian doctors/other health workers

What do congress critters from area think/plan to do?

3/

Campus:

Alumni reporting on this

Students in ROTC or reserves

Campus experts on
*Supply chain and fuel price economic issues
*Geopolitics and history
*Religion issues
*Cultural/artistic heritage lost in wars

2/

Campus:

Students who are abroad - are they safe

Spring break will become complicated/$$ for some

Students thoughts on the draft

People on campus from Iran and other immediately affected countries
*Worry about family members
*Feelings about regime in Iran
*Is campus supporting?

I have beat reporting today, and it will be a chance to talk about how you find stories on your beat from current events. My students are a covering campus team and a covering community team. Here are ideas I came up with on the way to work.

Throw yours in the comments, if you've got them.

Just finished scripting tomorrow's UnSpun on why some scandals stick around while others die out. It's 🔥

Private jet prices soar as wealthy scramble to leave Dubai People drive to Oman and Saudi in hope of a flight, while most tourists stay stuck in hotels and on cruise ships

One casualty of a the media's relationship to power: I know about great deal about the effects of current events on the rich. Effects on the disadvantages are often just told with statistics.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

It’s very cool that the American news outlet with perhaps the most robust reporting on Iran, The Washington Post, fired everyone at its Middle East desk 3 weeks ago.

Picture of a pair doing a sliding event at the Olympics. Basically it is one man lying on top of another on a very small sled on a track made of ice. Embedded text means When the passenger in front of you on the place reclines their seat.

#SundaySillies Modern travel edition.

**As a child, I used to think flying was an amazing adventure. Nice people smiled at you and gave you a little pin of airplane wings and you could leave snow and get off to palm trees.

Now you are trapped in a metal tube with people who hate you.

Considering quitting professoring and just starting a YouTube channel where I eat delicious foods and react.

I mean, people do it, so why not me?

...

20/ Student Q: Limits on supplying reporting records to authorities.

@thadogburn.bsky.social Covering protests often means local police or loaner police who are not up on media rights. "Protest that loudly at the time."

McMichael "Call a lawyer."

19/ Student Q: With pressure to cater and to censor stories, what's your biggest concern for the direction of news.

Zerwick: "The time is now for young people and us older people to be courageous." and avoid obeying in advance.

18/ Student Q about mental health.

Panelists:
*Newsroom discussions about looking out for each other.
*News leaders have to check expectations - encourage staff outside interests and breaks.

(Sturg aside: Resources here gcjt.org)

17/ Some discussion of anonymous sources, and how it's a different issue in a threatening environment. Ethical discussions in newsrooms are taking new forms and urgencies.

If you interview a protester, can they deny their name and wear a mask?

How about if you interview an ICE agent?

16/ Tips for student journalists from panel:

Don't go out alone
Have set meeting places
Have set times to contact the editor
Don't wear press badge on a lanyard
If you have access to lawyer, keep contact
Media vests can help but can also make you a target
Take care to not become the story <- Cash

15/Some discussion of the consolidation in the news industry and how it is putting news organizations under control of large companies. Zerwick "If they are so aligned with the administration, it's pretty close to state-run media."

14/ @ranalcash.bsky.social "We do not have state run media here. We will not have state run media. We cannot and will not allow that to happen."

"At the end of the day, it's just power and the government wanting to have power over what is reported."

13/ @ranalcash.bsky.social "It takes courage to do this job."

She encourages students to not be afraid, but to know the state of the industry.

12/ Points to a fact check on the #SOTU about the fact that the Charlotte Light Rail killer was not in country illegally. An official posted the story on X with a header "You can't hate journalists enough" (an aside, search for that on X)

11/ @thadogburn.bsky.social "It all goes back to intimidation. They are just trying to get journalists to not do their job."

10/ Zerwick - Court backing of the First Amendment is "very tenuous." Clarence Thomas is on the record as wanting to revisit Times v. Sullivan, a major press freedom case. [GIFT LINK] wapo.st/4u0ax0j

Marion County agrees to pay out $3M for newspaper raid, expresses regret • Kansas Reflector A handful of county-level officials who were involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.

9/ @ranalcash.bsky.social kansasreflector.com/2025/11/11/m... brings up this case where a newspaper and the publisher/editor's home was raided because of reporting from a public record.

8/ Even if the cases against journalists fall apart due to lack of merit, they still cost journalism resources.

Also, the publicity on those cases "creates this tenor that the journalists must be doing something wrong" for the public.

7/ @thadogburn.bsky.social shared that the @newsobserver.com journalists have been questioned and threatened over coverage.

6/
@ncopengov.bsky.social director Pate McMichael points out that it's a situation where the First Amendment is being used, somewhat ironically, as a weapon to restrict other. First Amendment rights.