"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." -- John Adams
Very early in this blog, I wrote a post about wading through the fake news and finding the truth. It's time to re-visit this issue.
Back then, just two weeks after the inauguration, I wrote how overwhelming the number of lies coming out of the Whitewash House. Here we are, two years later, and there have been more than 6,000 false or misleading claims from the Cheeto Mussolini since Inauguration Day. That's about 10 per day! That's championship stuff!
Truth and facts have been corrupted. To a very frightening degree.
It's a common refrain from the right, at least in my experience, that the "mainstream media" (seeming to mean anything except FAUX News) is to be distrusted. Their Supreme Leader has dictated this attitude. The Apricot Pol Pot deems any unfavorable coverage as "fake news," and his base has bought into that propaganda. Lock, stock, and barrel. The new definition of the truth for the right is "what fits their mindset." Recently I wrote about an interaction with a right-leaning high school acquaintance on Facebook and the circular reasoning about finding the truth. Here are verbatim quotes from a recent Facebook exchange:
My friend said, "People keep saying he lies... I keep trying to pay attention but I haven't heard one yet."
I replied, "If you think he hasn't lied, you truly haven't been paying attention. Here's a report from a Least-biased, highly factual site. https://www.politifact.com/.../statements/byruling/false/"
One of her friends replied (there are a lot of "(sic)" in here. This is cut and paste), "We don't use fact checking sites that are basically left-leaning propaganda. That is why you like them....but that does not make them "the truth", any more or less than the sources we rely on are "the truth". The truth is hard to determine, don't be so arrogant that you believe you have the truth and we don't. All media is biased. Until you realize that, you will remain unaware of legitimate ideas and idealogies of the right. Many, if not all liberals I talk with have NO IDEA what we believe or why. They don't listen to what we say, just put up smoke screens and phony "fact check" excuses to make our points "illegitamate". I predict that this election AGAIN will baffle the left as the right wins on Nov 6."
Very early in this blog, I wrote a post about wading through the fake news and finding the truth. It's time to re-visit this issue.
Back then, just two weeks after the inauguration, I wrote how overwhelming the number of lies coming out of the Whitewash House. Here we are, two years later, and there have been more than 6,000 false or misleading claims from the Cheeto Mussolini since Inauguration Day. That's about 10 per day! That's championship stuff!
Truth and facts have been corrupted. To a very frightening degree.
 |
| Tom Toles |
It's a common refrain from the right, at least in my experience, that the "mainstream media" (seeming to mean anything except FAUX News) is to be distrusted. Their Supreme Leader has dictated this attitude. The Apricot Pol Pot deems any unfavorable coverage as "fake news," and his base has bought into that propaganda. Lock, stock, and barrel. The new definition of the truth for the right is "what fits their mindset." Recently I wrote about an interaction with a right-leaning high school acquaintance on Facebook and the circular reasoning about finding the truth. Here are verbatim quotes from a recent Facebook exchange:
My friend said, "People keep saying he lies... I keep trying to pay attention but I haven't heard one yet."
I replied, "If you think he hasn't lied, you truly haven't been paying attention. Here's a report from a Least-biased, highly factual site. https://www.politifact.com/.../statements/byruling/false/"
One of her friends replied (there are a lot of "(sic)" in here. This is cut and paste), "We don't use fact checking sites that are basically left-leaning propaganda. That is why you like them....but that does not make them "the truth", any more or less than the sources we rely on are "the truth". The truth is hard to determine, don't be so arrogant that you believe you have the truth and we don't. All media is biased. Until you realize that, you will remain unaware of legitimate ideas and idealogies of the right. Many, if not all liberals I talk with have NO IDEA what we believe or why. They don't listen to what we say, just put up smoke screens and phony "fact check" excuses to make our points "illegitamate". I predict that this election AGAIN will baffle the left as the right wins on Nov 6."
Well, there's a difference between bias and fact. Sure, all media is biased. Each journalist is human after all. News sources do have a bit of bias based on their editors, their publishers, and their readership. Some news sources have more bias to one political ideology or another, and they may use language that resonates with their readership or choose stories based on ideology.
BUT even a biased source can be factual.
And some sources are more factual than others. We are all very aware of the uprising of Fake News before the election, especially on social media. Much of it was planted by the Russians to skew our outlooks. The social media platforms worked to eliminate fake news and stopped selling data about their members. But there are still highly biased sources or sources with low levels of factual reporting out there. And there are watchdogs that judge these for us and report on them.
Here is a chart that is helpful to sort out the amount of bias and the amount of truthfulness among sources.
The right likes to spit out the words, "Mainstream Media" as if it were a cancer. There is nothing wrong with the mainstream media, which is at the top center of that chart. The mainstream media is what reports in the most unbiased, factual way. The mainstream media is our friend! The reason those on the right don't like the mainstream media is precisely because of the fact that they report the truth, and the right does not want to believe the truth. Luckily, no matter how much they wish them away, facts are facts. Facts are stubborn things!
In the last two years, the orange scourge has perverted the term "fake news" so that it's no longer applicable to the real fake news. (Geez, look at how our language has become perverted. Real fake news! Holy cow! As opposed to the fake fake news, which is the legitimate news.) There really is fake news --non-factual claims-- on both the left and the right. When I come upon a meme or a sensational headline on social media, I check for the bias and factual reporting of the source before I even read it. I use Media Bias/Fact Check often. If the source is skewed right and is still highly factual, I'll read it. But if reporting is listed as "mixed" or less, I won't even open it. What's the point? We should all call out those who post questionable stories or memes, left or right.
So, what about the Fact-Checkers? Where does the right's concern that they are a leftist conspiracy group come from? Is there a legitimate concern that they are biased to the left? Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
Snopes.com was called into question by The Daily Mail (a source that is right-leaning, mixed factual reporting) in 2016, and never quite recovered from it. This perhaps was the start of the right's distrust toward fact-checkers.
Here we get to the circular arguments again, which I find so maddening. The right has started to question fact-checkers' bias based on opinions on their own highly skewed, questionably factual sites. The Media Research Center (which, by the way, questions climate change as well as evolution) and its sister site Newsbusters, both highly-biased conservative sites with "mixed" factual reporting, will simply assert that fact-checkers are biased, and their readers will simply believe them. The Newsbusters site does its own version of fact-checking the fact-checkers, and cite some claims that they have fact-checked themselves. Let's just say that they are legitimately conducting fact-checks. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they have 11 "checks" listed on their site from 06/18/18 to 11/11/18. That's an average of 2 per month. In contrast, Politifact has checked 111 claims so far this month, claims from both the left and the right.
What can we do? There are several fact-checkers and multiple sources of truthful information, and therein lies our solution. As I wrote before, what we can do is consume healthy media. Read. A lot. Be aware that there is "fake news" on both sides. Look for the broccoli and beans of the media sources. Reject the Doritos and Cheez-Whiz. That stuff ain't healthy. Use more than one fact-checking sites, such as:
Media Bias/Fact Check
Politifact
Snopes.com
Factcheck.org
AP Fact Check
Check the fact-checkers with RealClearPolitics, which is more factual than the other source I referenced.
Check for the general bias and factual rating before reading. Call out people for citing from questionable sources. Memes are not news sources. Skip them. Read multiple sources. Read from sources on the top center of that chart. Read more than just the headline, and call out others who didn't! Stubbornly search for the facts. Find the original source.
Which brings me back to Captain Outrageous and his lies. It astounds me that an intelligent citizen can say with a straight face, "People keep saying he lies... I keep trying to pay attention but I haven't heard one yet." You don't need "people" or "media" or "news" to tell you he lies. Just turn on the TV and listen to what comes out of his mouth. You only have to be a reasonably informed citizen to recognize the many lies and bizarre claims for yourself. There is no filter or interpretation needed; all of his bizarre behavior and outlandish claims are there in real time and in the raw for me and you and everyone to see. Use your brains, people!
Or, alternatively, go ahead. Continue your journey down the rabbit hole. Sit down to tea and discuss alternative facts with a madman. “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -The Mad Hatter, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
BUT even a biased source can be factual.
And some sources are more factual than others. We are all very aware of the uprising of Fake News before the election, especially on social media. Much of it was planted by the Russians to skew our outlooks. The social media platforms worked to eliminate fake news and stopped selling data about their members. But there are still highly biased sources or sources with low levels of factual reporting out there. And there are watchdogs that judge these for us and report on them.
Here is a chart that is helpful to sort out the amount of bias and the amount of truthfulness among sources.
 |
| Marketwatch |
The right likes to spit out the words, "Mainstream Media" as if it were a cancer. There is nothing wrong with the mainstream media, which is at the top center of that chart. The mainstream media is what reports in the most unbiased, factual way. The mainstream media is our friend! The reason those on the right don't like the mainstream media is precisely because of the fact that they report the truth, and the right does not want to believe the truth. Luckily, no matter how much they wish them away, facts are facts. Facts are stubborn things!
In the last two years, the orange scourge has perverted the term "fake news" so that it's no longer applicable to the real fake news. (Geez, look at how our language has become perverted. Real fake news! Holy cow! As opposed to the fake fake news, which is the legitimate news.) There really is fake news --non-factual claims-- on both the left and the right. When I come upon a meme or a sensational headline on social media, I check for the bias and factual reporting of the source before I even read it. I use Media Bias/Fact Check often. If the source is skewed right and is still highly factual, I'll read it. But if reporting is listed as "mixed" or less, I won't even open it. What's the point? We should all call out those who post questionable stories or memes, left or right.
So, what about the Fact-Checkers? Where does the right's concern that they are a leftist conspiracy group come from? Is there a legitimate concern that they are biased to the left? Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
Snopes.com was called into question by The Daily Mail (a source that is right-leaning, mixed factual reporting) in 2016, and never quite recovered from it. This perhaps was the start of the right's distrust toward fact-checkers.
Here we get to the circular arguments again, which I find so maddening. The right has started to question fact-checkers' bias based on opinions on their own highly skewed, questionably factual sites. The Media Research Center (which, by the way, questions climate change as well as evolution) and its sister site Newsbusters, both highly-biased conservative sites with "mixed" factual reporting, will simply assert that fact-checkers are biased, and their readers will simply believe them. The Newsbusters site does its own version of fact-checking the fact-checkers, and cite some claims that they have fact-checked themselves. Let's just say that they are legitimately conducting fact-checks. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they have 11 "checks" listed on their site from 06/18/18 to 11/11/18. That's an average of 2 per month. In contrast, Politifact has checked 111 claims so far this month, claims from both the left and the right.
What can we do? There are several fact-checkers and multiple sources of truthful information, and therein lies our solution. As I wrote before, what we can do is consume healthy media. Read. A lot. Be aware that there is "fake news" on both sides. Look for the broccoli and beans of the media sources. Reject the Doritos and Cheez-Whiz. That stuff ain't healthy. Use more than one fact-checking sites, such as:
Media Bias/Fact Check
Politifact
Snopes.com
Factcheck.org
AP Fact Check
Check the fact-checkers with RealClearPolitics, which is more factual than the other source I referenced.
Check for the general bias and factual rating before reading. Call out people for citing from questionable sources. Memes are not news sources. Skip them. Read multiple sources. Read from sources on the top center of that chart. Read more than just the headline, and call out others who didn't! Stubbornly search for the facts. Find the original source.
Which brings me back to Captain Outrageous and his lies. It astounds me that an intelligent citizen can say with a straight face, "People keep saying he lies... I keep trying to pay attention but I haven't heard one yet." You don't need "people" or "media" or "news" to tell you he lies. Just turn on the TV and listen to what comes out of his mouth. You only have to be a reasonably informed citizen to recognize the many lies and bizarre claims for yourself. There is no filter or interpretation needed; all of his bizarre behavior and outlandish claims are there in real time and in the raw for me and you and everyone to see. Use your brains, people!
Or, alternatively, go ahead. Continue your journey down the rabbit hole. Sit down to tea and discuss alternative facts with a madman. “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -The Mad Hatter, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Thanks for reading, Sister and Brother Resisters! Keep up the Resistance!
I am as frustrated with lies from the "left" as I am with lies from the "right".
ReplyDeleteEven on stories that have nothing to do with politics, I start by asking the question, "Does this sound like the truth"?
The more that I check stories for their veracity, the easier it is to recognize BS at a glance.
It's kind of like counterfeit money. The way you are trained to spot counterfeit is to constantly look at real money.
Facts matter. Always have, always will.
Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts, Richard!
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