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There is no such thing as a trustable news outlet. That seems like a large claim. How can that be? There has to be at least one?!
Let's break down what makes something trustable:
The source does not lie, or fabricate news.
The source does not spin a story to suit a narrative.
Conflict of interest
News agencies are incentivized to break stories.
News agencies make their money through traffic, eyes on their page, thumbs scrolling, and well-placed advertisements. If News Agency "A" breaks a story, then for a short period of time, they are the only source for that information. At that point all the other news agencies, begin to gather information and cover the new story as well, however, those agencies will have to give credit to the people who broke the story (News Agency "A", which gives the website a big boost in their search engine ranking (SEO), and may move them "Above the fold" for that and other stories. The phrase Above the Fold started with newspapers. Everyone is familiar with the term making the front page, as that is the attention grabber and it is typically the reason most people read the paper. Being Above the Fold brings that one step further; when newspapers are shipped they are folded so that only the top of the first page is seen. The goal is to present information above the fold that will entice the viewer to pick it up and buy it.
Similarly, this same train of thought has been used online, however the "fold" in this case, is being the first five results on a search engine, as the user does not have to scroll and if the information that they are searching for is in the first five results and your news agencies article is not, then you are less likely to get the click, and subsequently less revenue.
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1. The Source does not lie, or fabricate news.
You might think, this is obvious, but it occurs more often than you think. For example, let's say that a small media outlet breaks a story about something happening to a celebrity. Because the news involves a celebrity, the big entertainment news networks see the story and have a choice to make. Do they either check the source, share the news, or wait for a "larger" news source to share it. The obvious action to be taken, check the news source, but that takes time, and every second that the latest news is not on their website, they are losing potential traffic. So their choice narrows to: share it or not. Let's say that the news agency shares it, and time passes and then the story turns out to be false, so the small media outlet pulls or corrects their story. However, since the larger news agency did not check the facts in the first place they are not following the source for updates therefore they have not seen the correction/retraction and, at this point, has an article on their page that is not true and there is no way for them of knowing that this article has been pulled without them going back and checking, which they probably are not doing since they didn't have the time to check the article's credibility in the first place. So weeks might go by and viewers reading this article are reading fiction, thinking it is fact and will go forward, share, like, or even repeat the information they saw.
So, you might be thinking something like "Okay but that is celebrity news... who cares", "Or they don't do that for actual news". To which I respond they spin it.
2. The source does not spin a story to suit a narrative.
It has recently become more commonplace for a "round table discussion" to take place immediately following the news. Examples of this are Fox and Friends from Fox, The Today Show from NBC, The Talk from CBS. These discussions will usually start out by talking about the most inflammatory or attention-grabbing story from the news segment and begin "discussing it". Within this discussion, they might ask each other's opinion; but make no mistake, this may not be their opinion. They typically give an opinion that has tested well with their viewer demographic or one that is even more inflammatory than the actual story. It would not be the complete truth to tell you that they are trying to mislead you, but they are trying to lead you somewhere. At this point, you might feel like this article is going the way of the conspiracy theorist, but I assure you I am backing away from that ledge.
I don't mean to illude that any of these actions, which I have stated above, are illegal or even wrong. It is only wise for a company to make data-driven decisions, but I do not think these actions help them to foster trust. They do not make an effort to conceal their opinion and because they look and talk like news anchors it can be easy to forget that what they are saying just that an opinion. That said, opinion or not, if what they say resonates with you, then you are more likely to keep consuming their content and you end up following this same cycle over and over again until your only thoughts are they thought the news outlet has given you.
What to do?
Naturally, there are many things that you can do, however, there are few different situations that you might find yourself in so we will break those down below but really depends on the situation.
Situation 1.
You came across some new information, maybe it is posted on social media by someone that you know or something you see on TV. As you may remember from the first episode: One of a few things will happen depending on your perspective.
It either doesn't make sense to you or doesn't interest you. (nothing more to say here)
It aligns with your ideals so you either like, comment, or keep scrolling.
It says something radical about something you are interested in.
Case 2: In the second case: did you stop to think: Is this post real? Who posted this content? Is what I am reading even real or true. This might seem arduous if you are someone who shares a lot of content, but it may be something you consider. Because when you sharing something that isn't true you are validating to the next person who sees that you shared that the post is true. So what to do? The first thing to do is see who published the post, then just google what you read. If the first few results are not exactly aligning with what the post said, then the post might not be accurate. What you are searching for is consensus, from sources that you do like and respect and maybe a few that you don't.
If you are trying to do a deeper dive check out SNOPES, they do a great job of fact-checking larger stories and are good resources if you aren't sure of the validity of a story or piece of information.
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Case 3: It says something radical about a topic you are interested in, and the first instinct for many is wow and send it to someone else, with “Did you see this?” as the caption. Similar to Case 2 is the information you just read real? Step one always sees who published the post, google it and check for consensus. The action of checking information before we share it falls under the category of common courtesy, similarly, if you heard that a rumor about a co-worker, you wouldn't just spread the rumor as the information you spreading about them may not be true and could be damaging to their reputation.
Situation 2.
This situation is less common, but hopefully, at least within this community, it catches on. You have a topic you want to want to know more about; maybe want to write, or just be more informed in conversation. So where to start
Most fields of study have hubs of information on topics for example those that do biological research in the United States use the NCBI. Those who cook use America Test kitchen, obviously these are not the only sources but they are a place where data is collected and disseminated, for the consumption of those in the field. However, if you don’t know the hub you are looking for start by looking at Wikipedia. I know how they sound to many of you that went to school in America. "Wikipedia isn't factual", "It's a forum, anyone can edit it. Wikipedia has definitely gotten a mixed bag of reviews. When I was in school, teachers were very much against using it as a source because it was viewed as a blog. And for some things, it sort of is but for many things it is not. In order to dissuade some concern.
Wikipedia is maintained by a team of editors that are notified when changes are made.
Random people cannot make changes on Wikipedia you have to go and make an account and then changes that you make are checked by editors
That said regardless of your thoughts on the actual content of Wikipedia they are amazing at having extensive and well-curated lists of sources that were used in the article and this where we would suggest you start. This list of sources can help you learn where the hubs of information are in a particular field as they are commonly cited in Wikipedia articles as well as give you more insight and perspective into the source you are looking at.
So now that you have this long list of sources, what next? How do you decide which sources to use or not. Well, an easy screening technique is to look and see if any of the sources cited each other. This can be a great indicator of consensus in the field which is, similar to what we are looking for.
If you liked this topic and want to discuss it, head on over to the Forum, be sure to subscribe and we will back soon with new topics and fresh perspectives.
In our next episode, we will be talking about the conflict of interest and how that can impact how you should interest in news from various sources. If you liked this topic and want to discuss it, head on over to the Forum, be sure to subscribe and we will back soon with new topics and fresh perspectives.
us new outlets.
Acronyms:
NCBI - National Center for Biotechnology Information
Vocabulary:
Arduous - A task that is long, difficult, and often annoying to do.
Break - To break a story means to be the first person/agency to present the information to the public.
Dissuade - To calm concern.
Disseminate - To distribute
Periodical - A piece of literature, that is published on a schedule ie (weekly, monthly, annually etc.)
Spin - To add/manipulate/omit, a part of the story in order for the story to fit a narrative, that is either different or diverts from the story's native narrative.
Sources:
United States Consitution: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
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