How do I fact-check the news (step by step)?
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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 -
One general rule is to get as much information as possible from true experts - people who work on the specific subject that they are discussing, at least in broad fields of knowledge (e.g. history, biology, computers, law). Don't rely on a single person or team of people to be your one-stop-shop for information. As much as possible, the experts should be independent of each other. While a historian and a biologist may both work at universities, and you may learn about both of them from a reporter, they likely do not have daily contact with each other and likely have not ever met... but stay aware of 'where they are coming from'. When an interesting topic is raised, be willing to track down the original source and learn more directly from them.
Get information from sources that treat you seriously. For instance both NPR and the Economist both focus on in-depth reporting about a wide variety of topics. In contrast, TV news tends to be full of fluff. Ignore fluff peddlers. Ignore those who talk in circles about today's minor scandal or "breaking story", and instead focus on those who give you information that will still be useful a year from now.
Before you can check facts, you need to know what are reliable sources. This is a long term process. If I need to go to one place, Wikipedia is a good starting point to get 'all sides' of a topic (usually), with links to primary sources.
A long term strategy is to build general background knowledge rather than relying on case-by-case fact checking. Especially science and history. If you have that knowledge, a lot of the spin becomes immediately obvious, and you quickly identify who is worth listening to (of course, you need to first find reliable sources for history and science, and not get caught in partisan echo chambers. Just don't turn to politicians and TV pundits for your history lessons).
I like academics because they mainly communicate with other experts and know they can't get away with BS, while TV hosts and politicians mainly communicate with people who are easy to fool.
One general rule is to get as much information as possible from true experts
Trusting "experts" isn't exactly always a great idea, especially with the context of OP's friend in which the CCP being able to censor any dissenting opinions, so you're just reenforcing their adversion of skepticism.
It's ironic how the US's downfall is because the people are so overly skeptical of government, they end up inventing crazy conspiracy theories, meanwhile in mainland China, they are not being skeptical of the central government enough. There is has to be a resonable level of skepticism somewhere.
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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".
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
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).
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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.
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
wrote last edited by [email protected]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 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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
wrote last edited by [email protected]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 âpartisanâ 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.
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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.
But thatâs no different from any other kind of conflicting evidence in any scientific process. Whatâs required to distinguish plausible from not isnât âintelligenceâ per se, itâs determination to continue asking more questions in order to gather more data.
For example if one source says âtariffs will pay off the debtâ, and another says âtariffs will cause inflationâ reasonable disambiguating questions to ask might be âhave tariffs paid off the debt in the past?â or âhave tariffs caused inflation in the past?â
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
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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 claimsI took a media literacy course and they talked about SIFT, CRAAP and others like it.
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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 âpartisanâ 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.
Do they still call CNN leftist?
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Do they still call CNN leftist?
wrote last edited by [email protected]They label it as âleans leftâ now, with independent reviewers, so not as left as other sources. Although, I question if that takes into account the topics that donât make it on the website.
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One general rule is to get as much information as possible from true experts
Trusting "experts" isn't exactly always a great idea, especially with the context of OP's friend in which the CCP being able to censor any dissenting opinions, so you're just reenforcing their adversion of skepticism.
It's ironic how the US's downfall is because the people are so overly skeptical of government, they end up inventing crazy conspiracy theories, meanwhile in mainland China, they are not being skeptical of the central government enough. There is has to be a resonable level of skepticism somewhere.
It can be hard to identify experts, and sometimes experts are still being told what to say by others, so you actually need to identify independent experts.
Sometimes we rely on institutional endorsement to identify experts, but that relies on the institutions themselves being independent and being primarily focused on promoting expertise.
There are other ways to identify experts, but they can be difficult to apply until you have a lot of experience with experts. There are a lot of people out there who feign expertise -- for instance, it's common for conspiracy theorists to write long books with lots of footnotes. I'm afraid that the new generative AI systems will make in much easier to feign expertise. -
I am afraid Fox doesnât 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.
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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 âpartisanâ 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.
I really like ground news. I have the cheap plan, like $10/yr. Worth it.
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
I do I try my best to get the facts
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
Read multiple sources is one method.
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They label it as âleans leftâ now, with independent reviewers, so not as left as other sources. Although, I question if that takes into account the topics that donât 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.
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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 âpartisanâ 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.
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
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!
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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 âwestern propagandaâ, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her âyou sound like you read FOX newsâ. She replied with âhahah yes, how did you know?â
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 doesnât fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
wrote last edited by [email protected]- 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.
