Being a Good Consumer of Media and Candidate Rhetoric

 

Students always ask: how do I find god sources of news?  The internet and television are full of bad news sources, political propaganda, infotainment, and conspiracy-filled websites and programs whose sole purpose is to trick you into buying a product you don’t need or buying an ideology that actually runs against your own interest.

 

First, let me do what I suggest all media should do: make your perspective clear.  I am politically middle of the road. Neither political party would accept me in their ranks.  I believe that Republicans are too often the party of bad ideas and Democrats are too often the party of no ideas.  I lean libertarian on many issues, so I support same sex marriage and (which I define as freedom) and I don’t like the estate tax (which I see as confiscatory – love that word).  I think the Iraq War of 2003 was as foolish as the Vietnam War, but I think the US does need to modernize its strategic nuclear forces and build Conventional Prompt Global Strike capability (the ability to target anything in the world with conventional weaponry in a short period of time is essential for dealing with nations such as North Korea).  I like good solid investigative reporting and there isn’t enough of it these days.  I like newspapers and never get my news from the television (except BBC). To me the trusted sources of news are: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.  On a weekly basis The Economist is almost like a religious experience for me.

 

But many people are unsure. There are charges of fake news and sadly many news organizations regularly report issues that are not real, such as Obama’s supposed birth in Kenya (that is a complete fabrication, a lie, anyone who believes this is wrong, and anyone news organization that tells you this is true is lying to you).

 

How does someone deal with all the myriad of news sources, in particular, some that give you “alternative facts?”

 

First, I live and die by Fact Checking sites. These will help you sift through the garbage and lies spread by bad news sources, propagandist pundits, Internet rumors and lies, and politicians who will say anything to get elected.  Here are the ones I use.

 

·         Fact Check.Org From the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania

·         PolitiFact.com From several newspapers

·         The Fact Checker From the Washington Post

·         Snopes.com (fact checking and debunking urban legends and internet hoaxes that are often about politics)

 

This is a link to a PPT presentation that I have used for some of my classes. It is a quick guide to ways you can judge the quality of the information you are being given by any news source, web site, or political campaign:  Being a Good Political Consumer

 

 

The Internet

Here are some quick tips to thinking about information on the web.

 

Judging a Website: what is crucial about any webpage is that you know what the source of the information is. All information on the web is not equal. Before you trust any information on the web you must know who runs the website. Who is the source of the information? The US Nazi Party has many websites. Their information is probably not a source you want to use for research on Israeli foreign policy, for example.  If I’m researching Russian foreign policy, I need to know if the source is from the Russian government or a scholarly source. Their views might be very different.

 

Propaganda: There is a ton of propaganda on the web. Many governments in the world are not Democratic. They don’t have freedom of the press, but they do have a huge presence on the Internet where they disseminate propaganda that tries to influence the world’s judgment of their actions.  China, Russia, or North Korea are good examples of nations that use propaganda on the internet as part of their “influence operations” that try to make their governments look warm and fuzzy while they imprison government critics. Even in Democracies you need to be careful of the sources. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party both have their own web presence that is designed to make them look good and make their political opponents look bad.  Media often has a perspective as well (left, right, center, celebrity, sensationalist, scandal…whatever).  In short, always be mindful of where the information comes from. 

 

Conspiracy Theories: The web is a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories. That’s one of the most difficult aspects of our current information environment.  There are so many sources of information and many of them are just garbage. Remember that on the web you can find a lot of information on these topics, NONE OF THE FOLLOWING ARE TRUE!!!!!

·         How President George W. Bush launched the September 11 attacks so he could repeal the 2nd Amendment

·         How George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 to steal all Iraq’s oil and prevent Saddam Hussein from disclosing that the Bush family had been controlling global oil prices for decades in league with the Saudi Arabian royal family

·         How Barack Obama was born in Kenya and sneaked into the US at an early age so he could become President; he was doing this under the orders of al-Qaeda

·         How the Affordable Care Act (that created near universal health care in the US) had a section allowing a small government committee to decide who would live or die when they reached old age (the “death panels”)

·         In 2018, you can find all kinds of stories about how no students were killed in Parkland, Florida when a gunman attacked the school. The survivors of the attacks are paid actors employed by Socialists in an effort to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

·         Again: NONE OF THESE ARE TRUE, but there are sadly way too many people who believe this stuff because it is on the Internet.

·         Oh and there was an Italian website about fifteen years ago that linked me to the Kennedy assassination. I am not kidding. I had just turned two when Kennedy was killed. If I was involved in the plot, I don’t remember.

 

How do you navigate through this?  See the PPT presentation, but also remember this. You’ve all encountered large organizations, your high school or university or the DMV.   Do they seem well organized and super competent?  Do they seem capable of vast conspiracies that span continents and decades? Or do they seem barely able to muddle through on a daily basis?  All these conspiracies require massive planning that works, brilliance on a scale that defies explanation.  Is that credible?  Is it really believable that Hillary Clinton ran a child trafficking organization out of the basement of a pizzeria in Washington DC? Many people believe it. And apparently the organization was so competent that when one US citizen went to the pizzeria and began shooting up the place, al evidence of child trafficking was gone already. Amazing.  Conspiracies are great because they suggest that if we can only get rid of the conspirators, we could have a perfect world. Reality is a little more disheartening. It suggests that we don’t have a perfect world because things are very complex, some problems are nearly impossible to solve, and not everyone has the same viewpoint.  Not everyone identifies the same things as problems and even if we do agree on the problem, we don’t always agree on the solutions. Even if we do agree on the solutions, we may not be able to afford it or have the technology to do it.   But if we think about world history, there is a steady progression where life has been getting better for the vast majority of people.  If we’re muddling through, our muddling is not half bad.