How do you evaluate the information you receive?

Gardenlover

Gardenlover

The world needs more love
I've basically abandoned most media reporting as it always seems to be negative and I don't trust it. It is getting harder and harder for me to know what are actual facts verses false news.

I do not want to help spread misinformation.

How do you evaluate the information you receive?
 

I first evaluate the source of the information. Then, I evaluate the source's possible motives. I evaluate how logical the information sounds; if it doesn't make sense, it's not true. Then I evaluate their honesty - based on whether or not they have been honest in the past.
 
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win231 said:
I first evaluate the source of the information. Then, I evaluate the source's motives. Then I evaluate their honesty - based on whether or not they have been honest in the past.
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A good start but It can be a bit deeper IMO
not just by source but i look over/ read articles on the same topic..... from a few sources it can be seen those who twist the story or who OMITS the most.
I find most media misinformation is not an outright lie but many Omission of clarifying issues /facts.
 
Gardenlover said:
How do you evaluate the information you receive?
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Probably not very well.

Seriously it is hard. If possible, for important issues, I try to research original sources. For the Covid stuff that sometimes works, but for other issues not so much. Pretty hard to find original sources for say news of the Ukraine or China.
Gardenlover said:
It is getting harder and harder for me to know what are actual facts verses false news.
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I understand, and it goes farther than that. The spin people put on things, and even the stories they choose to report makes it hard to get past bias. I often look at CNN and Fox, it is really interesting to see the difference, no value judgement here as to who is better or worse, but they sure tell different stories. I think the BBC is better, but not without bias of course. Sometimes I even look at Russia TV (https://www.rt.com/), what I like about them is I have no illusions of fair and balanced.

I am not sure this is any worse than it used to be, we just have so many more outlets and choices the differences are obvious. They can't all be right.
 
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If you rely on TV news (including cable news), you're not going to be very well informed. There's no depth to their reporting because they don't have time to go into depth about anything. Although, oddly enough, sometimes shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver do some pretty good, in depth reporting.
 
These days I trust the media less and less. I often look at who the writer is. Some writers are better than others. I don't like stories that pretend to predict what will happen. That's bull. News should tell you what happened not try to look into a crystal ball and predict what some writer thinks might happen. That is not news. A lot of news now is trying desperately to shock people which I don't like. Neither do I like news that tries to "brain wash" the public. You know, Saddam Hussein and his "weapons of mass destruction" that, of course, never existed. Thank you George Bush for that one! At my age, I could care less and less about gossip regarding movie stars or some rich nut going into space. BORING!

My news comes from the internet. I can scan the headlines, omitting all news about the Covid19 death toll today "that I absolutely need to know" and just read about things that interest me like interest rates, inflation and the standoff in Eastern Ukraine. I couldn't stand watching TV cable news Glad I don't have it.
 
I sometimes switch back and forth between CNN and Fox during the day when I'm on the boob tube and not on my computer. It's amazing that the identical news story can be spun in very opposite directions! I'm not sure that I get a balanced perspective that way, more like a confused one. I don't discuss politics or religion with the other folks here in my retirement community, a lot safer that way.
 
too many sources ... rely on past history .
Frankly the folks in charge of news sources have changed and some of the solid trusted anchors have had issues being exposed with an agenda.
This again brings up some advice i received years ago from a mediator .... truth always is found in the middle somewhere .....
sometimes it is 50/50 but often can be 30/70 or 70/30 etc and each time you can not assume from past which way the split will fall.....
 
spectratg said:
I sometimes switch back and forth between CNN and Fox during the day when I'm on the boob tube and not on my computer. It's amazing that the identical news story can be spun in very opposite directions! I'm not sure that I get a balanced perspective that way, more like a confused one. I don't discuss politics or religion with the other folks here in my retirement community, a lot safer that way.
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CNN and Fox on cable are mostly just opinion programs. Hopefully, you read some actual news to go along with the opinion shows to give you some perspective and so you know who is lying to you.
 
If I hear something I often will go to other media outlets to verify the story, even something as "simple" as when Betty White passed. When I saw it on FB, I immediately looked elsewhere for comfirmation.
If it is something major, like Covid news, and the like, I will look at the source, to see if is a generally trusted source. When I had cable, I often went to MSNBC for my news. I trusted it at the time. But I think it is important to not trust just one source,

I think many people look for media outlets that match their world view. It is important to remember that opinion is not news.
 
Read both sides and try to figure out the truth. I avoid TV 'journalism' completely because it's all op-ed.

For medical news, I look for clues in news articles to point me to the actual studies and read those as well as other studies on the subject. That's especially important with Covid because nearly every source has an agenda that's often far from the truth in one way or the other.
 
How do you evaluate the information you receive?

From my own perspective which, like everyone's, is effected by the prejudices and biases I developed over my lifetime. News media knows this is true of everyone, and they learned how to use people's personal perspectives to get the public's attention and shape their decision-making and their politics, and that there's money in that; better sponsors and more viewers. But it looks like that's starting to change, fortunately.

I found what I'm confident is a bias-free online news outlet, if you're interested: https://ground.news/
 

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