How Can You Tell What's True?

Collection of Powerful Newspaper Editors

 We live in a very challenging time.  My father lived nearly his entire life in the house in which he was born, except for perhaps 5 years or less when he worked for the Forestry Fish & Game.  He knew his neighbors and they knew him.  I have lived in 6 different states, and I can't count how many different houses.  Recently a workman mentioned a name, assuming I would know the person.  I didn't.  "I'm sorry," he apologized.  "He lives about 4 miles from you, so I just assumed you would know him."  I'm sure my Dad would have, but I didn't.  

My parents subscribed to at least three newspapers--Pratt Tribune, St. John News, and The Hutchinson News.  We watched Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News every night that he was on. Edgar R. Murrow highlighted important news for us from 1951-1958.  We were quite comfortable that we knew what was going on in our community and the world.  Of course, we didn't.   

We no longer need to depend on 30 minutes of news in the evening, nor of only one or two people delivering it.  We don't have to wait for our favorite news program.  We can get our news on television, the internet, and our phones.  But, we trusted Walter Cronkite and Edgar R. Murrow.  Can we trust all of the people delivering the news today?  Sadly, no we cannot, but what we can do is research what we are being told.

I spend a great deal of my time researching the blogs I write.  The internet is full of information, but sadly, it is also full of misinformation.  Even more sadly, many people are willing to go in search of what they want to believe, rather than what is accurate information.  However, all of us are at risk of sometimes being fooled, even when we are trying to get accurate information.

If you are a sport's fan, you know about 'instant replay.'  How many times have you been certain that the football was over the line or the other guy touched the basketball last, and been wrong when you watched the instant replay?  Instant replay is a great tool when it is used correctly, but my recent blogs have discussed how technology can also be abused.  In response to one of my blogs about students entering key words online to obtain a custom essay for the specific subject of an assignment, one of my blog readers shared how much time his daughter has to spend investigating the essays turned in by her students to determine whether it was written by a computer rather than the student.

This is the world in which we live.  If you have found a news source that you like and you consult   nothing else, you may be ill informed, particularly if that news source has a bias.  Most of us have certain biases, mostly harmless, but our source for accurate news should not be careless about facts.

So, how can we tell whether or not we are being misled?  Here are some suggestions:

    Start by watching or reading more than one source of information.

    Is there an obvious bias?  Or, are there conclusions that don't make sense?

    Is the source a journalist or just a commentator?  A commentator is free to share his or her opinion without explaining how the conclusion was reached.  A journalist is meant to tell facts accurately.

   Use your computer to fact check the information.  There are organizations and individuals who search out facts to determine the accuracy.  Don't rely on just one.  Some good cites may have a bias, perhaps left leaning or right leaning.  Or, sometimes people just get things wrong.  If you try several fact checkers, you can get a sense of possible bias on certain subjects, and that will help you decide whether to check another fact checker.  Here are some fact checkers I have used:  FactCheck.org;  Wikipedia.com;  Snopes.com; TruthOrFiction.com .   

Not all opinions stay on the opinion page, and even the most conscientious people can get things wrong.   Sometimes there isn't a single right answer, and bias is something nearly all of us struggle with.  But the ways we can be misled are becoming harder to recognize, and we need to do what we can to get things right.