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?
While this is great advice, it requires the ability to distinguish plausible from implausible claims and from what OP describes, we’re not at that point yet.
E.g. if you google “why is Trump a bad leader.” And then read i.e. “Tariffs are hurting the economy.” And then you look for “Are tariffs good for the economy?” you will find pages both saying they are and they aren’t.
But that’s no different from any other kind of conflicting evidence in any scientific process. What’s required to distinguish plausible from not isn’t “intelligence” per se, it’s determination to continue asking more questions in order to gather more data.
For example if one source says “tariffs will pay off the debt”, and another says “tariffs will cause inflation” reasonable disambiguating questions to ask might be “have tariffs paid off the debt in the past?” or “have tariffs caused inflation in the past?”
The key is to 1. Not stop with positive evidence, but to continue to fail to find negative evidence 2. Not stop with opinions but find a balance of facts
I experienced this when we had the brexit vote. I had separate leaflets coming through the door every day.
These came through in the same post delivery.