By Judah Breitbach and Sarah Baker
How do we distinguish fact from fallacy when even our commander-in-chief walks the line between the two?
This may be the overarching question of the 45th administration. There are other underlying concerns, of course, like the overturning of the Dakota pipeline decision, or the immigration ban and subsequent court battle.
Seeing multiple sides of a picture in a bipartisan viewpoint is essential to a well-functioning democratic republic that engages in healthy debate. However, one could argue that the given examples in particular are polarizing due to the public’s lack of understanding of what is being published in statements from The White House, newscasts from “CNN”, a headline from Breitbart news, or tweets from the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Some studies suggest that the lack of critical thinking, necessary to understand and interpret what’s being published, predates the normal age demographic that consumes news. According to “NPR,” more than 80 percent of middle schoolers believe that paid sponsored content, or “native advertising,” was a real news story.
Stanford researchers who conducted an experiment including over 7,600 students from middle school to college, found that kids were duped again and again by fake news. The researchers were “shocked” by how consistently students showed a lack of media literacy, and took faith in absurd conjectures without so much as a citation.
Deliberately falsified news can, of course, be a huge contributing factor. Last December, Andrew Anglin, a neo-Nazi leader, through his website, the Daily Stormer, promised the public a march of at least 200 armed white supremacists in Whitefish, Montana.
This was both an alarming and largely controversial issue, as the threats from Anglin and his followers spilled into January. The only thing was that, well, it never happened. The march never took place and we truly doubt that Anglin actually intended it to in the first place. He simply wanted his message and prejudices to spread like wildfire, as they had, to frighten and terrorize the Jewish community in his area.
Conspiracy theories are another form of fake news. Take the “pizzagate” scandal. A theory that a few big businesses are running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza shop.
The report is based on nothing but speculation from unconfirmed emails and the fact that the pizza company’s logo bears resemblance to a pedophile’s code insignia for “boy love.” Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt. What if the story proves to be true? This is when your media literacy skills come into play.
Recognizing that a story is bull shit requires delving into a story further than the headline, and finding credible sources within the story. If someone is stating a fact or supporting a statistic, ask why? Why is this author making specific points? There are a lot of television shows, magazines, tabloids, radio stations, and yes, even newspaper publications, that make statements to support their own bias or opinion.
Not to say that they aren’t necessarily true, though it may be true to the speaker. Nevertheless, even a finite degree of altered judgement can completely distort the resulting theme and voice of any story.
Even a well-established author, renowned in their field, can make context errors. For example, Bob Woodward, investigative journalist for The Washington Post and author of “All the President’s Men,” wrote a biography on famed comedian Jim Belushi that puts the funnyman in a bad light. There were no technically factual errors in the book, but the connotations attached to Belushi’s past skewed the picture to make him seem a little more errant and irreverent than in actuality.
Asking the who, what, where, why and when of Woodward’s book, as well as of Anglin’s neo-Nazi website, and even the study from renowned Stanford University, are questions anyone who’s engaged in process of gleaning the truth should ask.