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?
Similar to what another person referenced, the journalists I follow almost always cite their sources. The news they deliver is often just referencing legislation or other documents and summarizing it, combined with some opinion. For me this type of news is just a Tl;Dr of stuff that’s complex or long to read, and because they’re citing what they’re saying (and often showing it in full somwhere on the screen or blog), I trust that they’re not taking it out of context.
For studies or reports on studies, I like to look at who is funding the study.
For other news, I will often trust when a reporter is or has been onsite. Eg. A protest or something in a city and they have actual footage of themselves there. Of course, that’ll all come with a bias, but I am willing to accept that risk.
For bias checks, I often will ask myself questions: why did they word it a certain way? What point of view is missing here? Who is gaining from this?
When a reporter or news group shows me time and again that they can be trusted, then I will more easily trust them.
I also always check new sources on mediabiasfactcheck.com as they have full analyses to figure out if a source is left/right leaning and how factually they have reported historically.
1 dimentional left-right spectrum itself is biased.
I mean, Xinhua would be considered “left” and RT news would be considered “right” but they would both blame “the west” for russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so this creates a false sense of nonpartisanship.