New York -
Far too many of our fellow citizens believe in fact-free nonsense. They’re adherents to - and propagators of - lies, conspiracy theories, and debunked claims. They refute science, facts, reality, and common sense, much to our collective peril.
This predilection for belief in inanities and insanities exists for many reasons and, in part, explains why we’re in trouble as a society. This tendency has long existed, of course. What amplifies the problem these days is that constant lying has become the hallmark of one of our political parties and its leader, everything one disagrees with is branded "fake news," and the speed of technology has outpaced our ability to cope with it all. The overhyped dawn of AI portends even greater challenges in this context.
Plus, we don’t have a national media or digital literacy curriculum as part of the teaching of civics. It’s desperately needed so that Uncle Harry doesn’t spew nonsense that he may have seen from disreputable sources online. Actually, media and digital literacy curriculum or not, there’s no stopping Uncle Harry anyway.
The University of Washington researcher Mike Caulfield has devised a straightforward digital literacy tool that empowers news and information consumers to separate truth from fiction. His SIFT Method is a fairly simple evaluative framework to help discern whether online content can be trusted or not. SIFT stands for 1. Stop 2. Investigate the Source 3. Find Better Coverage and 4. Trace Claims and Quotes to the Original Context. Simple common sense, right? Hah! This excellent method assumes rational thinking and an open-minded desire to know the truth. The problem is that Uncle Harry doesn’t really want to know the truth. For him, the cognitive dissonance of truth is too hard to take.
There have long been media pretending to be “news” outlets that lie and obfuscate on a full-time basis. There are the likes of once-respected media such as CBS and CNN that are now more willing to embrace “alternative facts" and normalize aberrant behavior. And there are too many media failing to invest in fact checking as they once did. Except one.
Did you watch the excellent documentary, “The New Yorker at 100.” It’s well worth it. The New Yorker magazine employs scores of fact-checkers whose procedures are excruciatingly rigorous. As Zach Helfand wrote in the August 25th issue this year, fact-checkers are “in the harm-reduction business.” It’s a business more media should reenter if we stand any chance of winning the battle against prevarication. The harm to this nation will otherwise continue to be incalculable.