Reporter and Elon alumna Maria Ramirez Uribe ’20 spoke to attendees at Elon University on Oct. 22 about disinformation surrounding the upcoming election as part of the university’s alumni speaker series.
Ramirez currently works for PolitiFact as an immigration reporter and fact checker. Her previous credits include freelance journalism for CNN, corps membership in Report for America and race and equity reporting for WFAE and La Noticia — a Spanish-language paper.
Ramirez started the presentation by explaining what PolitiFact is — a news organization that tracks statements made by politicians and then verifies if they are true or not. Since 2016 and the rise of misinformation online, PolitiFact has also begun to track social media posts and comments.
At PolitiFact, Ramirez specializes in fact-checking claims related to immigration. As someone who has gone through the immigration experience, she said she believes she has a better understanding of the system.
“I've been through the immigration system in a different way than a lot of people are,” Ramirez said. “It's a very complicated system, and so I think I have firsthand knowledge and a kind of different understanding.”
When asked by an audience member if this experience made her biased, Ramirez responded by saying that she is biased.
“I'm a human being, therefore I have bias,” said Ramirez. “I have bias about what food I like, I have bias about what clothes I want to wear and what music I listen to. We all, as human beings, have opinions.”
On the topic of immigration, Ramirez was one of the main fact-checkers for the recent misinformation spread about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Along with debunking the claims, Ramirez was also able to go to Springfield and see the harm of misinformation in person.
“The Haitian community there was very, very afraid. And the second day I was there was the first bomb threat,” Ramirez said. “We started to see the very real effects of misinformation. It's not just a post on social media, it's not just a funny meme, it's a very real issue that has now affected real people's lives.”
Ramirez talked about PolitiFact’s different ways of holding politicians accountable, including the promise tracker. This tracks what promises a politician makes for voters to use when a candidate runs for reelection.
“Usually before the State of the Union, we like to do a pretty big update of promises, because usually that's when the president will speak about his promises,” Ramirez said. “We'll also do updates as laws are passed or as policies are implemented.”
Ramirez closed out the event by reminding attendees how misinformation is common online and how to potentially stop yourself from spreading it.
“If a piece of content or a statement elicits a really strong emotional response in you, it’s probably misinformation,” Ramirez said. “It's probably a good time to sort of check yourself, stop for a second, before you tell that piece of information to someone else.”
Elon sophomore Adrianna Stapleton said she went to the event because she hoped to educate herself on how to find misinformation.
“Especially within this election, it's really important to know the facts. Since it's so tight, that can really be the difference between which candidate people vote for,” Stapleton said. “It's important to know, get clarification on what is right and what is wrong.”