Are you suffering from information overload illness? Does reading the news give you insomnia, heightened anxiety, indigestion, panic attacks, depression, migraines, or uncontrollable rage? If you suffer from any of these reactions, then here’s a four-step prescription that can help. Continue reading
Filed under media, news, organizing
The Bowling Green Massacre has been voted the best lie of the week by near-universal Facebook acclamation. You don’t remember the massacre? Shame on you. On February 2, Kellyanne Conway defended Trump’s refugee ban by referring to the Bowling Green Massacre:
“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said.
The Bowling Green massacre didn’t get covered because it didn’t happen. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Ky., carried out by Iraqi refugees or anyone else.
On Monday morning, I engaged in one of those meaningless Facebook conversations with someone who had no interest in what I had to offer. She began by asserting as “fact” something that was total fantasy and ended by telling me “I don’t use ‘news’ sources any longer.” Unfortunately, she’s not alone – many people say they don’t trust or don’t follow the news. If you’re tempted to throw up your hands and give up on “the media,” let me begin by telling you that there is no such thing as “the media.” All kinds and stripes and shades of media compete to define and deliver “the news.” As news consumers, we must use tools of media literacy to figure out who and when and how much to believe, rather than just giving up. Continue reading
Filed under media, news, Uncategorized
This is the photo the New York Times used in its article about food stamp recipients and soft drinks. Looks pretty bad, right?
I was awakened at 1:51 a.m. by a chiming phone signaling an incoming message that began, “am I right to be infuriated about this? what is the New York Times doing?” Yeah, I thought, as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. You’re right, but I’m still not going to reply until morning.
My friend’s message was about a front-page article in the New York Times that trumpeted biased – and inaccurate – criticism of food stamps (SNAP) and the people who use them. We already know that Facebook news is not necessarily real news, that fake news sites abound on the left and the right, and that anything emanating from Trump’s spokespersons should be fact-checked. But the New York Times? Continue reading
Parallel universe by Scary Side of Earth, published under Creative Commons license
Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway gave us a new category on Meet the Press this morning: “alternative facts.” Alternative facts look like sci-fi’s alternate realities or parallel universes, described in Wikipedia as “a hypothetical self-contained reality co-existing with one’s own…. A universe where the very laws of nature are different …” That seems like a useful description of Trumplandia. Continue reading
Filed under media, news, Tracking Trump
Want to know how to tell if a report is true or false? Some things are complicated, but others are really easy to check. Here are three simple tips for do-it-yourself fact checking, and three good fact checking sites for back-up. Continue reading
Image by kkirugi, posted under Creative Commons license
The flood of news and propaganda continues, and so I’m occasionally drawn into fact checking. Here are some of my fact checks for the past 24 hours. Continue reading
Filed under analysis, media, news, Tracking Trump
Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, and Fearless Leader were cartoon representations of Russian spies in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon (1959-1964). Any resemblance between comic cartoons and current political rhetoric is purely intentional.
On December 29, the New York Times headlined, Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking. As news consumers, what questions do we need to ask about that story?
Question #1: What is this “election hacking?” Continue reading
The Guardian article about Julian Assange, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin was one I wanted to believe.
I read The Guardian, and rely on this British publication for accurate, wide-ranging reporting on world news, including U.S. news, since we are part of the world. I also read and rely on The Intercept, a publication edited by Glenn Greenwald, Betsy Reed, and Jeremy Scahill, and funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. So when The Intercept said an article in The Guardian was “completely false,” they got my attention. Continue reading
Some rights reserved by Free Press Pics
My dad liked to say that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. A Buzzfeed investigative report shows something a little different: lies, damn lies and Facebook’s phony news sites. Buzzfeed analyzed the Facebook pages of three left-wing, three right-wing and three mainstream news sites. They found lies in almost 20 percent of the left-wing pages’ posts and 38 percent of the right-wing pages’ posts. Even worse, they found that “the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.” Continue reading
Mary Turck
News Day 