Check yourself before you wreck yourself
“Fake News” is not a term to be thrown around lightly anymore; in many circumstances, it seems to be used more as an insult or a deflection tool than as a label that actually helps people pick their way through the surplus of information that is online nowadays.
And with all that is just a keystroke away on the internet, it can be hard to pick through what is fact and what is fiction among all the clutter. What is a narrative being spun for someone’s personal gain and what are solid claims backed up by evidence and proof. This is where fact checking comes into play, and what makes it so important.
While it is not the only way, i would dare say it is many people’s first insticts to turn to the internet when trying to figure the answer out to something. And what many people tend to do is goog their question, click the first link that pops up and after reading a little bit and not seeing any red flags believe what they have seen as the truth.
And in a perfect world that would be the case…unfortunatly that is not the world we live in.
Tha first source you stumble upon might not bbe the holy grail of infromation you wish to spip from. For many reason, intentional or not, it could be very wrong and could lead someone astray under false pretenses.
There is an easy way to counteract this, and it is by cross refencing and fact checking. There are multiple ways to do it, and not only will you be more informed by doing this but if can seriously help improve your papers or works. The last thing you would want to do is to turn in a huge paper only to find out that the source your main chunk of evidence came from an a source that did not contain the truth.
As stated in “Check Please” it is important to find trusted coverage, especially when checking your claims. What this means is that as a researcher and journalist you should focus less on the first source you stumbled upon, and look more for a reputable and trusted source for reporting and analysis.
An example of this would be if I was googling a question about a political figure who apparently had a very scandalous affair. while I may have seen it on Twitter first, that isn’t the source I would be dwelling on. Instead, I should go out and look for other articles to back the facts that were supplied to me and see if a source like The New York Times or the Washington Post ran anything on it.
Another way to fact check, also from “Check Please” would be tracing the claims, quotes, media, and any media back. By following the trail of material, it would be easier back to the original content to compare and see how it holds up against the newer version.
Everyone at the end of the day is entitled to their own opinion and is tasked with the personal challenge of finding out what they want to know for themselves. However, just as forming your own opinion is subject to the individual so is ensuring that information is correct. Be it for personal integrity, professional integrity, or academic integrity take the time to fact check because it will for sure help you in the long run and improve your work tenfold.
