Episode 6: True or Not? - How to Spot Fake News
Summary Keywords
read, news, information, media, journalists, people, digital, online, story, reader, world, fed, media literacy, critical, friends, aware, episode, consumed, newspaper, app
00:04 Host, Loh Chin Ee
There are many things named after the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles. One of the more unusual items is the Rafflesia. It's a corpse plant, first found on a British expedition to a rainforest in Sumatra, and named after the expedition’s leader, Stamford Raffles. It's one of the world's largest flowers, up to 120 centimeters in diameter. It's called a corpse plant because it gives off the odor of rotting flesh to lure insects that lay their eggs on animal carcasses or rotting vegetation. It's a trick, of course. An insect inadvertently provides free pollination services. Another example of false advertising in nature is the pitcher plant. It entices insects or small animals with the promise of food, only to trap them in a cavity to be consumed.
01:00 Host, Loh Chin Ee
If this kind of false advertising feels familiar, it's because we see it all too often. On the Internet, it's called catfishing. Someone assumes a fake identity in order to trick victims in scams that can result in various types of losses. Being able to spot when something is not quite right, is now a necessary skill for navigating online information. In this episode of ‘How We Read’, we speak with journalists and media experts on how to spot fake news. I'm Loh Chin Ee. Welcome to the ‘How We Read’ podcast.
01:40 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter One: How News is Delivered.
01:48 Host, Loh Chin Ee
For many people, every morning, their smartphone alarm rings. They pick up their phone and turn off the alarm. Then begins the daily ritual of catching up with what's going on. That means swiping through social media feeds, WhatsApp messages, and reading the news, either through an app or via notifications. Somewhere in this flurry of digital activity, there might even be a cup of coffee or tea. Is this perhaps how your morning ritual works? As a reader, what does this access to instantaneous information in the digital world mean for you?
02:29 Dr. Jiow Hee Jhee
One of the things that you have to be wary of with this excess information is you do not know which one to believe. This is one of the key things that me and some of my friends, when we talk about the elections over at the U.S., all of us are watching very different video clips on what's happening. So, we get very different impressions of what's going on. And that's because there's a large trove of information out there. This is the kind of difficulties we will face moving on to the future, where people are just uploading content. You have a wide range to choose from, and it's very difficult to assess which one is more accurate.
03:04 Host, Loh Chin Ee
That’s Jiow Hee Jhee, Programme Director of the Bachelor of Science with Honors in Digital Communications and Integrated Media at the Singapore Institute of Technology. Having access to too much information creates a problem. How do we know what's true or not? To find out more, I turn to seasoned journalists for in-depth tutorial on the world of news-making. I'm hoping that knowing how the news works will give me some clues. Tan Tarn How, former Straits Times journalist, playwright and researcher at the Institute of Policy Studies breaks down how news, well, becomes news.
03:44 Tan Tarn How
So, first, there's difference between information and news. The news comes to us by various means – other newspapers, and then we have services like Reuters, AFP agency, France press. All these are news agencies, so they have their own reporters and they go around the world reporting on the news and we get the feed. Government might organize a press conference or there might be a National Day Parade. So all these events out there, which we go and cover. Then there's news, which we look for. So like investigative journalism, or scoops, you know. We might hear something that's happening in a certain place or in certain ministry, certain kind of a rumor or tidbit, right? Then we’ll chase that. So we look for that information. And lastly, we create it as well. Like for example, we might do our own surveys and then that becomes newsworthy. So, it comes to us, we look for it, or we create it somehow ourselves sometimes.
04:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Jaime Ho, Chief Editor at Channel NewsAsia Digital, elaborates on how journalists decide what is newsworthy. It isn't all that easy or obvious.
04:44 Jaime Ho
In this digital age, it gets actually more interesting because in the old days, when you think about old editors sitting around a table with cigarettes and talking about what's going to make the news, they were the sole deciders, so to speak, right? They will decide what's in the public interest, what needs a national audience, for example, or international audience, and they’ll decide, “this is going to be our top story, this is going to be our second story, this is going to be our third story”. But today, we actually have a far greater idea of what our audience wants, and this is exactly what we get through traffic figures. We know exactly who's reading, how many people are reading, how quickly are they reading, how much are they reading. And we take that a lot into consideration in deciding what we do. So if Story X, for example, gets a lot of traction, and we make the decision based upon that traction, based upon the questions that have been asked by our readers, then we’ll decide: okay, we need to follow up on ABC from Story X. So that is one big part that has changed for journalists all over the world.
05:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Whether people get their news via the print version, the online PDF version, the app or internet affects the way news is presented. Certainly, most people now read the news on their phones, which means journalists can use the data to decide what kinds of news will appeal to the public. But ethical journalism shouldn't just be driven by data to feed the masses.
06:14 Jaime Ho
The challenge, however, is, especially for a platform like CNA, in that while we do have that kind of data, we don't become beholden to that data and being beholden to the audience and just feeding them exactly what they want, whenever they want. And that is, pushed to the extreme, a little bit of danger. It’s a tricky thing and I think at least for CNA, coming from a little bit of a public broadcaster legacy, we have that bigger picture in mind as well. And there are stories which we know straight away isn't going to get much traction. For example, a story about otters at Bishan Park, everyone knows that's going to do well, and we could do a story on otters in Bishan Park. But there will be stories that need to be told and won't do as well as otters in Bishan Park but we feel we have to do the story, because, let's say the 50,000 people who do read it will actually come away better informed, better citizens and better aware of their surroundings, as opposed to a story about otters, which maybe may get double that figure.
07:07 Host, Loh Chin Ee
One major issue with consuming news online is when it comes through social media feeds, such as Twitter or Facebook.
07:14 Tan Tarn How
There's a lot of, I suppose the current word is ‘fake news’, out there, right? A lot of information which is false and pretending to be real and then packaged as news, right? So you got to look out for that. Then the other is, of course, the very algorithm-driven manner in which many websites work, like Google, Facebook, right? So it's a commercial enterprise and very clever in a way which we are not aware of. So you're constantly fed what they think, from your behavior, you like. But sometimes what you like may lack certain things like what you need to know. They are not going to send you those information. So you must be aware that there’s certain biases, even though it doesn't look like a bias, in the way information is fed to you in Facebook, through YouTube for example, through Google News, and you must be aware that you need to look for those information yourself, and to get a wider range of news beyond what you merely like, you know.
08:16 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter Two: Learning to be Media Literate.
08:22 Host, Loh Chin Ee
It's not all bad news, though. The wealth of information on the Internet gives us choice to a range of reading resources from all around the world, and delivery times have reduced significantly. In 1776, the news of the Declaration of Independence took one month to reach London via mail. In 1858, a transatlantic telegram exchange took 10 hours. Now, news can be transmitted, as soon as it happens.
08:52 Tan Tarn How
In the past, we had very little choice. We only could read very few newspapers, and we will not be able to afford to buy a copy of New York Times even if it were available. So in the past, maybe we may not have a chance to find out other things and it's because of the new media that people are able to say things in the past which will never be published and widely disseminated. That is the positive side of social media. Of course, the difficulty is sifting through all the information and knowing what is reliable, what is true and what is not and that maybe requires a bit more from the reader than in the past.
09:31 Host, Loh Chin Ee
However, in the age of 24/7, always-on consciousness, with so much information to digest and so little time, the tendency when reading online is to skim and scan. We try to consume as much as we can as quickly as we can. This mode of flippant reading affects the way we process information. Csilla Weninger, a Media Literacy and Communications researcher from the National Institute of Education explains why it's so difficult to read critically on our phone even when we know we should.
10:05 Dr. Csilla Weninger
What happens in social media, like something like Facebook, is you're scrolling through, right? There's pictures of babies, of your friends. There's pictures of cats and animals and silly memes, and then there's news. There's hard news in there, right? There was an article that one of your friends posted. So, the context of reading in social media is very different from the context of reading. When in school, you read schoolbooks. With your morning tea, you read the paper. So these different genres, different types of reading, were much more compartmentalized previously. And now, because of digital technology, it's all coming together. All the different types of reading, right, happen within a very similar context and of course, this will have an impact on how you read. Like, you're looking at baby pictures, right, looking at funny animals, what have you, and then there's a news about some major political issue, right? So your mind is not cued for that kind of, “okay, let me sit down and read this, and evaluate the credibility of this article”, right? It's not prepared for the type of, kind of, rational, objective reading that we would like to or we would prefer.
11:13 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Jhee tells us why it's so easy to be complacent when reading messages from our friends and people we know.
11:22 Dr. Jiow Hee Jhee
So most of the time, they will perceive, I won't be the one who get deceived. Maybe my friend will, but not me. One of the key issues we need to address is the complacency. The second thing is that they don't bother to search beyond what is presented there. So, although they know how to search or the techniques to search, they just don't do it. So this has been my experience with some of the youths that I encounter. They just read an article and say, this is it, you know, my friend sent it to me, so I believe in this and this is the position etc. So they don't tend to look further beyond that.
11:57 Host, Loh Chin Ee
It's not just the words on a page. A picture paints a thousand words, and the images so predominant in online information have the power to persuade, to pull us away from a critical stance.
12:10 Dr. Csilla Weninger
Visuals, in general, are even more able to elicit strong reactions, elicit emotions. They specifically play into our emotions. Often in what we see, for example, in news, right, I mean, there's this whole rise of spectatorship, right? Just witnessing of suffering, witnessing of earthquakes, witnessing of looting and, you know. There's all these images flooding us, I think it's much more difficult for us to establish the kind of critical distance toward visuals. And this is actually how visuals work, right? They allow you to condense perhaps even complex arguments, complex issues into one expressive form. You're leaving out information. You're trying to highlight the things that you think might speak to people. And the danger is then that some of the details get lost when you switch from a textual mode into a visual mode.
13:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee
In effect, we're not only reading words online, but still and moving images. That makes it much more difficult for us to maintain a critical distance to evaluate the effect of the combination of words and images on our mental and emotional state. How can we be more critical readers, able to deal intelligently with the daily influx of information?
13:26 Dr. Csilla Weninger
The reader should, first of all, be aware of our own biases. Research has clearly shown that it's much more likely and easy for us to agree with something that is ideologically aligned with what we believe in. And here, ideology doesn't necessarily mean political ideology, right, any kind of belief that you strongly hold about the world, about particular types of people, what have you. Understanding your biases and being clear about your biases is the number one step. Now, that's extremely difficult to do. I think we like our biases, you know, we kind of live with them, and I think the older we get the more entrenched they tend to get. So the next step would be then read widely. If you only read within your silo, so to speak, right, within what they call filter, bubble, or echo chamber, right, you're only reading things that are reassuring your vision of the world. That's very comforting but it also makes you less likely to then be able to spot when you're being misled, when you're being told things that may not be entirely accurate, or things that are really kind of playing on your biases and leading you to perhaps confirm those biases in a way that's maybe not particularly healthy. Read opposing views and be comfortable with opposing views. I think we need to expose ourselves to these ideas and viewpoints, even if we don't agree with them, but we need to be aware of what they are, and we do need to consider them, I think. Third, very, very more practical issue, of course, to read, not just literally but laterally. So you want to go outside of the text and you want to confirm some of the claims that that you're reading if, especially if a claim seems to be too outrageous, too exaggerated, chances are they are exaggerated, right? And people are really playing on your emotions, betting on your beliefs and trying to persuade you. Read in a particular way, you know. Check sources, check the credibility, check the reliability of statements, of claims, of statistics, even.
15:25 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Our invited guests provide some practical approaches.
15:28 Jaime Ho
Everything is basically fact checkable. And when you do fact check online, because there's so much data out there… But the more important thing rather than checking sources, is being able to attribute things that are being said. Who is saying it? Is it the reporter who's saying it? Or is it the newsmaker who's saying it? Or what? Because it's not just a matter of whether it's factually correct. It's also a matter of being clear about who is saying what.
15:58 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Rather than grazing for information through social media feeds, you can commit to getting information from direct sources.
16:04 Dr. Csilla Weninger
One idea might be to actually have a dedicated newspaper app, like you have the BBC app, or you have a news aggregate app like AP News, or what have you, right, where you go precisely to just read the news. In my experience, that tends to produce better results. Because often, in Facebook, what happens? You don't even read the article. You read the headline.
16:28 Host, Loh Chin Ee
As informed citizens, we need to ensure that we're engaging with national and global issues by reading widely,
16:34 Tan Tarn How
There's a certain thing about a newspaper or a news bulletin in our half an hour bulletin on television, which is that it brings you the news, in a whole package. It does not matter that some of the stories you might not think you're interested in. So it gets information to people, which is not focused on just their interests. And that has a very important democratic effect. The contrast is with reading online, right? The website will recognize what you're interested in. So if you're interested in, let's say, Beyoncé, it’ll give you largely Beyoncé, and a lot of entertainment news. And if you don't read much political news, it will never give you political news. Being an informed citizen, we need to get information about politics, about society, about the environment. And the danger of online media is that it’ll only give you those you are most interested in and neglect that. Whereas a newspaper gives you all the news that it thinks is fit. Of course that is filtered, but it gives you a wider spectrum.
17:40 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter Three: Educating for Critical Literacy.
17:45 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Being able to sail the vast ocean of information is a vital skill for this day and age. We assume our children and youths to be digital natives, but they too need to be taught how to navigate the world of news and information. They need to read critically and inject a healthy dose of skepticism when they receive a message or see something online. How can adults, parents, and educators particularly begin to engage with them to handle the online world sensibly?
18:16 Dr. Jiow Hee Jhee
When I give my parenting talks, I try not to go there. I just try and sum up by saying you are role models for the child. Your child actually looks up to you. Instead of just telling them the techniques, for example, you can search for alternative views. You know, someone says this, according to this research, you can actually search the research out, go to the citation or whatsoever. I think one of the key things that I'm trying to get across to parents is to remove that sense of complacency, especially if it comes from friends.
18:45 Host, Loh Chin Ee
We circle back to the same suggestion we gave in Episode 1 on The Bedtime Story. Have conversations with your kids about what they read.
18:54 Dr. Csilla Weninger
The number one advice that most people would have heard talk to your kids about what they know, what they understand. Talk about what they're doing online, you know, get engaged. Even if you're not a gamer, even if you're not into a lot of social media, I think if you really want to help your kid, you will have to force yourself to become familiar with it. For those of us with school-aged children, it's part of it. How do you deal with messages when they first start using, for example, messaging apps, right, like WhatsApp or Discord or whatnot, you know? Talk to them about what's appropriate. What are you guys using it for? How do you use it?
19:27 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Csilla suggests a broader view of digital literacy education for our schools.
19:33 Dr. Csilla Weninger
One of the insights from my work with schools is that a lot of times when schools look at media literacy, even to some extent digital literacy, there's a heavy emphasis on what we call a protectionist vision, a protectionist approach to media literacy. And in the research literature, there's a very well-known dichotomy between approaches that aim to protect children, to shield children, right, from the harms of media, be that, you know, traditional media or digital media, on the one hand. And on the other hand, a more empowering perspective, which does acknowledge the risks, right, and challenges of digital and regular media, but aims to make young people feel confident navigating the digital environment. It seems to me that there's a fairly heavy emphasis on digital wellness, telling youths about the dangers of the Internet, about what to do, what not to do rather. More frequently, what not to do, right? Then you don't have in the ways in which media and digital literacy is taught in schools is the emphasis, for example, on production, which is really, really important that comes out very strongly in the literature, that one way to learn and become a responsible media user, is by learning what it takes to create content, you know, and that can be anything. It can be little digital stories, it can be videos that you upload to YouTube, it can be multimedia presentations. Really, whatever the teacher and the students are comfortable with and whatever fits the curriculum. A holistic approach to digital and media literacy education should consider both.
21:15 Host, Loh Chin Ee
An Ofcom study in the United Kingdom published in 2018 showed that most people underrate the amount of time spent on news online and overrate their critical reading tendencies. Through the Internet and our devices, we have access to boundless information today. Digitally literate citizens need to know how knowledge is produced and consumed, and use the understanding to decide what to read and how to read. We must be more careful and aware consumers of information. The onus is on you and me to read widely, read critically and make attempts to read outside of our comfort zone.
22:00 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Thank you for listening to the ‘How We Read’ podcast episode on True or Not?: How to Spot Fake News. This episode was written and hosted by me, Loh Chin Ee, and my thanks go to my guests for sharing their insights with us. Next week, join me for the final episode as we discuss the future of reading. This episode was produced by Kenn Delbridge of Splice Studios. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com.