It may be hard to imagine, but the proposition that the press was an impartial disseminator of information was both venerated and deemed important enough that it was codified in the Constitution.
Objectivity today has rightfully come under increasing scrutiny. How can we be sure reporters are relaying the facts truthfully and with accuracy, without their own biases and opinions? In other words, how do we practice proper news hygiene?
Journalism (nay, the media) seeks to hold government officials, industrialists, etc. accountable to us, the citizenry; it has, and remains, a bulwark against civic malfeasance and despotism.
A neutral media is the government’s nominal fourth branch. And, while opinion has always been a component of the news landscape, the central tenet of the journalist as impartial remains steadfast.
The benefits the press provides our nation are innumerable. Consuming news makes us better citizens precisely because we are informed. Armed with information, knowledge empowers us to make educated choices; for example, when we exercise our right to vote.
Yet, we are only equipped to excel in the role we play in self-governance if we are reading news that is accurate. Regretfully, and with greater frequency, it is not always the default.
The news industry is at a precipice. From shouts of “fake news” to the concept of “alternative facts,” each of us must gain agency and play a more active role in verifying what we read is both fact-based and accurate.
So, how to detoxify ourselves of slants, biases, and lies? Here are six tips for practicing good news hygiene:
No. 1 | Consider the Source
Sourcing is the bedrock distinguishing real from fake news. “If it’s on the internet then it must be true” can no longer be said kiddingly in our post-ironic world. Reading an article on social media or a blog post, purporting to be true, doesn’t make it so.
There remain, in fact, a limited number of sources for accurate, fact-based information where news and opinion are differentiated, and where the reporting is both original and verified by the organization publishing it.
Whenever I read or hear something that sounds off, whether or not I want it to be true, I pay close attention to how the information was sourced. If it lacks attribution stating who said it, when, where, and in what context, or; if it sounds suspicious and you don’t see it anywhere but one place, please disregard it as noise.
- Note: Curation is not the same as reporting, which is an important distinction.
Aggregators of information like Google News, Apple News, Facebook, et al., do not conduct any original reporting. Knowing where third party aggregators derive their content is critical when gauging its veracity. Consider this handful of reputable organizations that produce their own, independent reporting:
- The New York Times
- Associated Press
- Reuters
- The Washington Post
- The Wall Street Journal
- NBC News
- ABC News
- CBS News
- Fox News
- CNN
No. 2 | Slant/Bias vs. Lies
Journalists are people, too. And despite best practices, there are generally tints on how news gets reported. If The Wall Street Journal is a center-right news outlet and The New York Times is center-left, chalk it up to the reporters and editors working there.
However, the effect of slant or bias in the press is largely overblown and mainly stylistic; position pieces are reserved for opinion sections or TV punditry programs.
When, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the opening of an investigation into President-elect Biden’s son for tax irregularities, the way facts were presented may have varied, but the facts remained constant.
Conversely, the information site the Daily Caller recently presented a story about looters in Portland, Ore., squirreling away guns to unleash violence against the police. To prevent my B.S. radar going off, I looked for some critical components:
- Does the story have a byline (did someone put their name to the story or is it a “newsroom” piece)?
- How did the information come to light?
- Who in a position of authority was quoted to lend credibility to the claim?
- Has the story appeared in any publication that has an established level of credibility (see list above)?
If I can’t answer those four questions, then I call bullshit until I can and consider the information to be false at best. At worst, it is a lie that seeks to sow chaos.
- Check out the website Media Bias Fact Check for an objective list of more than 3,400 news sites, and see where your outlets fall on the bias spectrum.
(In the aforementioned Daily Caller piece, I was unable to answer three of four.)
No. 3 | Beware of the “Think Tank”
These non-profit bastions of academia, from Human Rights Watch on the left to The Heritage Foundation on the right, are centers of research where intellectuals flesh out ideas and submit them to political organs for discourse and influence.
Each takes facts and then games them out, often within the realm of a particular political ideology, to see what real-world consequences their applications would produce. Think tanks offer opinions and prognostications.
Think tanks are not an arm of government. By design, the information is filtered through a prism of political thought. Some think tanks take less liberty than others, and only those non-governmental organizations that clearly state their non-partisan stance should be trusted to offer dogma-free opinion.
- A great example of a non-partisan think tank I trust to understand the implication of tax law in the real world is the Tax Policy Center.
- For a decent lineup of think tanks that objectively list each organization’s political stance, check out this list from Citizensource.com.
No. 4 | Don’t Trust — Verify
I remember the Sunday afternoon in January 2020 when my 11-year-old son blurted out that NBA legend Koby Bryant died as we were watching football on TV; a friend had texted him the news.
Two hours later, I saw the reporting on bonafide news outlets including ESPN. The lapse seemed like days, but that indicates a minimum threshold of fact-checking.
Furthermore, seeing the news on multiple sites increased its veracity. My adage is, if it’s real news, you will come across it in many places; never trust one source for your information (even if it’s your son).
No. 5 | Vary Your Palate
Related to No. 2 (Slant vs. Lie), a varied consumption of media is important for the perspective (not bias) different reporters may bring to the same story.
For example, let’s hypothetically say there is a disturbance in the Gaza Strip that leads to an armed skirmish between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli Defense Force. Here are the “facts” of the construct:
- Seven Palestinians are killed;
- One Israeli soldier is wounded;
- A half-dozen rockets are launched into Israel from Gaza;
- A rocket detonates inside Israel proper injuring three civilians.
All four pieces of information are facts. They happened. Note: Assigning blame to an instigator is where slant and opinion intersect with objectivity.
Headline No. 1: Israeli Army Kills 7 in Gaza As Protests Erupt
Headline No. 2:Amid Protests, Militants Launch Rockets into Israel, Injuring 4
Both headlines are accurate, yet each takes differing approaches in presenting the story. Reading (or listening to) the full coverage, from different sources, is important for both verifying the accuracy of the story and get differing perspectives.
No. 5 | Be Skeptical, Not Cynical
The 2020 presidential election is the most relevant story for this last tip. The notion that President-elect Joe Biden “rigged” the results of the presidential election is absurd — full stop. There is no credence to the idea. It is a lie.
Yet, opinion polls taken since the election show upwards of 80 percent of Republicans, around 60 million U.S. citizens, believe the election was “stolen” from President Donald Trump.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that can give this story any credibility. Vote tabulations exceeding 150 million ballots may never be free of irregularities, but multiple recounts in contested swing states have reaffirmed the outcome; a rounding error does not a rigging make.
The 55,000-vote difference in favor of John Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960, ultimately delivering the win to JFK, has exceedingly more credibility to charges of vote-rigging, yet Nixon put the welfare of the nation above his own ambition*.
Ultimately, every American will have to take more responsibility for how they consume news to ensure we remain the well-informed electorate that democracy requires of its citizens — if we hope to continue and enjoy our republic.
For more on media literacy, I suggest checking out Poynter Institute’s Mediawise page. Poynter, based in Tampa, Fla., is one of the country’s most respected journalism schools
I feel cleaner already! Do you?
Bryan Gottlieb is the principal of Versify Editing and Content Creators. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of the Detroit Metro Times and spent 20 years as a reporter and newspaper editor.
*Politico Magazine, “Worried About a Rigged Election? Here’s One Way to Handle It,” by Josh Zeitz, Oct. 27, 2016