Over the next few weeks, I'll address an evergreen topic: Avoiding misinformation. I’ll start by summarizing the techniques I use, then guide you through my process step-by-step in the coming weeks.
When not clowning about the latest Taylor Swift release, I’m pretty good at discerning fact from fiction and biased reporting from straight reporting. Regardless of where we are on the political spectrum, we’re all more likely to believe things that confirm our preexisting assumptions and come from sources we trust. That makes it extra important that we read things with a critical mindset, treating sources we like with the same level of skepticism and suspicion that we treat sources with which we disagree. Reading this way isn’t complicated but it does take some effort and practice to do consistently.
For context, I will use the buckets “red flag,” “yellow flag,” and “green flag,” to illustrate points that should make you stop reading and treat something as false until additional evidence is provided, provoke extra caution and hesitancy to share or retweet, and finally, positive items that should increase your certainty.
To start, I’ll talk about critical thinking– not what you think but how you think and why you should follow certain practices to improve your reasoning. Then I’ll write about the difference between implied or explicit headline claims versus what evidence is offered for headline claims in associated content. Particularly in the social media age, there’s no shortage of examples. Headlines are usually not written by the author of the article and are often written to grab your attention even when the content of the article is not. Finally, I will write about how to recognize and evaluate what is, in my opinion, the most pernicious type of misinformation: Claiming research results can only lead its readers to a specific (usually partisan) policy conclusion.
Let’s dive in!
When I’m thinking critically, I begin with the 5 W’s and an H. I was taught this practice at the same time I learned to read, so it’s been second nature to me for a LONG time but I recently learned it’s an Aristotelian framework!
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
It’s an immediate yellow flag when an article or podcast leaves out any one of these items (except in breaking news reports when many of these questions will be unanswerable). In those breaking cases, however, good reporters will caveat their reporting, noting that certain big questions are still unanswered and/or that their reporting is preliminary and will be updated with new information as it becomes available. In anything else though, you want to answer all of these questions before developing a belief about the claim or claims.
This framework was first instilled in me for writing, not reading. To tell a story that other people could clearly understand (the way my English teacher described narrative creation to Kindergarteners), we needed to outline these items. As an adult, the 5 W’s and an H framework apply to many things: Reading comprehension, literary analysis, argumentative writing, long-range planning, and more recently, SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. One of the ways it shows up in my daily life is the way it helps me to read between the lines of the news to disentangle opinion from fact and discern the reliability of factual claims, which is what I will share in the coming weeks.
Recently, I listened to an Advisory Opinions podcast episode where host Sarah Isgur did a fantastic job breaking down a recent NYT article about a Supreme Court leak related to the details of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization following a similar process. If you’d like to hear what it sounds like to apply this framework, you can listen here (begin at 31:21). If you’d rather read an example, continue. We’re going to use the 5 W’s and an H framework, beginning with “who,” to read a New York Times piece from 2018 that highlights the single most outrageous claim against Justice Kavanaugh that was nonetheless given a primetime airing on cable networks and covered by major media as a credible allegation.
Julie Swetnick Is Third Woman to Accuse Brett Kavanaugh of Sexual Misconduct
Who Questions:
Who wrote this piece (and is this opinion or straight news)?
Three authors are named and while the piece is listed under the “Politics” section, that’s not the Opinion section. A piece that has not been published in the Opinion section and that has named staff authors is a green flag! This is because staff can lose their jobs for failing to follow rigorous fact-checking and can face complaints, cause negative publicity for their publisher, or face blacklisting from other outlets even if they aren’t fired. Op-Eds (opinion editorials) are intended to be opinion pieces and are by nature considered to be more subjective than objective. Sometimes, I see people attempt to discredit stories because an author has a political bias or is paid by a specific company. While reading other things an author has written can help understand his or her perspective, I don’t believe that writing should be discredited on this basis; even broken clocks are right twice a day. I consider it a yellow flag when someone references bias or funding as a reason to categorically disbelieve something. I consider this a yellow flag because noticing bias should make us skeptical of claims and conclusions, and money can be coercive. However, neither of these things guarantees the truthfulness or falsehood of a claim or conclusion. The following questions will help discern whether an article’s claims withstand scrutiny regardless of who wrote them.
Who is alleging a crime?
The NYT leads with the first answer, publishing the accuser’s name, age, and general geographic proximity to the alleged perpetrator. This is a green flag because it means the accuser can be sued (and in this case prosecuted) for lying if the accuser’s statements are found to be defamatory. I consider it a yellow flag when accusers are anonymous. There are many legitimate reasons a person might want to remain anonymous when truthfully alleging wrongdoing. Also, because good reporters will risk jail time rather than reveal their sources (and judges are loathe to face the bad publicity of jailing reporters for refusing to disclose their sources), there’s very little accountability for anonymous leakers who speak with reporters. One more detail I’d like to point out that we can glean from this paragraph: The Times tells us directly that they requested an interview with the accuser (green flag!) and their request was declined (yellow flag). This is not always disclosed as explicitly as it is in this article but can usually be gleaned by paying extra attention to who is quoted and who isn’t quoted, among other details I’ll address later.
Who is the alleged victim (and is it the same person or a different person from the person making the allegation)?
No specific victim of the accused is identified or named. I consider it a red flag when no alleged victims are specifically identified by an accuser or discovered by reporters. This is because reporters will usually try to at least corroborate serious claims of criminality lest they be found civilly liable for defamation and indeed, the authors explicitly tell us in this article that they tried and failed. Also, reporters can and often do redact names while explicitly stating that they have spoken directly with alleged victims. Instead, the Times directly quotes Swetnick’s affidavit: “In a statement posted on Twitter by her lawyer, Ms. Swetnick said she observed the future Supreme Court nominee at parties where women were verbally abused, inappropriately touched, made ‘disoriented’ with alcohol or drugs and ‘gang raped.’” This way, they’re only repeating her claims, not making any claims of their own. I consider this an additional red flag for the claim; it warns me that the media outlet has so little confidence in the source that they did not even want to try paraphrasing the source’s core claims.
Who are the alleged witnesses?
There are no identified witnesses to what is described as a large party; this is a red flag for the accuser’s credibility. This is because it would strengthen her allegations to be able to name witnesses if she had known them (and their names could have been redacted from the record, so there was no disincentive to provide them). If she attended multiple parties, she should know people who can corroborate her claims. She also claims at the end of her affidavit that she “is aware” of “other witnesses” that can corroborate her statement. Since these crimes allegedly were committed by multiple men and boys at multiple parties with many people, it should have been easy to find people who attended these parties. It should have been easy to find someone who remembered lines of men/boys waiting to enter a private room a drugged girl had entered. It should have been easy to find someone who heard of this through the grapevine if nothing else. Still, the Times tells us “none” of her claims could be corroborated. This is a red flag the size of Russia.
Who is the alleged perpetrator or who are the alleged perpetrators?
The accuser answers this, but it’s unsatisfying and is another red flag. She claims that Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh are the perpetrators, along with many other men at these parties she attended but never names others. She does not claim to have been victimized by either named party herself. If we assume she’s telling the truth, it’s counterproductive to only name people she’s not accusing of crimes against her, since this ensures her rape cannot be investigated and she does not name the women the accused allegedly violated. A full-length article in the Paper of Record could have created the public pressure needed to ensure the alleged crimes were investigated and kicked off a prosecution! Instead, only a political target and his (by that time publicly known) high school best friend who publicly wrote about having been an alcoholic who spent a lot of time blacked out, were identified by her. When there are many people alleged to be involved in a claim, the only identified people have high profiles, the media is unable to find, never mind identify any corroborating evidence at all, and there are political or financial incentives for the reputations of the accused to be destroyed, you should be extremely skeptical of any claims made.
Next week, we’ll lay out “what” and “where” questions with green, red, and yellow flags following the same framework, then “why” and “how.” Then we’ll compare headlines with content, and finally, we’ll talk about how to think about and evaluate academic research. I ask these questions about every non-fiction thing I read or hear. I annotate books with these questions in mind. I talk to people about their experiences with these questions in mind. I write with this framework in mind. I hope you think about this as you read the news and political commentary and that it’s helpful to you.
If you’d like more applied examples, email me at edoll@braverangels.org with an article you’d like me to review… I’ll run through it live on a video stream when I launch my coming podcast! Keep an ear open for more information!