Climate scientists inadvertently support the idea that they are partisans when they do not account for "inconvenient evidence," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, told scientists and journalists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, Calif. Jamieson also said flawed studies must be retracted much more quickly.
A new study suggests that using emotionally evocative images on cigarette warning labels such as rotting teeth and a diseased lung is important in making the labels more memorable and effective in conveying the risks of smoking. The study addresses a key point raised in 2012 by the U.S. courts, which ruled that the pictorial labels were unconstitutional in part because they "did not convey any information at all."
FactCheck.org, the nonpartisan fact-checking site, has introduced a new feature, "SciCheck," to investigate science-based claims in political speech. In a blog post announcing the feature, Eugene Kiely, the director of FactCheck.org, said SciCheck "will focus exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy."
Peggy Charren, a major force in improving children's television -- and a grassroots activist whose work was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as the inaugural Annenberg Public Policy Center award for distinguished lifetime contribution to children's television -- died Jan. 22 at her home outside Boston.
Since President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, FactCheck.org’s posts checking claims in the speech and the GOP responses have been republished on sites across the web and shared thousands of times on social media.
Pollster Peter Hart conducted a focus group with a dozen voters in Aurora, Col., on Jan. 8 for the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Hart, director of APPC's "Voices of the Voters," convened the group just as a new, Republican-controlled Congress takes office and as candidates start emerging for the 2016 election.
Visiting Scholar Jo Holz (ASC ’81) joined the Annenberg Public Policy Center in July to begin work on a sociocultural history of American children’s television. Her resulting book will cover the development of major television shows from the beginning of children’s programming up through present-day offerings.
Supermodel Petra Nemcova was vacationing in Thailand a decade ago, on Dec. 26, when it was hit by a devastating tsunami that destroyed communities in 14 countries and took the lives 230,000 people. Amy Jordan, APPC's associate director, writes in The Hill about Nemcova's work to turn tragedy and social media into social action.
Year after year, the suicide rate is at its lowest in the United States during the holiday season, but nearly three-quarters of U.S. newspaper stories linking suicide and the holidays during the 2013-2014 season incorrectly said the opposite.
PHILADELPHIA — Just in time for Bill of Rights Day (Dec. 15), Annenberg Classroom has released the multiplayer version of a game for middle and high-school students that challenges them to apply their knowledge of the Constitution to everyday legal scenarios. Annenberg Classroom’s “That’s Your Right” game lets students compete against each other online in