39, Journalist & Lawyer
We have a disinformation problem in this country. The Harvard Kennedy School of public policy and government as well as the nonpartisan Pew Research Center report that millions of Americans have been confused by or accidentally shared fake news. Meanwhile, the FBI says that millions of elderly citizens are target No. 1 for bad actors who run debt-inducing phone and online scams. This is all before artificial intelligence photos, videos, spamming and who knows what else have scratched the surface on its full potential.
Stephanie Haney wants to do something about it. As a licensed attorney in Ohio and California and WKYC digital anchor and legal analyst, Haney has focused much of her work in 2024 on confirming facts and fighting disinformation.
“Verify,” her segment which runs three or four times a week, focuses on fact checking disinformation, such as offering tips to identify AI-generated content or avoid scams. She examines claims such as whether summers are actually getting hotter (they are) or whether drinking room temperature water is better for you when it's hot outside (it’s not). “Legally Speaking” is another segment breaking down legal issues for laymen.
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“I just hate the idea of someone thinking they're making an informed decision when they're not,” she says. “The internet has basically pointed a fire hose at everyone and said, ‘Figure it out on your own.’”
In February, leading up to an election marred by purposeful false and misleading claims, Haney launched Ohio Has Issues, an hour-long digital show co-hosted by Mike Polk Jr. With a focus on state politics, the duo welcomed guests such as state politics reporter Andrew Tobias, former Ohio Supreme Court chief justice Maureen O’Connor and NBC politics reporter Henry J. Gomez to break down the Senate primary race and clarify confusion around election issues like gerrymandering and private school voucher expansions — and to provide updates on other regional issues such as the Cleveland Browns’ move to Brook Park and the FirstEnergy bribery scandal.
“That weekly show gave you the opportunity to let conversations breathe with these journalists in the field, who are just in it every day,” she says. “We really did our best to hold the feet of the people in power to the fire.”
Haney’s journalistic tendencies showed up in elementary school and junior high, in which she wrote a school newsletter and then blog offering gossip on breakups and other school drama. Meanwhile, her first litigation came when her friend Jenny’s father staged fake crimes and played judge. Haney forced her friends to play mock trial. She was also a speech and debate wiz. Later, she found inspiration in lawyer movies like A Few Good Men and Legally Blonde. She earned a bachelor’s in political science and sociology-criminology at Ohio University before graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. Forcing herself out of her comfort zone, she signed up for the bar exam in California.
“I saw a lot of inequity,” she says. “I thought that law really had an opportunity to be a great equalizer because I really liked the idea of being able to provide services to people who couldn't afford them.”
After passing the bar and doing some freelance contract work as a lawyer, practicing law took a back seat to modeling and acting. She had a unique brush with the law came when she appeared in episodes of legal comedy Franklin & Bash, and she appeared in reality show The Drama Queen, about the TV hosting school and talent management company at which she worked.
In 2015, she earned her master’s in journalism and started a run of jobs in L.A. and New York City, including producing for Good Morning America and being an on-air correspondent with DailyMailTV, which won an Emmy for best entertainment news program. Haney says her favorite story from that show was an interview about the murder of rapper Tupac with Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight from jail, but her most impactful project may have been an LA Weekly cover story on embryo adoption.
She joined WKYC in 2019. Outside of reporting, she serves as a trustee with Rescue Village and a board member at Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce. She celebrated her engagement to co-host Mike Polk Jr. at Cleveland Magazine’s Best of CLE party and is hoping for the Buffalo Bills, her adopted team, to make a run at the Super Bowl. Mostly, however, she’s a “total nerd” whose passion is using the law and journalism to help others burn brighter than ever.
“My favorite thing about being a journalist is that I'm constantly learning,” she says. “I do not take for granted the opportunity to reach out to someone who is an expert on a particular topic and say, ‘Please explain this to me, so that I can help explain this to other people.’”
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