A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

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9 February 2022 — 0440 mst

Verify, don’t trust

Learn and share the abilities needed to be
smart, active consumers of news and information

Guest essay by Rebecca Johnson

As a Montanan who is very concerned about the neverending spread of misinformation throughout our country causing enormous problems with dire consequences, I contacted the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit that provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy. The result is this article which I hope you read.

Misinformation is one of the gravest threats facing us, but we are not doing enough to educate people how to recognize fact from fiction in the flood of information they encounter every day. MIT researchers found that tweets containing falsehoods reach 1500 people on Twitter six times faster than truthful tweets.

We live in the most complex information landscape in human history, where it is easier than ever to create and spread misinformation online. And we’ve likely all been fooled at least once by false or manipulated content in our social media feeds. Maybe it was a provocative quote from a celebrity that we later discover the person never said, or an arresting photo that turns out to have been doctored or wildly taken out of context.

Misinformation is often shared unintentionally, by well-meaning friends and family who’ve been fooled by it. But individuals, organizations, and government entities also create and amplify false content that is intentionally designed to exploit our fears and values and provoke a strong emotional response — all for their own financial, partisan or personal gain. This is disinformation, a particularly viral subset of misinformation.

Such false content can inflict real harm. It can prevent us from taking steps to protect our health, like getting a COVID-19 vaccine because baseless and frightening rumors make us hesitant. Or maybe we’ve been misled on important issues or how our government addresses them, making us cynical about our civic responsibilities.

That’s why misinformation is everyone’s problem, and it’s a big one:

  • 59% of Americans say it is hard to identify false information — intentionally misleading and inaccurate stories portrayed as truth — on social media, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll in 2020.
  • 63% of people worldwide agree that the average person can’t tell good journalism from rumors or falsehoods, the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reported.
  • 96% of young people (digital natives!) didn’t consider why ties between a climate change website and the fossil fuel industry might lessen the site’s credibility, a 2019 Stanford History Education Group found.

But all is not lost. We can solve the misinformation crisis through news literacy education. Learning to become more news-literate means being able to determine the credibility of news and other types of information and to use the standards of fact-based journalism to determine what to trust, what to share and what to base your decisions and actions on. It also means recognizing the critical role of the First Amendment and a free press in a democracy.

It’s not as hard as it sounds. Here are three simple things you can do right now:

  • Pause before you post or share information online. If the content triggers a strong emotional response — such as anger, fear or amazement — it might be misinformation.
  • Verify the information by opening a new tab on your browser and searching multiple sources or Google the claim rephrased as a question.
  • Correct or question the content in a comment. If you see a post that seems unreliable, ask for the original source or more evidence.

A well-informed public is essential to a robust democracy, and we share a common responsibility to learn how to discern fact-based information from false and misleading content that can put our community, our health and our nation at risk. To become part of the information solution to the misinformation problem, check out the News Literacy Project’s free tools and resources.

Rebecca Johnson is a retiree living in Montana City who has spent the last few years working as a volunteer organizer for several organizations to register Montana voters and fight to protect all Montanans’ voting rights. Rebecca also helped organize several state rallies and marches for women’s rights and voting rights.