84 On Sept. 22, 2022, the American Studies Institute hosted a lecture with speakers Joe Kennedy, Michael Berry and Stephanie Taub. The Department of Communication’s Advanced Journalism class fact-checked the event to make sure that the information presented was true. Kennedy was a Marine veteran and the assistant football coach for Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington. He was known for his involvement in the Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Bremerton, in which he sued the high school because he was fired for praying after football games. Kennedy spoke about this experience at the event. During this speech, the advanced journalism class went on a fact-checking campaign to see how much of what Kennedy and his attorneys, Berry and Taub, said was factual. “We didn’t want to make any judgment calls or opinions,” instructor of communication Noah Darnell, who taught the advanced journalism class, said. “If someone said something inaccurate or misleading slightly one way or another, we wanted to include the fact to base the claim on.” The students looked at the statements that were made, and then researched to check if a statement was true or not. They posted the statements that they corrected or clarified on Twitter. “They had researched before the event, and were given a whole host of documents,” Darnell said. “They did the bulk of the research live because it was a comment that was narrow in scope, and we wanted to keep to that.” TRUE OR FALSE Journalism students fact-check American Studies Institute speakers. The students put together a shared document of all the information that was included in the cases for easy access during the assignment. “We made a Google Doc to put every link, every article, every letter we could find about what this speaker and his lawyers have said at events or the Supreme Court in the past,” senior Gabi Gonzalez said. “Once we get into the event, we’ll listen for grandiose statements that he may make and then we’ll look at the articles we have collected and see if what he is saying is in fact true.” Junior Mattie Powers was asked why it was important to know if the statements made by Kennedy and his lawyers were truthful. “The point of fact-checking is to make sure someone is not spreading false information, whether they realize it or not,” Powers said. “Fact-checking is supposed to help people see what is actually true in communication.” The main goal of this project was to give a voice to the other side of the argument. Darnell said that even though they were representing the other side, it was not intended to be adversarial. “There is no reason to poke the bear,” Darnell said. “It was just wanting to sit there and say, ‘Here is one side of the argument. Now here is the other.’” The fact checking that the advanced journalism class did for this event could be found on Twitter at @BisonWondering. Written by: Jake Mooney
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