Good morning! Welcome back from your four-day weekend! Hope you had a good snow day.
Today I’d like to talk about something that is crucial to journalism (and to everyone who reads any stories from news outlets):
How to Tell Fact From Fiction (or Opinion).
Now, you may think this is simple, but I assure you, it’s not. Especially in today’s world where anyone can make their own website and post almost virtually anything they want.
How do we decide what is credible, reliable information and what is lies, distortion, or propaganda?
There are many different methods proposed by many different people. How do we even know if we can trust the people telling us how to figure out who to trust? What methods are successful, and which ones aren’t?
Here’s a quiz from the Pew Research Center
Here’s an article from The Guardian UK.
Between fact and opinion, there’s also the area of imprecision. Journalists and pundits often use imprecise or vague wording to avoid having to give factual information. Here’s a montage of FoxNews using the phrase “some people say” to get an unsubstantiated claim (one that’s not supported by evidence) out there. Then they build an argument off of a faulty premise (or at least one that hasn’t been verified). They’re not the only ones who do this, but it is a very common practice for them.
You should also know about logical fallacies (or errors in reasoning). Sometimes these are accidental, and sometimes they are used on purpose to deceive.
I’d like us to read an article together that may help give us some strategies or at least point out some things to watch for. It’s called, “How To Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda.”
Another way to help avoid this is to rely only on credible sources. We’ll discuss how to evaluate sources of information as well.