Named in honor of Frank Luther Mott, Pulitzer Prize winner, educator and long-time leader of Kappa Tau Alpha, the award is made for the best research-based book about journalism or mass communication published each year.
Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society founded in 1910 for scholarship in journalism and mass communication, has recognized research contributions to the field since the inauguration of the award in 1944. The winning author receives a $1,000 prize.
Entries are judged by a panel of university professors of journalism and mass communication and national officers of Kappa Tau Alpha.
Andie Tucher’s Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History is the winner of the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the best book on journalism and mass communication based on original research published in 2022.
As Tucher documents in her new book, debates over the definition of journalistic truth and “fakery” are as old as the mass press that emerged in the early 19th century. The book was published by Columbia University Press.
KTA President Bill Cassidy, a contest judge, praised Tucher for her insightful distinction between what is sometimes labeled fake news and the more problematic fake journalism, which is produced by bad-faith actors pretending to embody journalistic truth-values in order to advance a predetermined agenda .
“This timely and well-written book, among its many virtues, serves to remind us that debates over what constitutes the truth—journalistically speaking—have long been contentious, even though the ferocity of such debates has arguably increased in recent years,” said Cassidy, a professor of journalism at Northern Illinois University.
“Tucher’s riveting work offers valuable insights into furthering the discourse surrounding and concerning the press’s ideal role in serving the public in our democracy, as well as the role of the public in choosing what to believe,” Cassidy said.
Tucher is the H. Gordon Garbedian Professor and the director of the Communications Ph.D. Program at the Columbia Journalism School at Columbia University. She previously worked in documentary production at ABC News and Public Affairs Television.
Named in honor of Frank Luther Mott, Pulitzer Prize winner, educator and longtime leader of Kappa Tau Alpha, the award honors the best research-based book about journalism or mass communication published during the year.
Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society founded in 1910 for scholarship in journalism and mass communication, has recognized research contributions to the field since the inauguration of the award in 1944. The winning author receives a $1,000 prize.
Other finalists were Danielle Keats Citron for The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (W. W. Norton); Deborah Cohen for Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War (Random House); Aynne Kokas for Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press); and Sylvain Parasie for Computing the News: Data Journalism and the Search for Objectivity (Columbia University Press).
Contact: Beverly Horvit, umcjourkta@missouri.edu, 573-882-0880