Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP exposes network of scam Facebook ads using politicians’ images

for acting on an email to the AP Fact Check team from the Nevada governor’s office, alerting the team to scam ads on Facebook that used photos of politicians to offer unsuspecting homeowners lucrative tax incentives for installing solar panels. Seitz and Anderson uncovered a long-running, widespread scam – connected to a man previously sued by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising – that exposed the threat of harvesting personal data from unwitting users, as well as Facebook’s inability to police political scam ads ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. https://bit.ly/2uYB5CN

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP first to report OJ Simpson’s release from prison

for months of source work that led him to get a text in the middle of the night from a Nevada prison official that O.J. Simpson had been set free just minutes earlier – a scoop that forced competitors to cite AP. http://bit.ly/2xVgiTU