Misrepresentations, half-truths and outright lies are common in any political season. But this year, the numbers have exploded beyond anything ever experienced.
Add in new evidence of election interference from Russia through RT — the Kremlin’s media arm — plus absolute lies about immigrants eating pets, one must ask: How can anyone know what is true or not?
Part of the problem is that so many people now live in an echo chamber of their own opinions thanks to social media. New websites looking like journalism, but are not, are cropping up and can fool some people into believing lies or misinformation.
What can an ethical person do to get real information?
The answer is easy, take a few minutes to check facts before repeating anything found on social media/online or stories/information from friends and family. There are two excellent websites where anyone can check a story with a few clicks.
One is PolitiFact (politifact.com), a division of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit media institute. At PolitiFact, stories/rumors/statements are fact checked as true, false, mostly true, mostly false or a “pants on fire” lie.
For example, a recent Instagram post saying California dropped the voter ID requirement at polls was reported as “mostly false” because it lacks context of the state’s voting laws. An example of a “pants on fire” label is a claim the Biden administration was manipulating the job statistics.
Another quality resource is Snopes (snopes.com), the 30-year-old fact-checking site that investigates stories/statements/rumors and labels them as correct, fake or a mixture. Like PolitiFact, Snopes is a nonprofit that checks all sides equally. In addition, both groups belong to the International Fact Checking Network.
A recent Snopes debunk was the AI-generated image of Vice President Kamala Harris in a communist dictator’s uniform. Snopes researchers named Elon Musk’s X as the origin, most likely generated by Midjourney AI. A recent “true” determination was on a story that former President Donald Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David for a meeting, although the meeting was later canceled.
Like any responsible fact-checking group, both PolitiFact and Snopes give the names of the staff who did the fact-checking on each article.
There are also other resources people can use. Anyone can do a quick search in a search engine, or sites such as Google News, Apple News or SmartNews for the information. The following recommendations are from the News Literacy Project’s SmartNews:
Look for standards, such as the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics
Check for transparency — news sources should be transparent. Look at their “about” link for ownership and funding, is the advertising clearly labeled and you tell who is writing and producing content. Don’t be fooled by a sleek page design, look for the information.
Check how errors are handled. Credible news sources hold themselves accountable for mistakes and correct them. Does your source correct their errors?
Assess the reporting. Is it obvious the reporting is original, is it straight news reporting (the facts) or opinion? Are there grammatical or spelling errors? Are there bylines giving the reporters’ names?
SmartNews also cautions people against what they call the “trust busters”: information that is false or untrue without correcting it, using “click bait” tactics of false or misleading headlines, a lack of balance in the stories, misleading photos or videos, and state-run propaganda. They do caution against dangerous, malicious and offensive content that includes discriminatory language, unverified pseudoscience or content that promotes violence/panders to lurid curiosity.
As someone who worked on revising the SPJ Code of Ethics in 1995 (the code was again updated in 2015), I understand the knee-jerk want by some people to spread a rumor in favor of one candidate or another; but I also understand the need for all facts to be checked for accuracy. Unfortunately, some people do not want accuracy, they would rather spread rumors and innuendo.
Thanks to the internet, such fact checking is easy. It is incumbent on all of us — especially those who consider themselves to be ethical people — to check the facts and help stop the spread of untruths and rumors. Our democracy depends on it.
Tallent was a journalism faculty member at the University of Idaho for 13 years before her retirement in 2019. She is of Cherokee descent and is a member of both the Indigenous Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. She also writes for FaVS (Faith and Values) News.
