“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
In today’s world, we’re frequently forced to ask the same question. Much of the information we receive, particularly in areas such as politics and social issues, is fake news- yellow journalism or propaganda designed to deliberately mislead or deceive and affect our decision making.
Much news- some would say all news- is biased, that is, prejudiced in favor of or against something or someone. Unbiased information would try to present both sides of an issue. Propaganda is a way of wording or structuring something so it appeals mostly to emotions, and distorts facts. It’s intended to win you over to a certain cause or belief. Here’s a question for you: is biased reporting propaganda? If your answer is no, can you explain the difference?
Depending on your news sources, you may feel you’re in an echo chamber, hearing the same messages with the same slant, repeated over and over. Or, given multiple points of view about an issue or story, all claiming to be the truth, you may start to feel like the blind men and the elephant.
The good news is that, with a little practice, we can usually recognize propaganda and bias when we see it. It frequently involves one or more of the following:
- Lies masquerading as facts
- Denial of facts
- Opinions stated as facts
- Presenting just one side of an issue
- The use of unverified sources
The use of secondary rather than primary sources - The use of anonymous sources
- False experts and witnesses
- Slanted language
- Exaggeration
- Over-generalization
- Appeals to emotion rather than reason
Here are some ways to recognize and deal with these.
Lies / Denial of Facts
If the source is a website, is it a legitimate site, or a rip-off? Does it redirect? Go to the official site from a new browser page to verify (don’t use links.)
If the source of the ‘fact’ is unknown or anonymous, flag it. This applies to mainstream ‘anonymous sources’ too. The alleged facts can’t be verified, and the motive for the leak is often questionable.
Look for disclaimers like ‘as reported to’ or ‘as received’. This is a dodge.
Is the source a personal blog? If so, it’s almost certainly an opinion.
Does the article contain grammatical or formatting errors, or other errors of fact? These indicate poor research and suggest the piece may contain factual errors.
Is the source indirect (such as a chain email)? The fact that even a friend or relative forwarded it to you doesn’t make it accurate.
Is your source a reporter or a commentator? Talking heads are expected to have opinions. Reporters are expected to report facts.
Stick to reputable and official news sources that follow good journalism practices. One way to identify such sources is to check the source on mediabiasfactcheck.com or allsides.com. Media Bias/Fact Check identifies both an indicator of bias and (usually) an indicator called “Factual Reporting”. The later identifies how carefully facts are sourced (remember that even sites that are careful with facts can be biased in other ways.) If a story you’re interested in doesn’t come from a reliable source, try to cross-check with a more reliable source. Reputable sites often have an additional advantage: wider readership. More readers (or viewers) means more people to call out inaccuracies.
An additional resource to check truth and falsehood are fact-checking websites. Media Bias/Fact Check has a list of these [2]. Be aware that even these sites, which do careful fact-checking, may contain other logic errors, such as prejudicing what is or isn’t checked. You will frequently find that the fact you need checked isn’t. A second issue is timeliness. Stories, particularly stories involving investigative reporting, take time. A politifact.org report on voter fraud in the 2016 federal election [3] written on December 17, 2016 found little evidence of voter fraud, but an article by the Heritage Foundation [4] written on July 28, 2018 reported much more fraud. The point here is not that the PolitiFact report is wrong, or that the Heritage Foundation report is correct, but that there is a time-line factor in reporting: early reports are frequently incomplete or inaccurate.
Opinions Stated as Facts
Is what you’re looking at a fact or someone’s opinion?
You may think this is obvious, but sometimes the lines blur.
Consider:
‘The house was painted on November 18, 1999’ is a statement of fact (which may or not be correct), but
‘The house was painted recently on November 18, 1999, so it looks as good as new’ is an opinion, using a statement of fact as supporting evidence.
A web page from Auburn University [1] expands on this issue and how to deal with it at length.
Presenting one side of an issue
To examine this fake news component, let’s look at an example from BBC news dated May 26, 2012, an article titled Syria Crisis: Houla ‘massacre’ leaves 90 dead. [5] The article laid the blame for the massacre squarely on Syrian government forces.
But a few days later, May 28, 2012, Russ Baker’s WhoWhatWhy published an article, Syria: The Dangers of One-Sided Reporting, which faults the BBC coverage specifically because the reports were based almost entirely on the word from activists on one side in the conflict, not from journalists or neutral observers.
In other words, the reporting was one-sided. By June 8th, the BBC had released another story, Houla: How a massacre unfolded,[7] which painted a somewhat different story, in which who committed the atrocities was more clouded.
It’s easy to excuse errors in reporting from a war zone, where the reports are not first hand, and the BBC article cited is not completely inaccurate. But it’s not completely accurate, either. It’s simply not complete, because it didn’t dig deep enough.
In academic writing and rhetoric, you’re expected to present two or more points of view and discuss the pros and cons of each one. You might then choose one you favorite and present your conclusions. By presenting multiple sides and arguing their merits you’re giving your audience a sense of what you used for evidence, how you weighed it, and the methods you used to reach your conclusions and try to influence theirs. Presenting just one side of an issue skips key pieces of that process.
The relative effects of one-sided reporting in news is sometimes hard to evaluate. A variation of the problem has, however, been well-studied: that of building effective survey questions.[8] Good surveys are critical in some areas such as health care and public policy, and there are of course a lot of sins in survey building, such as leading questions, loaded questions, and double-barreled questions. The study [8] asks if presenting both sides of an issue creates better survey, and uses as an example a 1981 ABC News/Washington Post poll that asked respondents whether they favored or opposed ‘stronger legislation controlling the distribution of handguns’ as opposed to split-ballot questions like ‘Would you favor a law which required a police permit before he could purchase a handgun, or do you think such a law would interfere too much with the right of citizens to own guns?’ The study is complicated, but shows that the form of the question affects not only what the responses are but the rate of responses. It also suggests that the less educated are more willing to ‘acquiesce’ to one-sided agree/disagree forms of questions (given what we know about confirmation bias and how little critical thinking skills are taught, I’m leery of that part of the results; we may all be a little ‘less educated’ in this regard.)
One website that attempts to deal with one-sided reporting is AllSides. [9] The site attempts to report hot button issues and topics in a more neutral way by showing articles on an issue from all sides (left, right, neutral.) Their reason d’etre is well-described in a TED talk. [10]
Sources, Witnesses, and Experts
On September 12, 2017, Hillary Clinton’s book on how she lost the election, What Happened, went on sale. By noon the next day, the book had collected nearly 1,700 reviews on Amazon, close to evenly split between one-star (negative) and five-star (positive) rating. By 3:05 that afternoon, Amazon had apparently deleted over 900 reviews.
What happened? Only 338 of reviews logged that morning were from users who were verified purchasers of the book on Amazon, according to ReviewMedia. [11] Many of the reviews, especially the negative ones, were bogus.
Think of each book review as testimony: you read the book, and you review it; you’re witness to your own feelings about it. Except in this case, the reviews were by false witnesses.
In journalism, a ‘source’ is a person or document that provides timely and relevant information. Examples are official records, publications or broadcasts, officials’ statements, witnesses of an event, and other people affected by a news event or issue.
Developing and evaluating sources is a reporter’s job, and it’s not an easy one, but your job as reader or viewer- the consumer of the reporter’s news product- isn’t easy either. You need to evaluate the same sources, but indirectly, through the reporter’s filter- to evaluate the evaluation, so to speak. Your best advice is the same advice given to reporters: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”[12] Here are some tips on how to do so.
A primary source is direct or firsthand evidence of the event. This contrasts to secondary sources, which are descriptions, discussions, or interpretations based on primary sources. The vast mountains of information you face every day reduce to more manageable foothills when you begin eliminating secondary sources. With the exception of scholarly journals that publish research, and books that are collections of letters and speeches, diaries or the like, most periodical publications and books are secondary sources.
Both primary and secondary sources have their uses and problems. The problems can be lumped into categories: are the sources accessible, accurate, and understandable?
Every student knows the problem of finding an interesting reference in a bibliography and then being unable to access it. The culprits are usually time and money. Books must be borrowed or purchased. Online publications and article reprints are often hidden behind a paywall. Borrowing a book or document means a trip to the library, and worse, primary sources in archives often require interlibrary loans, which take time. Either way- buy or borrow- you’re making a significant investment.
But as a consumer of news, there’s another way to think about accessibility. Does the article or book or show you’re examining even list its sources? If so, how thoroughly? A bibliography is useful, and an annotated bibliography even better: a citation’s annotation gives you a sense of how the author evaluated the source and how relevant it was. Beware of hype in bibliographies. A spot check of one or two can tell you how relevant a citation is to the reporter’s story.
Although documents can be forged (or non-existent), accuracy is more of a problem with websites. Is the website reputable? The domain name may help tell; .edu and .gov websites are generally more credible. Is the website author reputable? Does he have publications, or is he referenced on other sites? Does he publish regularly? An intermittent blog by someone you’ve never heard of may not be the most reliable source. Is the website professional in appearance? Are there spelling and grammatical errors?
Witness accuracy is always worth skepticism. As a reader or viewer, you usually don’t have direct access to witnesses (and wouldn’t want to if you could.) But again, some heuristics can help make sense of it.
Is the witness attributable- either identified by name or title? There may be cases, such as in crime-related stories, where witnesses don’t want to be identified for good reason, but common sense should make this clear.
A ‘fact witness’ should only report things he or she has seen first-hand. Post-hoc and hearsay witnesses aren’t really witnesses at all.
Is the witness relevant? A report on a purported chemical weapon attack in Syria [13] cites unnamed doctors and aid workers that up to half of those killed in the attack were children, and another citation, the Syrian American Medical Society, that many victims had symptoms of exposure to a chemical agent. As medical personnel these witnesses are credible as to what was done, but would be less so as witnesses to who perpetrated the attack.
Is the witness an expert? Expert witnesses are considered valuable in law cases because a trial or lawsuit’s subject is sufficiently complex: the severity of an injury, the degree of sanity, or the cause of a structural failure, for example. If an expert’s cited, a search for that person should quickly verify his or her credentials. But even in courtrooms, expert witnesses are often hired guns, and the other side may use its own expert witnesses to advocate a differing position. Which bias do you choose to believe?
How many witnesses are there? One? A few? Many? Consider a ball game: There’s no need for eyewitnesses to tell you the winning team.
Is the witness biased? The BBC news piece mentioned in discussing one-sided arguments [5] begins this way: ‘At least 90 people, including many children, have been killed in Syria’s restive Homs province, opposition activists say, calling it a “massacre”.’ Opposition activists can hardly be expected to place blame anywhere but on government forces. If bias is evident in witnesses, it’s the author’s responsibility to either verify the witness or identify that the witness is unverified, for example, by presenting counter-claims.
A final word on sources. We live in a complex age, filled with complex issues, from nuclear proliferation to drug addiction. In order to interpret news on a complex issue, it helps to understand the issue in broad terms: to have background. One of the best uses of secondary sources is to find good survey books and articles and read. Identifying ‘good’ is usually as simple as looking at reviews and ratings.
Misuse of Language
‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.’ These words, inscribed upon the Ministry of Truth building in The George Orwell’s 1984, introduce the reader to the idea of doublethink: as Orwell describes it,‘to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.’
Words are tools, and, sometimes, weapons. One way to weaponize language is to slant it. Slanting is using a statement or description in favor of a particular position. Slanting begins with the inclusion or omission of facts, but extends to the writer’s choice of words. A politician who supports a reform may be ‘enthusiastic about reform’ or ‘a fanatic about reform.’ A woman may be described in two ways: ‘a well-cut black dress draped subtly about her slender form’, or ‘a plain black dress hung on her thin frame.’
Emphasis can also be used to slant writing, even to something as simple as word order: ‘he was plain but kind’ is not identical to ‘he was kind but plain.’ When an author selects specific words to covey an implied meaning, he’s taking a stand: pro, con, or neutral. If that stand is not neutral, or the writer doesn’t prove or justify his stand, he’s biasing his work.
Exaggeration is another form of slanting. It takes many forms, but is often used to dramatize or emotionally charge a story to make it more appealing to a reader. When a headline doesn’t match the content of a story, it’s often because the headline exaggerates. Consider the following headline from CNN: ‘Marijuana legalization could help offset opioid epidemic, studies find’ [14]. As HealthNewsReview pointed out a few days later, there was no way to know if anyone was actually choosing to use marijuana instead of opiods [15]. Exaggeration can be used in more subtle ways, such as in using loaded images and pictures [16]. Videos of protests and rallies often uses camera angles to make the crowd look larger or smaller, depending on the point being made. Even the amount and type of news coverage of a story can constitute exaggeration [17].
Over-generalization is often the result of an attempt to make sense of an issue. It’s another form of exaggeration, and can be found in headlines, but can also be more subtle. One way to over-generalize is to include a witness over-generalization. A news piece on increased rate of homicides in Baltimore included a statement from an anonymous Baltimore police officer that police were staging a work slowdown[18]. The officer’s statement was an opinion about the entire police force; the reporter includes it in his story, but doesn’t point it out as opinion or offer other evidence (such as interviews with other policemen) to support the statement.
Biased language often appeals to emotions rather than reason. The Knife Media offers an interesting analysis of words used to describe the dialog tag ‘said’ in “50 ways to spin the phrase ‘Trump said” [19]. Selection and arrangement of material also plays to emotion; a different piece from The Knife offers an example in a story about an accident involving a self-driving car [20].
When you start looking for fake news and biased reporting, you see it everywhere. It’s easy to be cynical. But developing skill in critical reading will also make you more aware of good reporting when you see it. In today’s fast-moving and complex world, you need good information. It’s up to you to go find it.
[1] How Do You Separate Fact From Opinion?
http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/fact.html
[2] The Ten Best Fact Checking Sites https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/2016/07/20/the-10-best-fact-checking-sites/
[3] Fact checking the integrity of the vote in 2016
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/17/fact-checking-claims-voter-fraud-2016/
[4] New Report Exposes Thousands of Illegal Votes in 2016 Election
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/new-report-exposes-thousands-illegal-votes-2016-election
[5] Syria Crisis: Houla ‘massacre leaves 90 dead
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-18216176
[6] Syria: The Dangers of One-Sided Reporting
[7] Houla: How a massacre unfolded
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-18233934
[8] Effects of Presenting One Versus Two Sides of an Issue in Survey Questions, George F. Bishop, Robert W. Oldendick and Alfred J. Tuchfarber, The Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 69-85
[9] AllSides
https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
[10] Free Yourself From Your Filter Bubbles, TED Talk
[11] https://qz.com/1076357/hillary-clintons-what-happened-amazon-just-deleted-over-900-reviews-of-hillary-clintons-new-book/
[12] Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload, Bill Kovach & Tom Rosensteil, Bloomsbury USA, 2010
[13] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/syria-attack-we-found-bodies-on-the-stairs-they-didn-t-see-the-gas-in-time-xk0d8vrnt
[14] https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/health/medical-cannabis-law-opioid-prescription-study/index.html
[15] https://www.healthnewsreview.org/review/cnn-leaves-out-key-limitation-to-study-on-legalizing-marijuana-and-opioid-use/
[16] http://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/photos/in-pictures-injured-children-in-a-hospital-in-douma-syria
[17] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/20/us/police-brutality-video-social-media-attitudes/index.html
[18] https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/26/us/baltimore-deadliest-month-violence-since-1999/index.html
[19] https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/50-ways-spin-phrase-trump-said/
[20] https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/tesla-and-self-driving-technology-how-the-media-may-deter-progress-with-faulty-reasoning/
Credible witness – Wikipedia (eyewitness,unimpeachable
The echo chamber – time-lines
Anonymity begets bad behavior