Media Literacy and Fake News (2 Viewers)

Ayo · Oct 2, 2019

The Canadian Journalism Federation is taking fake news very seriously. I've worked with media literacy for years, and this is - to date - the most expansively public approach that I've seen, in advance of the Federal Election.

Journalism group launches anti-fake news campaign ahead of Canadian election

Recent polling suggests nearly all Canadians have come across misinformation online, yet only 40 per cent feel they know how to differentiate between fake news and the real thing.

www.thestar.com

If you are engaged online, you have likely been subjected to something that was not true, and yet there isn't much pursuit in trying to determine factual accuracy of the articles and information. And most of us - probably every single one of us here - have fallen for it.

Recent polling by Ipsos, Earnscliffe Strategy Group and MIT researchers suggests nearly all Canadians have come across misinformation online, yet only 40 per cent feel they know how to differentiate between fake news and the real thing.

The polls also found 90 per cent of Canadians admitted to falling for fake news in the past, and only a third of them regularly check to see if the stories they’re consuming are legitimate.

I don't think that their approach is going to be enough. I think the most effective utility it will have is bringing awareness. But fuller approaches to media literacy are going to be necessary to combat the deluge of increasingly deceptive media. These are hard skills that can be learned, but with the advent of new 'deep fake' technology, media literacy is going to have adapt, too.

I would like to see greater emphasis on media literacy in the US. Because even though this statement is for the Canadian audience, it definitely - maybe even more so - applies to the US where news is more infotainment and sensationalized than it is up here:

“To be an engaged citizen, you have to have access to quality journalism… you have to understand what is quality journalism and what is not,” said Richard Gingras, vice-president of Google News.

Another source includes one approach - the SPOT approach: https://www.manitoulin.ca/news-media-canada-launches-new-tool-to-help-people-spot-fake-news/

SPOT is an acronym that acts as a simple way to remember the four principles of identifying misinformation. It works like this:
S: Is this a credible source? Check the source of the article—and be skeptical.
P: Is the perspective biased? Think critically and look for varying viewpoints on an issue.
O: Are other sources reporting the same story? Be your own fact-checker and verify the validity of the story.
T: Is the story timely? Check the date the story was published—sometimes, stories use old information to take advantage of a timely occurrence.

It's obviously not enough, but a decent start.

Lazybones · Oct 19, 2019

V Chip said:
MediaBiasFactCheck has this to say about Snopes:

so Dave Van Zandt is all of a sudden middle of the road with no biases?

Lazybones · Oct 19, 2019

LA - L.A. said:
I'm in agreement with you not only in this specific instance, but in general.

The first lesson in any media literacy class should be "never ever put stock in any headline ever." Headlines since the dawn of language serve only one master, grab everyone's attention with sensationalism. The only headlines I've ever seen that gave a simple, matter of fact, preview of the article were those that came over the newswires. The only reason for that is that the newswires feeds are not meant for public consumption.

They didn’t sensationalize the headline, they numbed the headline. It was totally used to give cover to the network.

Dragon · Oct 19, 2019

Lazybones said:
not to thread jack, I’m still waiting for the 10-20 lies per day that trump spews and all the bad project Veritas has done.

I don't know how many times you need the link mentioned previously but here it is again

https://twitter.com/ddale8?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

one more as well

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/flurry-of-trump-falsehoods/

Lazybones · Oct 19, 2019

Dragon said:
I don't know how many times you need the link mentioned previously but here it is again

https://twitter.com/ddale8?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

one more as well

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/flurry-of-trump-falsehoods/

again, I don’t want someone else’s words ad to what he is lying about I want to read it myself. Please point me to the day that he is spewing 10-20 lies. This should be super easy. Ayo quoted a stat that he averaged 13 lies a day on Twitter. Please point those out.

Ayo · Oct 19, 2019

Lazybones said:
again, I don’t want someone else’s words ad to what he is lying about I want to read it myself. Please point me to the day that he is spewing 10-20 lies. This should be super easy. Ayo quoted a stat that he averaged 13 lies a day on Twitter. Please point those out.

i did not say on Twitter. He does lie on Twitter. But I did not say he lies an average of 13.5 times on Twitter. Never said that. The stat is an average of 13.5 lies a day period. Across all manner of communications. If you want to read for yourself, transcripts are readily available. The primary source material is all over the internet, widely available in video and print form. There isn’t anything prohibiting you from doing it.

the transcript from the rally a couple of nights ago is online. You can read it yourself and see the lies yourself. There were at least a couple dozen.

it is super easy. The speech in online. And at least two dozen lies were documented and linked. You can do it yourself if you like.

if you want to, you can read the transcript and list all of the lies that were pointed out and then demonstrate that they are not lies if you want. Compare the speech to your list and Dale’s list. Or try to, rather.

Trump has said around 120 times that he got choice when Obama couldn’t. Do you not believe that his statement is a lie? Or do you believe he is telling the truth?

you keep saying you want to decide for yourself. So, do it. Plenty of speeches available in different formats. Super easy. Instead of repeating you want to do it yourself, actually do it.

otherwise it begins to seem like you don’t actually want to do it.

Ayo · Oct 19, 2019

I’ll also add that I’m not going to entertain this Trump doesn’t really lie that much nonsense when plenty of information has been provided, and in repeated, patient good faith.

this thread is not going to be mired in obstinate defiance of verifiable fact because (1) that’s actually contradictory to the thread’s very point and (2) it takes away from the actual topic. I’m with the poster above that Trumps lies (or not, when he is falsely accused of lying - and he has been) is probably not fodder for this thread and merits its own.

I think I’ve provided plenty of information and links and resources and clarified my position more than once. So, I’m done with it in this thread and will, instead, try to keep the thread more or less on track.

i didn’t read the snipes article, but do feel like a question about fact checking sites is germane to the topic at hand. Just to be clear. There’s a line of relevance that’s distinguishable imo.

Lazybones · Oct 19, 2019

Ayo said:
i did not say on Twitter. He does lie on Twitter. But I did not say he lies an average of 13.5 times on Twitter. Never said that. The stat is an average of 13.5 lies a day period. Across all manner of communications. If you want to read for yourself, transcripts are readily available. The primary source material is all over the internet, widely available in video and print form. There isn’t anything prohibiting you from doing it.

the transcript from the rally a couple of nights ago is online. You can read it yourself and see the lies yourself. There were at least a couple dozen.

it is super easy. The speech in online. And at least two dozen lies were documented and linked. You can do it yourself if you like.

if you want to, you can read the transcript and list all of the lies that were pointed out and then demonstrate that they are not lies if you want. Compare the speech to your list and Dale’s list. Or try to, rather.

Trump has said around 120 times that he got choice when Obama couldn’t. Do you not believe that his statement is a lie? Or do you believe he is telling the truth?

you keep saying you want to decide for yourself. So, do it. Plenty of speeches available in different formats. Super easy. Instead of repeating you want to do it yourself, actually do it.

otherwise it begins to seem like you don’t actually want to do it.

No problem, I will wait for MT15 to respond. The conversation was about him on Twitter. Sorry to confuse the 2.

N.O.Bronco · Oct 19, 2019

Lazybones said:
again, I don’t want someone else’s words ad to what he is lying about I want to read it myself. Please point me to the day that he is spewing 10-20 lies. This should be super easy. Ayo quoted a stat that he averaged 13 lies a day on Twitter. Please point those out.

You have been given ample evidence while refusing to engage on your end.

There was at one point an open discussion about the difficulty in determining and moderating bad faith engagement.

To me, an easy way to determine that in select cases is when you have two people arguing matters of fact, one person claims: Trump lies habitually, the other is skeptical of that. Then in the course of conversation multiple people provide multiple examples to back up their claim, while the other person simply sealions his responders demanding arbitrary thresholds be met that have no bearing on whether the central matter is true or false. Attempting at no point to articulate why that arbitrary threshold matters to the larger conversation and by all accounts is simply being used to try and trip up another person on weak technicalities that prove nothing of substance. As Trump only lying three times a day on Twitter(and double or triple that in real life) vs. twelve doesn’t in any way dispel the central matter at question.

PS: MT15 has 4 responses in this thread, none of them state or imply what you have ascribed to her.

MT15 · Oct 19, 2019

Lazybones said:
not to thread jack, I’m still waiting for the 10-20 lies per day that trump spews and all the bad project Veritas has done.

No you are not. You’ve been shown how to look it up and given links. All you literally have to do is follow a link and read the list.

Beach Friends · Oct 19, 2019

JRad said:
In all fairness, do we know ABC didn’t use it by mistake? If I sell you a video of a firefight, you air it, then you later discover I sold you video of a different firefight, that’s pretty well within mistake territory. At worst, it’s bad vetting.

That's the point - I am not definitively saying it's one or the other. Snopes is.

Dadsdream · Oct 19, 2019

I read one of those sensational articles that counted and listed all of his lies.

Included among the list and counted as lies were obvious quips, jokes, off-the-cuff remarks and banter with the press as he was walking to and from the helicopter.

Some White House reporters are dismayed by these "chopper talks."

“They are actually a perfect encapsulation of him: quick hit questions, quick hit answers, lots of give and take,” said one White House reporter. “But they are terrible for reporters. It is impossible to hear, have a substantive dialogue, ask a follow-up question or do any serious pressing of the president. It is a f*****g circus.”

Trump’s ‘chopper talk’ puts media on the defensive

Using Marine One as a backdrop, the White House has replaced formal briefings with impromptu chats where the president sets all the rules.

www.politico.com

N.O.Bronco · Oct 19, 2019

Dadsdream said:
I read one of those sensational articles that counted and listed all of his lies.

Included among the list and counted as lies were obvious quips, jokes, off-the-cuff remarks and banter with the press as he was walking to and from the helicopter.

Some White House reporters are dismayed by these "chopper talks."

“They are actually a perfect encapsulation of him: quick hit questions, quick hit answers, lots of give and take,” said one White House reporter. “But they are terrible for reporters. It is impossible to hear, have a substantive dialogue, ask a follow-up question or do any serious pressing of the president. It is a f*****g circus.”

Trump’s ‘chopper talk’ puts media on the defensive
Using Marine One as a backdrop, the White House has replaced formal briefings with impromptu chats where the president sets all the rules.
www.politico.com

Where is this source/list?

How does it materially change the core matter of dispute here? I.E. Trump’s habitual aversion to the truth? As you can take away jokes and quips(why you would, idk) and it doesn’t materially change the fact the president is a habitual liar on a daily basis. Not just in chopper chats, but online, in his personal life, throughout his business career, at press events, in canned statements, through his campaign, in interviews, and really, anywhere Trump physically uses his vocal cords or expresses his speech.

A response like this appears to functionally have little other purpose than re-routing the conversation away from the inflection point at hand and onto the media making the case, using an arbitrary dispute over technicalities from a singular unnamed source as that justification.

yuyi64 · Oct 19, 2019

Dadsdream said:
I read one of those sensational articles that counted and listed all of his lies.

Included among the list and counted as lies were obvious quips, jokes, off-the-cuff remarks and banter with the press as he was walking to and from the helicopter.

Some White House reporters are dismayed by these "chopper talks."

“They are actually a perfect encapsulation of him: quick hit questions, quick hit answers, lots of give and take,” said one White House reporter. “But they are terrible for reporters. It is impossible to hear, have a substantive dialogue, ask a follow-up question or do any serious pressing of the president. It is a f*****g circus.”

Trump’s ‘chopper talk’ puts media on the defensive
Using Marine One as a backdrop, the White House has replaced formal briefings with impromptu chats where the president sets all the rules.
www.politico.com

Not only that but oftentimes when people (in this case the press) ask stupid questions they deservedly get stupid answers in return. If you ask loaded questions don't expect reasonable answers.

V Chip · Oct 19, 2019

Lazybones said:
so Dave Van Zandt is all of a sudden middle of the road with no biases?

Right. When facts no longer matter, call into question the fact-checkers. When fact-checkers don’t back up your opinions, call into question those who check bias of fact-checkers. When that also goes against your opinions, call those bias-checkers, too.

BobE · Oct 19, 2019

JRad said:
In all fairness, do we know ABC didn’t use it by mistake? If I sell you a video of a firefight, you air it, then you later discover I sold you video of a different firefight, that’s pretty well within mistake territory. At worst, it’s bad vetting.

Journalism 101, Vet your damn story. If they vetted it and still aired it people need to be fored. If they didn't vet it and still aired it people need to be fired. ABC either way should be damn ashamed at what happened and that they still never really offered a true retraction or apology is baffling.

Beach Friends · Oct 19, 2019

JRad said:
In all fairness, do we know ABC didn’t use it by mistake? If I sell you a video of a firefight, you air it, then you later discover I sold you video of a different firefight, that’s pretty well within mistake territory. At worst, it’s bad vetting.

BTW, what is your basis for saying at worse it's bad vetting?

The way I see it, bad vetting is the very best scenario for ABC.

But the framing of the question is only the most glaring of problems with the Snopes' article. Overall, the article is spin.

Look at how poorly the paragraph on ABC'S response is written. The lack of quotation marks leads to confusion as to what ABC said, and what Snopes is stating as fact. Specifically, rather than making it clear that all Snopes is saying is that ABC has said it was investigating, it reads as though Snopes is stating as a fact that there is an investigation underway.

Also, why the hell is Snopes going out of its way to say that far right (or alt right) sites are suggesting that something nefarious was the cause?
Pure spin.

JRad · Oct 19, 2019

BobE said:
Journalism 101, Vet your damn story. If they vetted it and still aired it people need to be fored. If they didn't vet it and still aired it people need to be fired. ABC either way should be damn ashamed at what happened and that they still never really offered a true retraction or apology is baffling.

I don’t disagree at all with what you are saying here. But if the discussion is related to Snopes having bias based on the headline, I just don’t agree using “mistakingly” in the title is obvious evidence.

I’d have to see how Snopes runs similar articles, or if they even reveal how they choose the titles before jumping to that conclusion. Which, to be honest, I’m not sure I care enough to do as I’m not even sure the last time I went directly to Snopes for anything.

V Chip · Oct 19, 2019

Beach Friends said:
Also, why the hell is Snopes going out of its way to say that far right (or alt right) sites are suggesting that something nefarious was the cause?

Because there is zero evidence to the contrary. It is 100% fact that it is far-right sites that are pushing that narrative as truth without anything to back it up.

Like I said previously — where is evidence to support the view? I’m happy to see it and change my view with evidence.

Media Literacy and Fake News (2 Viewers)

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