What if mass media can't get rid of misinformation (or agree on what the term means)?
“Educate youngsters on how to ‘spot lies, think critically, and ask questions,’ using programs like those at Media Literacy Now. As for social media, instead of censorship or de-platforming, the cyber-pros need to provide audiences full context on what specific source, perhaps a paid or self-interested group or a pathetic mischief-maker, lies behind what they post.” - Get Religion
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1. It isn’t just ‘youngsters’ who need to be educated on how to filter information. Not by a long shot.
2. Of course it’s impossible to get rid of 100% of misinformation or agree 100% on what it is. That’s no reason not to try to reduce it as much as possible, focusing on the 90% that is obvious.
But—I guess this is a third thought—I like his idea of social media putting a lot more energy into disclosures. They could also more aggressively add links to verifiable facts and debunking.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Aaron Blumer]They could also more aggressively add links to verifiable facts and debunking.
I wouldn’t trust any site to do this. If the links are only to slanted sources, whether they be left (or right) leaning, that’s no help at all. There are almost no objective fact depositories any longer (even dictionaries and encyclopedias these days are not immune to slanting the facts to fit a narrative), and many (most?) today believe being objective is just “both-sides-ism.”
We’d be better off verifying the information ourselves, even though it’s more work. As it is, I already ignore any link that claims “debunking” and look around for myself, whether the link was on Mother Jones, Breitbart or anything in-between. And when I’m done looking around, I still only consider the validity of what I learned or my conclusions on it to be somewhere better than 50.1% (i.e. more likely true than not). It’s sad that it’s come to this, but those putting out false or politicized info as truth have only themselves to blame.
Spare us from more “aggressively add[ing] links to … debunking.” I’m not even sure how to add links to “verifiable facts.” Just about anything I learn these days is subject to disbelief first, and believing it only when I have done more research on it. Just read today’s headlines on the the study that supposedly showed that “gender affirming treatment” lowered depression, and how they are now walking back their claims quietly. If you think even scientific studies from once “reputable” sources are believable, think again.
Dave Barnhart
Not quite sure whether I trust the big mass media or social media to do this policing. Just today, for example, Mark Zuckerberg all but conceded to Joe Rogan that Facebook (and Twitter) had done the FBI’s bidding to suppress the Hunter Biden story just months before the election, and the FBI cited the discredited Russia allegations from 2016 to support their position. Really, the past few years have given us a slew of cases where mostly starboard-side organizations have their articles, conferences, and the like censored, including (my favorite) cases where “FactCheck” helpfully changes the question being asked from the one the person in question answered, and then declares the person to be a liar when his answer doesn’t match the question FactCheckers thought should have been answered.
Do we really want to encourage this behavior, or do we need to take a serious look and ask “does this make sense?” For reference, I’ve noticed that the media do a poor job of examining claims since the early Clinton administration, and if I’d been paying attention, I’d have seen that bias well before that. To draw a picture, when I was in college in the late 1980s, I was given an “Impeach Rather” bumper sticker that made fun of Rather’s bias towards the left even then. So more “fact-checking” by these guys? No, thank you.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Bert Perry]Not quite sure whether I trust the big mass media or social media to do this policing.
Actually, I’m sure I DON’T trust them to do this policing, and that’s the problem. They’re just not believable sources, either of them.
Dave Barnhart
[dcbii]I wouldn’t trust any site to do this. If the links are only to slanted sources, whether they be left (or right) leaning, that’s no help at all.
Links to slanted sources is a great way to help identify and debunk misinformation. Very much like a debate or a trial. Both sides are presenting information (sometimes the same sources and facts) and slanting them to prove their side of the argument. As long as you understand the slant/bias around what is presented and around the sources/facts, than it is a great method to sift through information and determine the proper viewpoints. The problem, too often today, is that someone has a narrative and then searches for the facts to support the narrative. For example, “the election must be stolen”. It usually starts with a belief that the other side is trying to steal the election or that there is no way candidate X could ever win. Then the search goes to finding facts/statements/viewpoints that support that it must be stolen.
[dgszweda]Links to slanted sources is a great way to help identify and debunk misinformation. Very much like a debate or a trial. Both sides are presenting information (sometimes the same sources and facts) and slanting them to prove their side of the argument. As long as you understand the slant/bias around what is presented and around the sources/facts, than it is a great method to sift through information and determine the proper viewpoints.
As long as I know the source (and thereby also know the slant that will be present), it can be helpful. However, links for “debunking” rarely look like this:
“Our view at Politico. Opposing view at Fox.”
They normally look like this:
”Debunked.” or “False.” It’s almost as if they are going out of their way to avoid letting you know which side you are seeing. Just like you said here: “The problem, too often today, is that someone has a narrative and then searches for the facts to support the narrative.”
Further, if it’s a link to a “Fact Checker,” a misnomer if there ever was one, it’s presented as completely objective and not slanted.
I actually do read conflicting sides on issues, since I usually start with aggregators that pull info from the whole spectrum. However, presenting just one side as if it’s the objective truth is worse than just outright lying. Especially when the the slant is such that it rewords questions and/or answers to look like what was said was false when it was true as originally stated.
Dave Barnhart
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