WHATELY — The news world seems to be spinning faster and faster, content flying in from all directions. Allegations. Revelations. Back-and-forth. BREAKING NEWS.
Scrolling through the social media feeds can be a dizzying experience.
On top of the information overload: One person’s fact is another person’s fake news. The year is 2017, and we don’t know what to believe anymore.
From a room in the Whately Public Library on Tuesday, University of Massachusetts senior journalism lecturer Steve Fox addressed the flood of information, and what we, as interested citizens and news consumers, can do to improve our media literacy.
In the face of all this information, he said the onus is largely on news consumers to seek truth for themselves through a diversity of sources and to follow stories as they progress, because things change.
“Don’t just look at one source,” Fox said. “Look at multiple sources. Look at sources that challenge your preconceived beliefs of the universe.”
He said challenging beliefs is made harder with social media, when people can “unfollow” — or block out — outlets that pose questions they don’t like.
Fox posed three questions people should consider when reading: Is the report verified? Is the news source independent of outside influence? Are the outlets accountable to their readers?
On verification: Fox cautioned against drawing conclusions based simply on someone else’s opinion. Think Rachel Maddow on MSNBC or Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. “These are people who are kind of paid to give you their opinions. They’re not necessarily reporters.”
He said reporters will “tell you where the information came from.”
Independent news organizations “are not receiving funding from different organizations. So they’re independent. They’re not beholden to political entities. They may be beholden to a certain extent to their corporate parents, but, you know, even then you have the separation between the business side of news operations and the editorial side of news operations.”
As far as accountability, “You will see corrections. You will see clarifications both on broadcast outlets as well as newspapers and online. If somebody gets something wrong on a story, they will usually own up to it.”
He also recommended applying a “truth test” when reading, watching or listening to the news.
Who is saying it? Are the facts in context? Is the report transparent?
“Look for who is saying something,” Fox said. “Is it just somebody opining, or is there support? Are there reports? Is there data? Is there testimony? … All these different things accumulated together provide that evidence.”
As for transparency, Fox said, reputable news outlets will let the reader or viewer in on the reporting process. How many times did the reporter try to reach a source? Why is one source being allowed anonymity?
He said reporters should “open the freezer” — a metaphor dating back to an inaccurate report following Hurricane Katrina that bodies were stacked in a freezer at the Superdome.
“It’s a metaphor for kind of going that extra step,” Fox said. “And I think that pertains to news consumers as well.
“When you are deliberating and figuring out what’s good information, what’s bad information … open the freezer on your own.”
He added that people should not be afraid to dig through documents themselves. To give weight to their reporting, certain outlets link original documents on their websites.
He also presented a “hierarchy of direct evidence,” which is an inverted pyramid describing which citations carry the most weight and which you may want to take with a grain of salt.
Fox placed video, audio and photos at the top, though he cautioned that those can be manipulated or photoshopped. Original documents and written records also carry serious weight, followed by journalist accounts and finally eyewitness accounts.
Fox said some witnesses are drawn to the spotlight; others could be asked leading questions by reporters.
For breaking news, Fox urged caution when retweeting or sharing articles on social media. In the early hours of major stories, outlets may get things wrong — not because they are “fake news” but because the information provided to them is not yet concrete.
And because stories develop, and things change, “the burden is really on the news consumer when it comes to this idea of following the story.”
The bottom line, he said, is if people want to forge consensus and solve difficult problems, there needs to be a fair exchange of ideas, based on solid information.
“If we’re going to be able to solve problems, if we’re going to be able to make legislation that works — all these different types of things — we have to start talking to each other,” he said.