Media Literacy and Fake News (3 Viewers)

Users who are viewing this thread

    Ayo

    Spirit Grocer
    Joined
    Sep 28, 2019
    Messages
    896
    Reaction score
    2,307
    Location
    Toronto
    Offline
    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.
     
    When I read something like Mother Jones or NAtional Review, and I read both with some regularity, I approach them as editorials on news. Rarely do either one really produce "news" as it is generally understood.

    In fact, national and international "news" reporting is done by a very small group of people and is owned by an even smaller number of entities - NYT, the Post, CNN, the big networks, and to a lesser degree Tribune Corp and Hearst (via the AP). What Mother Jones/National Review/and others are doing is almost always commenting on what this small group of people have reported. There are exceptions, but those exceptions are usually pet projects with an ideological bent - say campus free speech "news."

    I think if I were doing a media literacy course I would start with that and then move to trying to decipher, in any publication, facts vs. commentary.
    Then I would approach the idea of "Facts" themselves and their troublesome nature: what are sources of the facts, the record of sources, the ability to even decipher the objectivity of the source and/or the "facts" they provide; along with the questions of why a particular news item was deemed important enough to cover over others and whether there is any bias in emphasis.

    It's an interesting area for sure.
    2 things - like ProPublica, Mother Jones also does some ‘long form’ journalism- doing month/year long studies
    They don’t have the staff to do lots of those, but the ones they do are pretty good

    “Facts” like “objective” is warn out - it’s been abused too much to carry the weight it once did-
    maybe something like ‘accurate, verifiable information ‘
     
    I didn’t watch abc news tonight, so I don’t know if it was mentioned or nouht. Maybe you watched?

    It may be they want to figure out exactly what happened before they comment. That’s understandable.

    I wonder if ABC ever aired a retraction. AlI I could find were retractions by ABC Nightly and GMA made on Twitter.

    In looking for an on air retraction, I found this Snopes entry, which I think could, ironically, be used to test or teach media literacy. Specifically, it would be interesting to see how people of different political views see bias manifested in the Snopes article.



     
    Last edited:
    I wonder if ABC ever aired a retraction. AlI I could find were retractions by ABC Nightly and GMA made on Twitter.

    In looking for an on air retraction, I found this Snopes entry, which I think could, ironically, be used to test or teach media literacy. Specifically, it would be interesting to see how people of different political views see bias manifested itself in the Snopes article.



    Snopes should be ashamed
     
    I wonder if ABC ever aired a retraction. AlI I could find were retractions by ABC Nightly and GMA made on Twitter.

    In looking for an on air retraction, I found this Snopes entry, which I think could, ironically, be used to test or teach media literacy. Specifically, it would be interesting to see how people of different political views see bias manifested in the Snopes article.



    What bias?

    They correctly said ABC made a careless mistake in authenticating the video, but there's is nothing indicating that they intentionally aired the video as partisan deception.

    That appears to be objectively true in this incident.
     
    Last edited:
    What bias?

    They correctly said ABC made a careless mistake in authenticating the video, but there's is nothing to indicate that they intentionally aired the video as partisan deception.

    That appears to be objectively true in this incident.

    Thanks for your input.
    Did you have an opportunity to read the entire entry?
     
    I read the entire entry before making my post.

    What do you think is biased in the entry?

    Thanks,

    I am going to tell you what I think, but I am really interested in seeing what those with more left leaning views see before I share my views.

    I am especially interested to see what @Ayo sees as problematic, if anything, since he is involved in media literacy professionally. Hopefully he doesn't mind taking a little time to share what he sees.
     
    Last edited:
    Personally I find that the easiest way to get a fairly balanced view on what is happening and being reported in the news are to

    1. use multiple sources from both sides of the issue
    2. Examine direct and "verifiable" information eg. Video from press conferences ("I did not say that" - yes you did!), Official transcripts of testimony or investigations, Peoples own word (Twitter etc..). Video especially if video of the same action can be aquired from multiple sources.
    3. Correlate with international news sources like BBC world news
    4. Look up supporting information - Laws (is the action leagal or not) , History (kurdish support of US troops), How did similar situations get handled previously.

    I think that is why I get so frustrated when some talking heads on certain news channels keeps pushing conspiracy theories which has been debunked repeatedly and yet they keep pushing the story. And even more frustrated when people quote those stories without even caring if they are true or not just to get even with the "other side"and never actually try to back up their claims with any substantial evidence or fact showing WHY they actually believe what they wrote.
     
    Thanks,

    I am going to tell you what I think, but I am really interested in seeing what those with more left leaning views see before I share my views.

    I am especially interested to see what @Ayo sees as problematic, if anything, since he is involved in media literacy professionally. Hopefully he doesn't mind taking a little time to share what he sees.
    Why not just share your view of what you see as biased in the snopes entry?
     
    Last edited:
    I understand wanting to see the side by side - I just did a search and found a side by side on twitter @polishpatriotTM.

    Someone should be fired - but it doesn't stop there. Although ABC apologized on twitter, they made no mention of the "error" on their evening news.

    IMO, failing to acknowledge that as publicly as possible, or at least on the same medium it was published, is arguably worse than the original sin.

    They may have been duped initially, but there is absolutely no excuse for not making a good faith effort to inform their viewers that they put out bad info.
    Trump wasn’t duped. He called them out on Twitter. And of course the initial retort was that he was pushing more LIES!
     
    Trump wasn’t duped. He called them out on Twitter. And of course the initial retort was that he was pushing more LIES!

    Yes they should have corrected it on the news but they did correct it on Twitter. Trump is telling 10- 20 lies each day so it is great that you for once found ONE instant where he was telling the truth. But I hope you put the same expectations to be truthfull to Trump as you do to ABC but so far I haven't seen him correct himself even once. A lot of people take what Trump writes on twitter as news so in a sense you could call him the biggest distributor of "fake news"
     
    Yes they should have corrected it on the news but they did correct it on Twitter. Trump is telling 10- 20 lies each day so it is great that you for once found ONE instant where he was telling the truth. But I hope you put the same expectations to be truthfull to Trump as you do to ABC but so far I haven't seen him correct himself even once. A lot of people take what Trump writes on twitter as news so in a sense you could call him the biggest distributor of "fake news"
    10-20 lies a day? Wow. I went back a week and didn’t see what you are seeing. Can you share the day that he told 10-20 lies so I can understand where you are coming from.
     
    10-20 lies a day? Wow. I went back a week and didn’t see what you are seeing. Can you share the day that he told 10-20 lies so I can understand where you are coming from.

    as of October 14: 13,435/993 = 13.5 (this is an incredible number, yes, and who knows if that number is actually precise, but even if it's overestimated by 25%, we're still in double digits in terms of average)

    in the last two months his daily average has risen to around 22

    but, to be fair, there are many lies he's told more than once - including one that he's told over 100 times as of the end of September - so the daily average would be down if we only counted each unique lie
     
    as of October 14: 13,435/993 = 13.5 (this is an incredible number, yes, and who knows if that number is actually precise, but even if it's overestimated by 25%, we're still in double digits in terms of average)

    in the last two months his daily average has risen to around 22

    but, to be fair, there are many lies he's told more than once - including one that he's told over 100 times as of the end of September - so the daily average would be down if we only counted each unique lie
    Can you point me to one or two day’s that you are referencing? No offense, but I’m not confident in the nbrs provided. I’m sure you can understand that it is better to judge something for yourself than to take someone’s else’s word for it.
     
    Can you point me to one or two day’s that you are referencing? No offense, but I’m not confident in the nbrs provided. I’m sure you can understand that it is better to judge something for yourself than to take someone’s else’s word for it.
    He certainly will do that but he’d like to see what the right leaning members would say first
     
    Trump is telling 10- 20 lies each day
    Trump is a politician and politicians lie for a living. They state their opinions as facts in order to push their political agendas. If you add the combined lies told on a daily basis by Trump, Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Schumer, etc they probably number in the hundreds. I personally choose not to lose any sleep over politicians lying and I'm not going to even bother counting.
     
    Last edited:

    Create an account or login to comment

    You must be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create account

    Create an account on our community. It's easy!

    Log in

    Already have an account? Log in here.

    Advertisement

    General News Feed

    Fact Checkers News Feed

    Sponsored

    Back
    Top Bottom