I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
Sometimes when I need a break from work, I read newstories and yell at fascists in the comments. Occasionally, during their barrage of what-aboutisms, they will reference something I’m unfamiliar with.
The first thing I do is Google what they referenced. For any legislative action, you can read the bill or law. For anything that goes through the court, you can look up the docket. Read what the charges are and the evidence brought forward. Raw data is the most trustworthy, but it can be hard to understand. See what your favorite news source has to say about it, and then see what FOX says. Compare and contrast. What is each side saying, what is each side NOT saying? Just as Trump does no wrong on FOX, there may be some shady things going on that your team isn’t talking about.
I tried this with my father. He’d spout off some fox news garbage, I’d do all this research and send him an email explaining everything with the sources linked, and he would just reply with another fox news article… :(
I had someone at work with similar issues (nothing political, just incorrect facts confidently stated).
I pointed out that each time this happens my trust in what they say is eroded: “if you were wrong about that then why should I believe you about this”
It only worked for a bit & then I had to revert to “yeah, whatever bro”
Yeah.
If everything they say is proven wrong they’ll respond with “I don’t care”.