I’ve lived and/or worked in 14 countries, seen a fair share of propaganda, helped negotiate a few tricky deals, had the benefit of a great education (full of look-at-the-data and question-assumptions), and considered myself a fairly thought-full person. I tried to be aware of various outlets’ slants and people’s motivations, but… I also became guilty of sharing fake news in 2016. After being embarrased a few times, I did some research and developed a practice of checking out things that made me angry and/or sad, but also things that seemed overly warm-fuzzy. I learned some interesting things about how internet trolls cultivate communities, to then sow division. And, of course, there are multiple ways to display statistics to make or muddy a point.

A friend shared a video the other day, questioning some of the decisions made years ago by certain leaders, which started a conversation about how to filter the news. This WhatsApp group is full of well-traveled, well-educated folks — and the challenge of filtering the news is real, for all of us. We have to become more active, informed consumers of news (not only our cleaning or electronic products).

Me: “Always good to question our assumptions. There’s no doubt she has some smarts, but she’s a known conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist… so take this with a grain of salt. Also, the source should give you a clue that the video content is fringe.”

Friend #1: “I don’t know who 2 believe. Everyone seems 2 b lying. In the morning I have placed 2 links on the same subject – from BBC & CNN. Did anyone see the obvious discrepancy right in headlines of these most “reliable” sources?”

Friend #2 “Who can one believe? It seems that all media is not being upfront about things?

The conversation continued with a few memes about the series of catastrophes in 2020, a note clarifying that the BBC and CNN statistics coming from slightly different contexts, and my below summary of a few things learned in reading, researching, then filtering the news… before returning to sharing photos of our new pandemic cooking skills, and various jokes (we need to keep laughing, to keep going!).

“The major outlets have journalistic standards. These are commonly accepted principles most learn in a critical thinking, philosophy, or journalism class, if they have the opportunity to take one.

The core journalistic principles were developed in early 20th century, in reaction to “yellow journalism” aka sensationalism (instead of verified facts), which led to all kinds of misunderstandings, including most famously (contributing to) a war between US and Spain in Cuba and Philippines.

Painting of a scene from the Spanish American War. Troops are facing off and there are poofs of smoke from shots fired, all with a tropical backdrop in the Philipines, with palm trees, distant water and hills of the other side of the bay.
Battle of Las Guasimas, near Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. June 1898. Spanish-American War. Chromolithograph by Kurz and Allison.

Those core principles= report the facts. Offer some interpretation without (with minimal) spin. Cite your sources. If you’re going to state a claim, get it verified by 2+, independent sources. Anonymous sources only when it would put the source in danger.

Everyone can make mistakes. The major outlets will follow these standards, and will issue retractions or corrections on details they get incorrect. FYI, subscribers can look up each media outlet’s “code of ethics” and their retraction rates.

If you’re interested in understanding how to filter the news, check out the useful chart below.

The extra short version of how to filter =

  1. Check in with your gut, or does this pass “the smell test”? ie does it seem plausible in this world?
  2. Does it make me feel especially angry, sad, or warm-fuzzy? (trolls place triggering content to cultivate a community; they typically start with softer things and then scale up to more divisive content, after they’ve gained your trust)
  3. Are other, reliable sources reporting similar things?
  4. Does this person or source have a particular “bent” or axe to grind? will they also look at evidence disproving their thesis? talk with experts w range of views?… or simply channel “confirmation bias”?
  5. What do the nonpartisan, truth researchers say? Snopes.com and politifact.com are the best known. Wikipedia’s has a good list of fact checking websites around the world. And public libraries and community colleges often have a low-cost or even free course.

Critical thinking is an essential skill, and a challenging one to develop and hone in this era of so many social media, TV, youtube and podcast channels — an explosion of information sources.

We all make mistakes, (& when called out, hopefully learn – I did in 2016). People are overwhelmed and need tools to understand what’s going on and how to filter– the brain wiring (cognitive shortcuts and biases), the motivations and biases of outlets, social media with big data enabling targeting certain customer segments, who shares what. By the way, something like over 60% of fake news (memes) is shared by folks >65 years old, and on Facebook (NB it’s not 60% of the older adults sharing, but a subset in that age group which overshares & propagates most of the fake news). That surprised me, but then again, if they grew up in a democracy, they grew up with reliably researched and sourced TV news… and still have a tendency to trust what they see on a screen. Regardless of our age or background, those 5 Qs shared above are useful in discerning what is real and fake news- the smell test, strong feelings, are other majors reporting it, is there an incentive directing (corrupting?) reporting, and what do the fact checkers say?

Check out this helpful chart, admittedly focused on US and UK outlets, but there will be similar ones in each country. And the 2023 update, mapping media bias & reliability, is interactive and linked here.