Media Literacy and Fake News (2 Viewers)

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    Ayo

    Spirit Grocer
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    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.


    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.
     
    Unfortunately that truly is a question these days. But also I think we have to be careful to confuse result with bias.

    A reporter saying “the forest fire appears to have been started by a careless smoker” isn’t necessarily bias against smokers - it might be genuinely appropriate reporting. In this hyper-partisan era, people presume that media that is negative or critical of a person or agenda is necessarily biased against that person or agenda. Ideally that would never be true, though sadly it often is. BUT that doesn’t mean it always is.

    Once we get into the mindset of presuming that criticism = bias, objectivity is lost.

    I agree with that 100%. And to take it a step further, if your news source is never criticizing "your side" then you should probably accept the fact that you can take what you are consuming with a grain of salt.

    In fact, trying to figure out how much is true is probably not worth the effort. As a sort of off topic example, I started to watch "An Untold History of the United States." After a few minutes, I realized it was getting pretty weird and only then did I back out of it to get some info and I saw that it was produced by Oliver Stone. Well, that was the end of that - I know he is liberal with the truth so I couldn't rely on any of it.
     
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    Once we get into the mindset of presuming that criticism = bias, objectivity is lost.
    I think that's the goal of accusing all news outlets of being biased.

    If the general public can be convinced that all news is biased, then they can be convinced that all news is fake.

    If the general public is convinced that all news is fake, then the general public will only believe what they're told by those they are already following.

    If the general public only believes what they're being told by those they are already following, then those being followed have near absolute power to do whatever they want.
     
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    The media certainly does not do itself any favors.
     
    The obit itself referred to his being a vicious killer. And they changed the headline. If that’s the worst you have, meh. It was a stupid error, but not really in line with the worst I’ve seen.
     
    The obit itself referred to his being a vicious killer. And they changed the headline. If that’s the worst you have, meh. It was a stupid error, but not really in line with the worst I’ve seen.

    Oh, I have worse than that. I just don't have time to get into at the moment.

    In any event, I like to get my news from Tucker Carlson. The kids all run into the den every evening, Monday through Friday, at 7:00pm CST excitedly yelling, "it's Tucker time!"

    We know he will go after Republicans as well as Democrats. And the little ones know that they have to have their homework done and replinish the ice chest in the den with beer by the time the opening monologue starts.
     
    Didn‘t want to start a new thread, but it’s pretty safe to say that a piece on Infowars belongs in the fake news thread. This is a really interesting story written by a guy who worked there for a while.

     

    So people are literally posting state propaganda and deceptively passing it off as horseshoe media literacy?

    .....No wonder a recent experiment demonstrated a shockingly increasing number of people in America are incapable of discerning statements of fact from statements of opinion, and that consumers of Fox News are less accurately informed about current events than non-political consumers.
     
    So people are literally posting state propaganda and deceptively passing it off as horseshoe media literacy?

    .....No wonder a recent experiment demonstrated a shockingly increasing number of people in America are incapable of discerning statements of fact from statements of opinion, and that consumers of Fox News are less accurately informed about current events than non-political consumers.

    Who do you mean “people”?
     
    Who do you mean “people”?
    Which usage? In the first sentence, I was denoting people that would offer up a rather absurd state propaganda spread attempt to equivocate a slightly left-leaning but credible news outlet with the accusations rightfully pinned on right-wing news, as a relevant contribution to this topic while obfuscating its source.

    In the latter, I was tying that to a larger trend, both on the left but more prominently and disturbingly on the right, of an adversarial relationship with facts to go with a growing confusion between fact and opinion that seems to be heightened by disinformation outlets concentrated overwhelmingly on the political right that are turned to and justified in their consumption by people that would find the former compelling rationalizing agents to justify their consumption patterns.
     
    This is why I think it should be a rule on this board that people have to provide the source of anything they quote or insert into a post.

    When someone withholds their source, it's an intentional choice to conceal information. I think that is uncivil behavior.

    I am sending you a private message in a good faith attempt to resolve this.
     
    This is why I think it should be a rule on this board that people have to provide the source of anything they quote or insert into a post.

    When someone withholds their source, it's an intentional choice to conceal information. I think that is uncivil behavior.

    I get your point, but I also wonder why the source is so important. Are the ideas suspect? We should be debating ideas and I think these days people just dismiss reasonable ideas out of hand entirely based on their source.

    Source matters but should always be secondary to the idea. However, I agree that there’s so much (literally) fabricated material out there these days, it’s important to know where something is coming from.

    But the White House saying something like “it’s a beautiful day for summit here at Camp David” isn’t propaganda if it’s objectively true that the weather is nice.
     
    I get your point, but I also wonder why the source is so important. Are the ideas suspect? We should be debating ideas and I think these days people just dismiss reasonable ideas out of hand entirely based on their source.

    Source matters but should always be secondary to the idea. However, I agree that there’s so much (literally) fabricated material out there these days, it’s important to know where something is coming from.

    But the White House saying something like “it’s a beautiful day for summit here at Camp David” isn’t propaganda if it’s objectively true that the weather is nice.

    Thank you for this post Chuck, very well said.
     
    I get your point, but I also wonder why the source is so important.
    The source is important, because we need it to have the opportunity to check out the full context and content of the source material itself. Sources matter anytime source material is presented, otherwise why bother to ever cite sources?
     
    The source is important, because we need it to have the opportunity to check out the full text or content of the source itself. Sources matter anytime source material is presented, otherwise why bother to ever cite sources?

    I don’t disagree at all - citation is extremely valuable. But I don’t think it rises to level of “uncivil” to post something reasonably objective without a source. It’s good practice, I try to always do it, but it’s hardly reprehensible when it doesn’t happen. If someone wants a source they can ask for it.
     

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