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.