(5.6-Minute read)
Rules
Here’s the first rule of Truth Club. Try and tell the truth. It’s important.
I have seen memes where President Biden is accused of fucking something up in 2020. People will comment that Biden wasn’t President in 2020 and yet the meme gets shared and passed on as the truth. I see posts where the successes of the Trump Administration are touted with statistics that leave out 2020. Whether people like it or not that year counts for Trump. Equally, what Biden inherited in 2021 counts for him.
The chart available at the top of this page is from Ad Fontes Media. Just scroll down to the bottom of their home page, right click on the chart, copy and paste to your desktop. Anything above the green line is excellent for accurate reporting. If you want to check out a news source, go to Media Bias Fact Check and enter in the name of the source that you want to check out.
Really all you have to do is follow the regular old news outlets like, AP, ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN (Yes), NBC, NPR, Reuters, The Hill, etc. Keep in mind that bias and accuracy are two different things. I am biased and also strive for accuracy in my opinions. Obviously, people will disagree with that statement.
MAGA Heads refer to legitimate news sources or anything that they don’t like as fake news. They much prefer made up news that conforms to their world view.
Regardless of the bizarrity.
Disinformation
The amount of disinformation being willfully spread throughout social media is truly incredible. It’s being done all day every day. We are awash in outrageous lies. The truly sad part is that knowing the difference between what is fact and what is fiction is going to get even worse. A lot worse thanks to the power of computers, software, aps and so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). Individuals will lack the necessary resources to check things out for themselves so trusted sources will be crucial.
I have written about this topic before.
Are you interested in being truthful, Part 1. (In case you don’t know, you can click on the word “truthful.” It’s a link to what I wrote. It’s a 14-minute read. At the end there’s a list of fact checking sites that anyone can use to check stuff out.
Here are a couple other writings of mine on the subject:
Social media weaponized.
Facebook litter.
None of this stuff is rocket science. Good advice for anything is don’t jump to conclusions. If you don’t want to bother checking out to see if something that is particularly inflammatory is true then you shouldn’t post it, unless being inflammatory is the goal. (All too often it’s the only goal.)
MAGA Republicans are fighting to preserve the spread of disinformation. You read that correctly. They are suing universities and think tanks to protect their first amendment right to lie to people.[1] They have elections to win and they use disinformation to groom their base of supporters. The truth through fact checking gets in their way.
It’s a matter of priorities.
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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/technology/gop-disinformation-researchers-2024-election.html