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Hello there,
Learning to spot lies is a core skill for any journalist. My journalism school professors beat it into my head early on.
At the Spartan Daily, the student newspaper at San Jose State University, we learned the old adage: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
It may sound cynical, but in the post-fact world of politics and business, everything needs to be examined. And I mean everything, especially the things you don’t think anyone would dare lie about, like where they went to school, for example.
In our two Big Stories for the week, the inconsistencies were so pervasive that it took five people – Terence, Lokesh, Collin, Budi, and Candice – to get to the bottom of them.
Our first Big Story is a follow-up to our January 16 exposé on Lee Seng Fook, the founder and CEO of Vizzio Technologies, who over 20 years earlier went by the alias Dennis Lee. Following the report, Vizzio appointed an interim CEO last Friday, suggesting that Lee has now stepped down.
Our team has since unearthed more inconsistencies involving Lee’s patent claims, plagiarized videos, and customer lists, among others.
Our second Big Story looks at Moehammad Ichsan, co-founder and CEO of Indonesian waste treatment startup Octopus. My colleague Budi found at least three online sources that list Ichsan as a graduate of UC Berkeley.
A spokesperson for Octopus said Ichsan attended Berkeley but dropped out. Ichsan says he only attended an online course at Berkeley and that he dropped out from a local university.
The CEO says he never told anyone about such claims, but several sources contradict this. Ichsan hasn’t provided any paperwork to show that he attended UC Berkeley.
Also in this week’s AI Odyssey, you can read how AI is about to upend journalism. I look at the deal between OpenAI and Axel Springer – which owns Business Insider and Politico – and what it could mean for the future of journalism and AI.
— Scott
THE BIG STORIES
1️⃣ More cracks appear in Vizzio CEO’s claims
AI ODYSSEY
FYI
NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW
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