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?
I never trust any source of information.
For every article, no matter the source, I think if what they say is logical and coherent. If there’s any conflict of interest or if the source may be interested into pushing a particular agenda. If there’s something real attached, like the article is talking about a new law or scientific paper or something officially published, or maybe a video, I try to go find the original source and read it directly.
After all that I try to only believe the parts that I could verify or find logical and coherent, discarding the rest as that particular media propaganda (which is also useful to know that several people is going to think that).