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?
Seriously though, does anyone know if Trump is smart or not? Anyone knows his grades when he was younger for example? Did he ever take an IQ test? What does it even mean to be smart? How do you even prove this statement?
I can quote that Chinese friend of mine:
“You know because recently I watched some news about Harris and Trump. Harris is like, you know, some political right democrat: we should respect the LGBT people or some lots of lots of stupid things, but I see the increasing prices and lots of people, they don’t have their jobs, so lots of lots of Americans - they support Trump now.”
“You know, I think maybe Trump is the better choice for American people. If I were American, I would say “OK, Trump”, you know. I think the American people are not stupid. They don’t want to have low paid jobs and pay lots of money for some illegal immigrants, and some stupid, stupid robberies, you know. But they just wanna increase their salaries and have a good living environment. Of course, if I were American, I would support Trump too.”
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.
Who owns the news source?
An example:
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.
While this is great advice, it requires the ability to distinguish plausible from implausible claims and from what OP describes, we’re not at that point yet.
E.g. if you google “why is Trump a bad leader.” And then read i.e. “Tariffs are hurting the economy.” And then you look for “Are tariffs good for the economy?” you will find pages both saying they are and they aren’t.
I experienced this when we had the brexit vote. I had separate leaflets coming through the door every day.
One pro-leave said if we voted leave we’d have more money for pensions, health care, education and have better jobs.
One pro-remain said if we voted remain we’d have more money for pensions, health care, education and have better jobs.
These came through in the same post delivery.
But that’s no different from any other kind of conflicting evidence in any scientific process. What’s required to distinguish plausible from not isn’t “intelligence” per se, it’s determination to continue asking more questions in order to gather more data.
For example if one source says “tariffs will pay off the debt”, and another says “tariffs will cause inflation” reasonable disambiguating questions to ask might be “have tariffs paid off the debt in the past?” or “have tariffs caused inflation in the past?”
The key is to 1. Not stop with positive evidence, but to continue to fail to find negative evidence 2. Not stop with opinions but find a balance of facts
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.
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.
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.
- Who is publishing it? How trustworthy are they? What’s their track record? What’s their funding and goals?
- What’s the source? Can I verify the source? Do I need to or to what degree does it fit other information I sighted or assessed previously?
- Who is supporting the information? Experts of the field? Of long investment? Or far-fetched or arbitrary people that may not have any expertise, may not have fundamentally verified their own information and biases, or are not trustworthy for other reasons?
- How recent is the information? Is there even legitimacy or urgency in giving it attention right now? Is there on-site documentation? Official analysis reports or scientific studies? Of what quality, by whom, with what on-site expertise?
Something like that.
For stuff I’m not sure of or unknowing I often check Wikipedia, which links further sources, or actually check court rulings, or laws, or state published information, etc. Having watched many documentaries and having read articles gives some assessment basis for various related topics. Watching or reading from independent invested journalists, especially when they go/went on-site, gives (reasonably) verifiable legitimacy.
As for your friend, it also depends on how much you are willing to invest. Nudging with questions like “don’t you feel it’s suspiciously positive?” or dropping some information like “he was bankrupt multiple times, why is he celebrated as saving the economy? doesn’t that seem off?”
If they’re open to other sources and information, it’ll be easy. More likely, they are not, which will make it harder and a longer process if you’re willing to invest. Factual information often doesn’t help. Making them question stuff themselves would be the best way then.
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!
Read multiple sources is one method.
Shall i tell her to read both Fox and MSNBC at the same time then?
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.
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… :(
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”
Yeah.
If everything they say is proven wrong they’ll respond with “I don’t care”.
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.
For a detailed explanation and analysis of how mass media is manipulating read Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Sources like Ground News help to show where the bias of your sources lay. Mind you, even neutral sources have their issues since they may not cover more serious “partisan” topics, even if the material is very disturbing.
Ground News does have a Blind Spot tool as well to help show most stories that the other side is not talking about, excluding the very serious ones I mentioned.
This is splitting hairs a bit, but Ground News is more of an aggregator with useful framing than a source in and of itself.
You’re right about it being more of an aggregator. I think having a good aggregator is about as important as the sources. To be more informed, hearing the news from different perspectives is essential, I feel.
For actual sources, starting internationally is a good bet to get an outside perspective of what’s going on in your country. I feel that the BBC does a great job of covering US news for that reason. Al-Jazeera is another international source that is decent for most news in the US, but has notable biases for issues in the Middle East as far as I am aware.
For more domestic US sources, PBS and NPR are the gold standards and worth supporting since they are public broadcasting networks. The other major news networks have more notable biases since they are privately owned.
For business news, Axios, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance do a decent job.
Do they still call CNN leftist?
They label it as “leans left” now, with independent reviewers, so not as left as other sources. Although, I question if that takes into account the topics that don’t make it on the website.
To be fair, CNN “leans left” in the same way US Democrat liberals “lean left”. Which is to say, socially progressive (usually) and economically capitalist.
Assuming I’m using those terms right, which I think I am, at least in the context of the US.
I would say CNN probably still is mostly left leaning (relatively), but they have had a lot more right wing stances over the past five years than they did the previous decades.
I believe you used those terms correctly, although offline people would tend to say it more as economically conservative for that second part, in the US.
I really like ground news. I have the cheap plan, like $10/yr. Worth it.
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.
I do I try my best to get the facts
Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump
I hope you didn’t talked to my mother, thay sure does sound like her 💀
To be honest, this is no easy feat. Even my mother who has been in the US for over a decade and have somewhat of a fluency in English (good enough to get naturalized as a Citizen) still watched WeChat and consumes propaganda. I can’t do a thing about it except remind her about how white people don’t see her as part of the country and supporting Democrats is better because it lowers the risk of deportations so she’s kinda not as indoctrinated as everyone else, but still she often parrot those anti-Democrat rhetorics like “NYC Dems lets in iLLeGaL iMmiGranTs and crime rates rising” and blame them for “taking away benefits”.
How old are they? Of they are like 40 or older, I won’t even bother, they are a lost cause. For those younger people, just encourge them to read more from various souces, instead of trusting one. Don’t go “FOX News Bad”, that probably wouldn’t work unless you are really closely related and they at least somewhat trusts you (like blood relationship), if you are like a classmate or coworker, that will not work, just that they should read everything, and tell them to be skeptical.
The most important thing is: ABSOLUTELY NEVER CONFLATE “CCP” with “China”.
If you say “China Bad” they automatically assume you are being racist. Make sure to say its the Communist Party of China.
Edit: typos
Edit 2: P.S. I’m Chinese American for context, I’ve grown up mostly in the US, with only like the first decade of my life in mainland China, the rest is in the US (I don’t have much memores of China)
My older brother went to the equivalent of “middle school” in China, and he eventually came to be against CCP, after being going to public school in the US, but he’s more like the KMT nationalist type, still somewhat attached to China (culturally), but just anti-CCP.
