Welcome to Grove City Grassroots, a hub for organizing rallies in our area to coordinate with National Days of Action across the country.
Fighting Disinformation
I remember when most of America sat down in the living room to watch the five o'clock news on one of the three national networks. Whichever one we picked didn't matter all that much because they all adhered to journalistic standards and reported the same facts much the same way. This isn't to say there weren't problems -- there were many -- but our television and newspaper reportage was consistent, fact-based and separated from opinion; and the crackpot stuff was in the Enquirer, which we all read at Grandma's house and pretended we didn't.
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Today, we have all encountered family, friends, or co-workers who strongly believe in things that didn’t happen and strongly disbelieve things that did.
And the standoff is that they know what they think is true, having read or seen it. Rather than try to argue, which as you know doesn’t work, perhaps the best thing we can do is calmly state that we vet our information sources to ensure that they are reliable, and offer to help them do the same.
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With all the misinformation and partisan news in our current political climate, how do you verify the information you sift through?
When you need food — healthy, fresh, nourishing — you don’t start by sifting through your clothes closet or the trash. Same principle for mental food: start by not sifting through the wrong area (entertainment) or the junk heap (disreputable sites). That helps a hell of a lot and saves time.
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Short answer: Read the news from Reuters. Very High factual reporting, low bias. AP News has High factual reporting and left-center bias. USA Today is rated Mostly Factual due to previous errors and left-center bias.
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Reuters | Breaking International News & Views
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Associated Press News: Breaking News | Latest News Today
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USA TODAY - Today's Breaking News, US & World News
Long answer: We have a full-fledged disinfodemic raging around the nation. Misinformation – getting facts wrong – is bad enough, but disinformation in the form of outright lies, distortions, and deflections that are designed deliberately to mislead, is no longer something we can pretend we can easily rise above. We are being targeted by other nations and also by homegrown spreaders in an unrelenting assault intended to make us stop thinking and start reacting purely emotionally. It’s the civic duty of every American to refuse to be manipulated when it comes to facts.
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A guide to fighting lies, fake news, and chaos online
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No, it’s not America’s “Mainstream Media” (MSM) that’s doing most of the misleading. The media is not controlled by liberals; it’s controlled by a handful of corporations whose primary goal is to make ever more profits.
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The above are slightly outdated -- the consolidation of power has progressed.
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Never believe anyone who tells you that none of the MSM can be trusted. The truth is out there. The problem is that it’s not the only thing out there, so we have to exercise some caution.
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Here’s what’s out there right now:
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First: News sources that have been in business a long time and adhere to journalistic standards, i.e. they must be able to back up their reporting with fact-based sources, and if they do make a factual error, they admit to it publicly and explain what they got wrong. This includes a lot of newspapers (online and print) such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and a great many smaller city papers.
Yes, they can be editorially biased, but that doesn’t mean they don’t adhere to journalistic standards, which are clear and vital to a reputable news source.
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Seven Standards of Quality Journalism
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It’s difficult to find a news outlet with zero bias, but Reuters comes close.
NYTimes leans left, WSJ leans right.
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If you read the news reporting from either or both, you’ll get a good idea of what’s really happening. Both are rated as having high factual reporting. (Update: WSJ’s factual rating has slipped to Mostly Factual. I would hesitate to rely primarily on a source that didn’t have a High Factual rating.)
These sources have opinion pieces, which are not the same as news reporting; they are someone’s personal interpretation of events/facts and their significance, but I’ve seen people cite an opinion piece as if it were factual news reporting. Reputable sources are clear about putting opinion pieces under the Opinion section, and news on the front page. Opinion/commentary can be useful in understanding different sides to an issue, but only if they are from well-respected commentators and are properly sourced and accurate in terms of the factual situation they are commenting upon. If the premise on which the opinion is based is false (“CRT is being taught in elementary schools” or “Obama was not eligible to be President” or “The election was stolen”) then the opinion has slid into a commercial for disinformation/conspiracy theories.
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Fair news reporting doesn’t use charged or loaded language, which tells you how you should interpret and feel about the facts; any site claiming to be news but doing this is untrustworthy. Fair news reporting offers both sides of the response to the facts.
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Journalistic standards and a very good record for factual reporting is the standard everyone should seek when they choose their news sources.
Second: Bipartisan News Sites.
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Allsides reveals news bias and shows news from different sources. It doesn’t discuss factual ratings, though, as far as I can see; and I consider a source’s ability to pass fact checks to be more important than its bias — which I don’t think is that hard to detect anyway.
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AllSides | Balanced news via media bias ratings for an unbiased news perspective
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10 Journalism Brands Where You Find Real Facts Rather Than Alternative Facts
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Third: Independent news magazines (online and print) that do not have corporate ownership and hold a mission to expose injustice and to report stories that are important but passed over by larger outlets.
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https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mother-jones/
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Billionaire-owned news is not our only option
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They are usually editorially biased (in their commentary/opinion pieces, and in their choices of stories), but if you are aware of their bias in that regard, and they have a high factual rating, then they can be a good addition to reputable mainstream sources.
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Fourth: Biased aggregators. These are strictly left or right-sided sites that appeal to people on either side who are less interested in reality than in getting mad at the idiots on the other side. They gather news they know will be of interest to one side and leave out everything else. They use loaded language and don’t present views from the other side.
On the left: DailyKos, Raw Story. On the right: Drudge, Breitbart, Newsbusters, Twitchy, RedState, Infowars, Daily Caller, Town Hall, Newsmax, National Review. The right tends to seek confirmation bias (see below) more eagerly. And the right-aggregators are often much less careful about reporting facts, sometimes moving into tinfoil hat territory (conspiracy theories, disinformation). But a steady diet of biased aggregators on either side, without any reputable and more balanced news source , should definitely be avoided.
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Fifth: Fake News. Unlike the biased aggregators which sometimes spin facts until the truth’s barely visible, these guys just make it up. Literally. Fake news is not an equal problem on both sides of the political aisle; in fact, it would be fair to say that there would be very little fake news if the industry had to survive on readership by the left. “We've tried to [sell fake news] to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”
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We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned
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(CNN is not fake news. They do not make up stories and present them as real. Neither is Fox, though it has a lot of problems including spin and mislabeling itself as unbiased factual news. Its focus is not fabricating stories and presenting them as news, ergo it’s not fake news.)
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Sixth, or more properly, 666th: The Dark Web, aka the 10th Circle of Hell. This is the dank sewer of the internet that draws the worst of humanity and can drain a normal person of all hope in under 30 seconds. (That was my opinion.) Its appeal is almost-perfect anonymity. It has legit uses but it is also a haven for illegal activities and draws the worst of racists, misogynists, homophobics, Islamophobics, anti-semites, and any other haters. Groups that can’t find a legit server to host them are comfortable and secure on the Dark Web, where they can spread their venom.
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Bottom line, the truth is out there, but if you sort out information according to whether it confirms what you want to think or have already decided to believe (“confirmation bias”), you aren’t likely to find it.
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confirmation bias | Definition, Background, History, & Facts
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Other Stuff Out There
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Media Evaluators: They can be very useful in a time when there’s so many outlets claiming to be news sources. Any news source is run by people and people can be wrong. No one site is the gateway to all truth, but some are much better than others. They range from highly trustworthy, all the way down to absolute dreck. Factors to consider: the reputation of the organization or person who owns it and where its funding comes from; reputation for factual reporting, i.e. how often does it fail fact checks and what’s the procedure when it does? (Reputable sites include the correction at the end of the article. And they don’t make a lot of errors.) Does it subscribe to journalistic standards?
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What is its bias level? The reputable evaluators have clear criteria for their ratings.
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I try to stay between the left-center and right-center markers on MBFC, and only choose outlets with a High factual reporting rating. Beyond that, you’re getting coverage that’s too biased to give you the total picture, AND they’re telling you how to think and feel about what they choose to tell you. Nuh-uh. No thanks.
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This site has the famous chart, and individually rates sources along a spectrum.
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Both of these sites are in range of each other’s evaluations.
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Fact Checking Sites: Non-partisan fact-checking sites have become invaluable to those who want the truth instead of confirmation bias. They report on both Democrats and Republicans; they do their research and they cite their sources. I’m not going to say both sides are equally guilty in order to spare feelings: many on the right try to discredit fact-checking sites because more conservative politicians are less honest, and more rumors, conspiracy theories, ‘alternative facts,’ and fake news come from the right today. The man squatting in the Oval Office even broadcasts lies and misinformation and disinformation on a regular basis, and the once-noble Republican Party does nothing to correct him.
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Not all sites claiming to check facts are really doing so. There’s a lot of far-right sites now that call themselves fact checkers. Look for sites that are IFCN (International Fact Checking Network) signatories.
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The Voter's Self Defense System
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I like Snopes because their research is done well and properly sourced.
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RationalWiki has a high factual rating but also a very high snark level; they are targeting rightwing disinformation and they aren’t impersonal nor polite about it. If you can ignore that, it’s a useful site to find out what a rightwing source or person is saying. This is sometimes necessary because there is such a wide divide between what the left and right sides read or watch, that they are often clueless about what the other side is reading/watching.
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You can also search Conservapedia, which is bountiful source of conspiracy theories, lies, misinformaton, and disinformation.
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With both of the above sites, check the sourcing for any article in the footnotes. This will help clarify which one sources to reputable outlets.
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I’ve written about online/print news sources, and I personally stay away from broadcast news, whether cable or online, for two reasons. First, they have hours to fill, and that shouldn’t be a factor in deciding what gets reported and how often. Second, they have an entertainment factor that I also believe shouldn’t be in play. But that’s a personal call.
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YouTube and videos in general:
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Be wary of manipulated videos. I’m disturbed by the number of people who use them when asked to cite a reputable source. Apparently their only criteria for a fact is “something I actually saw with my own two eyes.” It doesn’t occur to them that any video can be manipulated or manufactured. Here’s a guide for those who choose to continue to watch or who encounter them as they read:
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The Fact-Checkers Guide to Manipulated Video
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Radicalization can occur thanks to YouTube algorithms responding to viewer choices. Not everyone who falls into the site and doesn’t come up for air will become a murdering domestic terrorist, but even at best, it is not a reputable source for facts.
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The Making of a YouTube Radical (Published 2019)
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There are more and more fake/doctored videos and photos out there, and now we have a President who uses them and spreads them, and no one in the Republican Party will call him out on it
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The hidden signs that can reveal a fake photo
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Deliberately misidentifying a photo is an unfortunately common right-wing tactic; we saw it during the BLM protests, the "LA riots," and used to misrepresent rally sizes. Here's Trump brazenly lying about a photograph and being exposed by Reuters Fact Check​:
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Last thoughts: In the Alternative Fact Universe, people often offer the “arguments” that no one can know the truth, that both sides are equally devoted to the spread of lies and misleading information, that the “MSM” is liberal and corrupt, that there’s no way to evaluate news sources or fact checkers (“Who’s checking the fact checkers?” The IFCN, for one; see above), etc. etc. They are dismayed that “alternative facts” don’t show up a lot in more of the outlets with the greatest readership, so they counter by reframing the narrative.
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Never start with what you want to believe, and go hunting for confirmation of it. The terrible truth is that today, in our world, you’ll find it. Start instead with an open mind and look for provable facts on which to base a reasonable opinion.
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How to read the news like a scientist
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How to make sure you aren’t spreading misinformation online | The Mozilla Blog
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It is the civic duty and responsibility of all citizens is to seek the facts, and honor the truth. Democracy cannot survive in an atmosphere of lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. The enemies of America know this only too well.
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~ Katherine Bailey
Women's March, one of the top orgs in the Resistance, has a program that allows anyone to join the fight against disinformation.
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And you can do this from home. In your pajamas.
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Click on the Warrior to learn about Digital Defenders
How do you react to misinformation, disinformation, or conspiracy theories? It's a hard call, but here's some advice from Pen America.