Continuing from the previous episode, we learned that when we read a website we need to not automatically attribute the reliability of its content based on the professionalism of its presentation. Just because it looks good doesn’t mean that it is good. We need to open additional tabs in our browser to do further work assessing the sources reliability by reading across websites and not just what the authors want us to read. 

We have to determine two things: 

1. Authority
2. Perspective

To determine a source’s authority on a subject we need to do something counter-intuitive, we need to leave the source and look into a couple things to better understand or investigate the source. The source cannot be its own proof of authority. A source that quotes itself as proof of authority would be circular sourcing. 

Again, this is not black and white thinking as much as judging something to be “more reliable” versus “less reliable.” So the source’s professional background on the subject should be a strong consideration. It’s more than a little unfortunate that expertise is often put-down as if being an “expert” at something actually disqualifies the source. This would be the product of living at a time when anyone can claim anything on the Internet and the reliability of the information is determined by whether one agrees with the information and/or the professionalism of the presentation. We often do not trust those we think are “too smart.” 

I’m going to have some trust of someone who has done work in the area under consideration. But it’s not automatic. I have a B.A. in Journalism and a B.A. in Biblical Studies. I worked hard to earn my degrees and I should know more about those subjects than someone who carefully studies YouTube videos on either of those two fields. That’s not to say that the YouTube viewer might not have some interesting insights or that I might have been a shitty student and barely passed my courses. So, it’s not either/or and it’s not automatic. But work in the area should be recognized as a factor. And I know, based on my own understanding of the areas I’ve worked in, that I do not know everything about those fields. But I’m pretty sure that I know a hell of a lot more than someone who formed an opinion because “they’re just that smart.”

The process they used to produce the information is an interesting one, because it goes back to the circular sourcing I referred to earlier. The Drudge Report example mentioned in the video is a typical case of a “news report” based on a website post based on a single tweet and then “confirmed” by a third party’s reaction to the story. That’s a rumor pretending to be “news.” 

During the 2016 presidential campaign I saw a story about candidate Clinton deciding at the last minute to not give a talk at a community center in Florida and the person posting the story said that Clinton chose to leave because not enough people had shown up for the event, somehow proving what a shitty campaigner she was. That seemed odd to me, so I tried to track down the story and only found a single source, a small community newspaper reported that the event had been cancelled, but they cited typical bad Florida weather as being the reason for the cancellation and didn’t speculate on other reasons. Did the possible low turnout influence Clinton’s decision? I have no way of knowing. But having lived in Florida, I know that bad weather can make getting from place to place not only difficult but dangerous. Either way, the only facts of the story were that the event didn’t happen and that there was a bad storm that day that the campaign cited as being the reason for the cancellation. 

We don’t think about when mistakes are made, how does the news source share the correction. In the days of printed news there was an expectation that the correction would get the same prominence as the original story. If the error had been on the front page of the paper, then the correction should also be on the front page and not buried on the last page of that section of the paper. As noted in the video, ProPublica, added the correction to the original story, positioning it above the original corrected story. That is an important component of a news presentation, the willingness and openness to correct errors and not hide or gloss over mistakes. Everyone can get something wrong is not the same as “no one is reliable.” That’s the same sort of social insecurity that would demean expertise because they are not infallible. If they get something wrong, do they hide it or fess-up? 

The last part, Perspective, is acknowledging that we aspire to objectivity in our reporting, but that it’s in our human nature to add a point of view or reason for the story. It’s in our DNA. The reason many students hated what they remember of History classes is that all they remember hearing were names of people and places and dates but not much else. For whatever reason, most humans do not hold on to information unless there is some sense of story or narrative attached. And that sense of story or narrative is created by the person writing the story. That’s what humans do. Some stories can be told with minimal “input” from the writer and other stories, regardless of what actually happened, is only a vehicle for the author to communicate an idea. John Green’s point is that everyone, writer and reader, comes to information with a perspective and that we could all do better if we were more empathetic with each other and then went down the steps of determining the level of reliability to what we’re hearing. 

It’s a lot to expect everyone to keep their “shields up” when scrolling through ones news feeds. But that’s what an adult does, stay alert to ones environment and critically judge the information one uses in ones daily life. It’s not all doom and gloom, but one should always exercise caution, given how easy it is for some to spread misinformation and disinformation. 

How skeptical are you in the things your see in your news feed? Does it matter to you? 

Sources:

• Who Can You Trust? Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #4 by Crash Course (2019-01-29), https://youtu.be/o93pM-b97HI, retrieved 2023-08-22)