What Is Fake About The News?

Newspapers and Periodicals - 1915 Issue

This blog started as a result of a Lexis/Nexis article, “A Little Truth About Fake News—and the Law”.  My first thought was about how applicable validation was to my genealogy research, which sent me to a good article by Family Search Organization’s  “Rookie Mistakes”. I know – a lot of reading, isn’t it? A little more generalized education that you expected? Well – as a Christian, truth is very important. Especially now with such wide divisions in our county and it’s impact when semantics make a difference.  Not all we take into our minds is worth being there. So, let’s take time to learn to discern:

Barbara Gray, associate professor and chief librarian at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, recently spoke on a LexisNexis webinar titled 10 Tips for Fighting Fake News: How to Fact Check Like a Pro. Gray offered these tools for smart and efficient research to help validate “news”:

1. Be skeptical
2. Create your own habit of fact checking
3. Ask yourself "who says" and "are they biased"?
4. Use your gut
5. Look for citations of sources of information
6. Be aware of your own confirmation bias
7. Take notice if you are feeling emotional after reading the information—it could have been manufactured to exploit your bias
8. Write fast, but fact check slowly
9. Check primary sources such as government reports, court documents, and scholarly articles found in databases such as those provided by LexisNexis
10. Always give attribution, and be transparent about where you get your information

There are "red flags" to look for in web pages - most in blogger pages, but some "news" sources display these, too. This list was compiled by Thomas O’Toole, founder of Second Chair Media LLC.

1. Suspicious domain names
2. No "About Us" Page
3. Missing byline and contact information
4. Questionable currency or lack of post dates
5. Lack of sources and hyperlinking
6. Lack of uniform style
7. Poor design aesthetics
8. Headline and social media misdirection

O'Toole voiced hope for the future: " [T]he way to combat false or misleading speech is with more speech, offering rational, factual information."

Reminds me of genealogy research. It is easy to use another's research to increase our family trees - but that opens us up to errors. Which is one reason I pulled my tree from all but one online location. I know mine is a "work in progress" and contains errors that I continue to work to prove or disprove. Which brings us to a "Rookie Mistakes" quote:

"Experienced researchers should realize that solid evidence from multiple sources is needed in order to draw valid conclusions about individuals and family relationships. Since all the needed information may not be available, this means that a tentative conclusion is put into their research logs indicating that more sources are needed. They look for multiple records for individuals, including birth, marriage, death, and census records. They use these records to create a complete picture of individuals and families so that the conclusions they draw are strongly supported by the evidence. The more sources you can cite, the less likely your conclusions will be over-turned later by yourself or someone else." [Italics are my added stress to article.]

The same is true if you are researching today’s news, any era in history, a family’s genealogy, or biblical doctrines.

Yes – you knew this would come back around Bible reading, didn’t you? We need to understand the source of anything we are going to accept as “true”, “valid”, “real”, and that we will make part of ourselves to support. What you do about politics is not in my interest – and mine should not affect you. But – what we believe about the Bible, God, Jesus, salvation, and punishment has an impact on how we see eternity.

What do we want to do with it? Deny, embrace, or ignore? When we decide, shouldn’t we validate what sources we use to make that decision?

Acts chapter 17 opens with Paul and Silas arriving in Thessalonica, and the city was not happy about their being there. They rejected what he was telling them – both politically and violently. For their safety:

And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few. (Acts 17:10-12 KJV)

Which brings me to a steady theme I’ve written for decades now – search the scriptures daily simply to determine if what Christians believe are true. Learn how they were written. Why they are held as valid. Be skeptical about them, but do the research. Find out what Paul was teaching, why he chose to, and the results. Be a Berean.