I often get asked what sources I trust, and my usual answer is: none of them. While it can be a practical necessity to take a source's word for something, we should avoid doing so unless the source has a proven track record of honest and accurate reporting on that specific topic. And just because a source provides good information and insights on one topic doesn't mean it's good on others. A source assessment is required to separate the wheat from the chaff for individual sources, just as it's necessary when comparing different sources against each other.
Instead of relying too much on any specific sources, it's to get your information from as wide a variety of sources as possible. Seek out alternative perspectives that challenge your own. Avoid the trap of selecting sources to follow because their information confirms your own paradigm. Be cognizant of your own confirmation biases and the limits of your knowledge, and remain open to the possibility that everything you think you know is wrong. Treat your conclusions and beliefs as hypotheses to be tested against opposing perspectives.
Critically assess each source with consideration for their potential biases. Maintain healthy skepticism and check key claims against cited sources. There mere inclusion of footnotes or links in an article can make a story or argument appear well supported, but this is commonly an illusion. Oftentimes, cited sources fail to support or even directly contradict claims for which they are cited. As you consume news media, identify the agenda being served and consider whether any political or financial interests might conflict with the aim truth-telling.
Through that process, you'll develop a wider overview of the informational landscape and won't miss the forest for the trees. Determine common ground by identifying key claims that are uncontested. Then synthesize conflicting claims to reconcile the contradictions. Apply your source assessment to determine what seems most credible, and hypothesize an explanation that best fits the available evidence. Conflicting claims can be often be easily reconciled, for example, by simple recognizing that at least one of the sources is demonstrably lying. Through this analytical process, you'll come away with a new working hypothesis to test against new information as you continue to expand your knowledge about the topic.
With an infinite number of topics to focus on and limited time, you'll also learn to distinguish distracting noise from matters of real importance, and the more you develop these types of analytic skills for news consumerism, the better you'll get at it and the easier it'll become, so you'll eventually be able to rather quickly and easily assess information and draw reasonable conclusions. The effort you put into developing these skills will pay dividends as you acquire actionable knowledge and avoid becoming deceived by the incessant political propaganda that permeates our information environment.
~ Jeremy R. Hammond, independent journalist, www.jeremyrhammond.com
