Free Webinar – Getting to the Truth: How to Detect Fake News
Speaker: Thom Fladung, Managing Partner, Hennes Communications
Thursday, October 13th, 2022 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-4)
Fake news is not new news. Masters of the art include Benjamin Franklin. But in the digital media era, when information – true and false – travels in seconds, fake news has become a prevalent challenge in society and can taint your case before you ever enter the courtroom. This seminar delves into the history of fake news, explores how we are living through a second coming of Yellow Journalism and provides practical tips for how to recognize fake news – and avoid spreading it.
Learning Objectives:
- Lessons from history may show how to overcome the latest fake news era, so fake news doesn’t follow you into courtroom deliberations.
- Understanding confirmation bias and why it is the gasoline thrown on the fake news fire.
- Practical tips for recognizing fake news and how to be a better – and better-informed – news consumer and legal advocate.
This one-hour webinar is sponsored by the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association. By arrangement, this webinar is open to everyone, including non-attorneys. If you do not need Continuing Legal Education credit, there will be no charge. To register, click here.
Speaker:
Thom Fladung serves as managing partner for Hennes Communications. He brings more than 33 years of daily newspaper and digital media experience to the agency, having served as a top editor at some of the nation’s largest newspapers such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Detroit Free Press. Over the past decade, Fladung has also played a lead role in helping newsrooms enter the digital age, including web, social media and handheld digital devices.
Fladung is expert at crafting effective, strategic messages on hard deadlines. He is also experienced at quickly evaluating, assembling and disseminating information – crisis management skills that are critically important for clients coping with reputation management issues and breaking crises.
He is intimately familiar with the relentless content requirements of the 24/7 news cycle, and understands the necessity and nuances of communicating on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. He recognizes the crucial role social media plays as a first alert for many consumers of information.
Fladung has overseen newsrooms of more than 300 journalists and has directed dozens of award-winning investigations, breaking-news stories, human interest stories and features. Highlights include helping direct six journalists reporting from the Iraq war after the invasion in 2003 for the Detroit Free Press; leading coverage during the Northeast blackout of 2003 in Detroit, and getting the newspaper out with no power; and overseeing coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2007 while serving as editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.