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.”
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.
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.
Who owns the news source?
An example:
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”.
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
Read multiple sources is one method.
Shall i tell her to read both Fox and MSNBC at the same time then?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I do I try my best to get the facts
Similar to what another person referenced, the journalists I follow almost always cite their sources. The news they deliver is often just referencing legislation or other documents and summarizing it, combined with some opinion. For me this type of news is just a Tl;Dr of stuff that’s complex or long to read, and because they’re citing what they’re saying (and often showing it in full somwhere on the screen or blog), I trust that they’re not taking it out of context.
For studies or reports on studies, I like to look at who is funding the study.
For other news, I will often trust when a reporter is or has been onsite. Eg. A protest or something in a city and they have actual footage of themselves there. Of course, that’ll all come with a bias, but I am willing to accept that risk.
For bias checks, I often will ask myself questions: why did they word it a certain way? What point of view is missing here? Who is gaining from this?
When a reporter or news group shows me time and again that they can be trusted, then I will more easily trust them.
I also always check new sources on mediabiasfactcheck.com as they have full analyses to figure out if a source is left/right leaning and how factually they have reported historically.
1 dimentional left-right spectrum itself is biased.
I mean, Xinhua would be considered “left” and RT news would be considered “right” but they would both blame “the west” for russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so this creates a false sense of nonpartisanship.
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.
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.
The quickest and easiest version I have for fact checking is to check the source of the story, usually that’s in article. Check the ownership of the company, who owns it and what’s their agenda, that usually leads to who is their audience, who are they writing for and why. Is it to sell ads or actually pass on info. Also, if some thing is too goo to be true, it usually is but do the fact checking to confirm.
I am afraid Fox doesn’t 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.
