About

Media Myth Alert is a Web log that periodically calls attention to the appearance and publication of media-driven myths — stories about and/or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, prove to be apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.

Media Myth Alert also seeks to promote Getting It Wrong, which was published in 2010 by University of California Press.

Getting It Wrong won the 2010 Sigma Delta Chi award for research about journalism, a national award given by the Society for Professional Journalists.

The content of Media Myth Alert is written by W. Joseph Campbell, a tenured full professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He is a former professional journalist, having reported for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Hartford Courant, and the Associated Press in a 20-year career that took him across North America to Europe, Asia, and West Africa.

Including Getting It Wrong, Campbell is the author of five books.

His other works include Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (2001) and The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (2006).