I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
Sometimes when I need a break from work, I read newstories and yell at fascists in the comments. Occasionally, during their barrage of what-aboutisms, they will reference something I’m unfamiliar with.
The first thing I do is Google what they referenced. For any legislative action, you can read the bill or law. For anything that goes through the court, you can look up the docket. Read what the charges are and the evidence brought forward. Raw data is the most trustworthy, but it can be hard to understand. See what your favorite news source has to say about it, and then see what FOX says. Compare and contrast. What is each side saying, what is each side NOT saying? Just as Trump does no wrong on FOX, there may be some shady things going on that your team isn’t talking about.
The first thing I do is Google what they referenced. For any legislative action, you can read the bill or law. For anything that goes through the court, you can look up the docket. Read what the charges are and the evidence brought forward. Raw data is the most trustworthy, but it can be hard to understand.
I tried this with my father. He’d spout off some fox news garbage, I’d do all this research and send him an email explaining everything with the sources linked, and he would just reply with another fox news article… :(
Yeah.
If everything they say is proven wrong they’ll respond with “I don’t care”.
I had someone at work with similar issues (nothing political, just incorrect facts confidently stated).
I pointed out that each time this happens my trust in what they say is eroded: “if you were wrong about that then why should I believe you about this”It only worked for a bit & then I had to revert to “yeah, whatever bro”
Teach her about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
tl;dr: it’s not enough to find a theory that fits the facts — famously “all swans are white” — you have try and then fail to falsify your own theory — for examplefinding a single black swan.
In this case it’s not enough to watch Fox News and hear something about Trump that sounds good — and then stop — you have to look for evidence that Trump is not a good leader and then fail to. But of course we know there is lots of counter evidence so…
This is a basic premise of scientific method.
I’m still waiting for evidence that Trump is a good leader, since all of the things he is supposedly doing are not actually true.
This Is the best response Ive read so far. The only thing id add is that this falls under Epistemology. that word alone IMO is dangerous to any regime.
We are all prone to biases established over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Even if you’re aware of all of them and vigilant you’re going to fall for them sometimes.
No source lacks bias, but you’re not trying to find the least biased source. Instead use multiple sources where you can identify the general biases a source supports. Rotate multiple sources and reference the same stories and events from multiple agencies knowing which biases they generally push to get a better overall model of what is actually going on and why. Fox, Al Jazeera, RT, BBC, CNN, PBS, Reuters, France 24, AP, common dreams, democracy now, etc. include at least 1-2 geographically local sources.
My preferred method is rss feeds so I can aggregate many sources into one place. Also avoiding articles that are just person X says Y, focus on actions and events instead of people using journalism for PR like politicians and oligarchs.
Similar to what another person referenced, the journalists I follow almost always cite their sources. The news they deliver is often just referencing legislation or other documents and summarizing it, combined with some opinion. For me this type of news is just a Tl;Dr of stuff that’s complex or long to read, and because they’re citing what they’re saying (and often showing it in full somwhere on the screen or blog), I trust that they’re not taking it out of context.
For studies or reports on studies, I like to look at who is funding the study.
For other news, I will often trust when a reporter is or has been onsite. Eg. A protest or something in a city and they have actual footage of themselves there. Of course, that’ll all come with a bias, but I am willing to accept that risk.
For bias checks, I often will ask myself questions: why did they word it a certain way? What point of view is missing here? Who is gaining from this?
When a reporter or news group shows me time and again that they can be trusted, then I will more easily trust them.
I also always check new sources on mediabiasfactcheck.com as they have full analyses to figure out if a source is left/right leaning and how factually they have reported historically.
1 dimentional left-right spectrum itself is biased.
I mean, Xinhua would be considered “left” and RT news would be considered “right” but they would both blame “the west” for russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so this creates a false sense of nonpartisanship.
I do I try my best to get the facts
It’s exactly why the word “NEWS” should be held to a standard, and exactly why people with insidious intent work to make that not be the case. Fox isnt news, they’ve legally fought that they are “entertainment” yet still use NEWS and format their shows like they are providing facts and evidence instead of pseudoscience and opinions. Bottom line is, we’re all fucked, hope you liked the show!
The quickest and easiest version I have for fact checking is to check the source of the story, usually that’s in article. Check the ownership of the company, who owns it and what’s their agenda, that usually leads to who is their audience, who are they writing for and why. Is it to sell ads or actually pass on info. Also, if some thing is too goo to be true, it usually is but do the fact checking to confirm.
I am afraid Fox doesn’t provide with the sources
Then that’s a sign that Fox news (or whatever source) isn’t a useful source. That’s where people need to get their heads straight. Trying to fact check unsourced claims is a sucker’s game - it’s easier to make a BS claim than to fact check it, especially when the claims are produced by a billion-dollar propaganda machine.
I try to read multiple sources and ignore the biasing. Just look for what actually happened and quotes or preferably video to see it with your own eyes not the authors opinions. Even with this it’s infuriating and obvious questions go unasked or unanswered all the time.
You can still get extremely distorted news even if your news sources don’t tell actual falsehoods. It’s enough for them to shade and slant the truth, and present it selectively. To some extent you can identify corrupting influences and then look for sources that are less affected by those influences, but eventually you can only vet the news by comparing it to the real world.
If you don’t have independent confirmation for the specific event, you could do a simple application of Bayes’ theorem.
If (say) FOX is reporting something and you’re not sure how much credence to give it, ask yourself:A. How often does this sort of thing happen in general? (Check historical sources.)
B. How often does FOX claim this type of thing happens? (Check Google trends.)
C. How likely is FOX to report this if it actually happens? (If it fits their narrative, probably close to 1.)
Then you can estimate the likelihood of the report being true as AC/B.
Who owns the news source?
An example:
There’s the S.I.F.T. method which can be pretty quick and effective. Stands for - Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims
I took a media literacy course and they talked about SIFT, CRAAP and others like it.
I never trust any source of information.
For every article, no matter the source, I think if what they say is logical and coherent. If there’s any conflict of interest or if the source may be interested into pushing a particular agenda. If there’s something real attached, like the article is talking about a new law or scientific paper or something officially published, or maybe a video, I try to go find the original source and read it directly.
After all that I try to only believe the parts that I could verify or find logical and coherent, discarding the rest as that particular media propaganda (which is also useful to know that several people is going to think that).
First, I pay attention to if an article references an original source. If not, see if they’re the only one reporting the events in question.
I also tend to look at community reactions a lot, see what other random people have to say. That’s a horrible way to verify truth, but on the other end, it’s the effect of the actions or events that will really matter.
And, yeah, I doubt Fox “News” has referenced an original source in decades, so I’m very skeptical of anything they report. And if they’re the only ones talking about something, I generally assume it’s completely false.
Read multiple sources is one method.
Shall i tell her to read both Fox and MSNBC at the same time then?
