Ask Lemmy

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:

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.

I do I try my best to get the facts

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.

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

https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082322

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 goong 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.

The news is a propaganda machine designed to output a dual-pronged attack ironically outlined by your post. For skeptics like yourself the constant stream of misinfo will have you fact checking senseless data that you instinctively know to be true or false based on observation, wasting your time. however when presented in the news or by aquaintences It challenges you to correct them, this is a job for a team of the same magnitude as the news stations themselves.

For the indoctrinated Its just a constant echochamber of new info that helps fortify new or previously fabricated info, and gives them talking points to repeat to anyone even minorly skeptical of the regime.

Your experience with your friend IS part of the manipulation. the only way out is to attempt to focus on what is local to you and within your control (dont ignore the macro issues obviously just try not to focus on them). Getting involved with local politics, speak with real people and rather than attacking their facts. Attack their logic, similarly to how you are trying to get your friend understand her bias and where that stems from.

being a victim of propaganda, being religeous, being part of a subculture, having unresloved trauma, having children, never being properly taught logic or Epistemology (edit:this word is so important cant believe i forgot it.), all of these and more contribute to bias.

To answer your question, there are organizations that do fact checking but im also skeptical of those because who watches the watchers? How do they afford to exist? Do the fact checkers have bias themselves? Its a never ending cycle of bullshit.

No doom and gloom though (they want you to feel defeated) because there is still tons to appreciate, so many people are waking up. Lots of individuals attacking "the system" from every possible angle all across the world. All it takes is some mildly uncomfortable conversations with the people you care about, and patience, LOTS of patience.

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).

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.

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.

Think hard:

it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff

How would you know that?

Can you really know that?

How and where have you first met this person?

what can I do step-by-step to verify the news

One neccessary precondition is: You need to love critical thinking.

My questions above were meant as an example for that. You don't need to answer them. But if you felt uncomfortable when you read them, then think about your own critical thinking.

My recommendation is: talk to your friend about critical thinking.

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.

If you don’t have independent confirmation for the specific event, you could do a simple application of Bayes' theorem.
If (say) FOX is reporting something and you’re not sure how much credence to give it, ask yourself:

A. How often does this sort of thing happen in general? (Check historical sources.)

B. How often does FOX claim this type of thing happens? (Check Google trends.)

C. How likely is FOX to report this if it actually happens? (If it fits their narrative, probably close to 1.)

Then you can estimate the likelihood of the report being true as AC/B.