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In the Wake of a Big, Tragic Story, You Can Sort Good Information From Bad

Fact Check Sources

Making a Case

Nancy Robinson has been a practicum student working with me in the library this winter. She collaborated with Mrs. Hanson to work with the 8th grade English classes to write persuasive papers about the driving age, the voting age, and required community service for high school students.  As a group, the students wrote a thesis and supported it with relevant arguments.  Students then created an infographic in less than twenty minutes using Piktochart and presented their argument to the class.

Fake News: A Throne of Lies

1. The bias that is the most difficult to detect is your own.
   The two internet hoaxes I fell for the hardest fed into my own bias. SO embarrassing!
   
2. Lies are nothing new.
   Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”

3. The SPEED of our lies is new.
   If you are getting your news from Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit, you do not have the whole story. As my mother says, “The internet is like a huge gossip circle.”

4. If you get your news from SNL or The Colbert Report, you do not have the whole story.
   Just because it’s funny doesn’t make it true.

5. Even Mainstream Media starts to spin the news before they have all the facts.
   Sometimes what media outlets do not report is more important than what they do. Fitting the whole truth into a sound bite isn’t easy, so if your opinions are based on headlines alone, slogans, or catch phrases, think again.
   
6. Everybody has blind spots and a world view that influences their opinions and reactions to events. 
   

Tips for Detecting the Truth

1. Check Politifact, FactCheck, ProCon, or another reliable site before jumping to conclusions. The unashamedly conservative Townhall points out that Politifact has a liberal bias, so don't be afraid to fact check your fact checkers. 

2. Listen to the people you do not agree with once in awhile. You might not buy what they are saying, but at least you can see that there might be another way of looking at the world.

3. Be willing to revise your opinion based on new information.

4. If the argument is mostly based on name calling and yelling, maybe it’s not much of an argument.

If you are looking for something more, check out A Finder's Guide to Facts.