To ask how you know what to believe

[Annabella92]

Aibu to really be unsure what is believable

There is quite a chasm between what is being said on X about the German Christmas Market attack and what the BBC are saying. I've already seen enough examples of the BBC trying to persuade me of things I know with my very own eyes are not true. So I don't trust them. But I don't trust everything I read on X either. How do you triangulate

Approaching the old git range of human kind, I grew up in an era where far too many sacred cows of Britishness were thought beyond the realms of any kind of corruption or not “doing the right thing”. Church of England, British Police Forces, the BBC, the Royal Family, Armed Forces, etc…. Decades of successive failures, cover ups, scandals, protecting a chosen few, downright criminal behaviour have upended all of these for me, but I am unbiased enough to know that each will still retain a degree of good and honesty, alongside the high profiles failures. The skill comes in being able to sieve through the facts and fiction written and reported around each issue, and not jumping onto a bandwagon that someone else might be driving. Some of the worst people in politics are very media savvy, can have huge behind the scenes monetary support helping sow the seeds of division for their own personal agendas.

I have never been a sheep, happy to bleat along the path chosen for me by others, and I can only hope that their are lots of others out there like me, because if not, heaven help this country in the next couple of decades.

BBC is trusted source - pwahahaha pull the other one

From Edgar Allen "I married my 13 year old cousin" Poe:
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

The BBC cannot be relied on. No provider of news is truly impartial. Don't believe what anyone tells you as fact.

Only trust evidence you view first hand, even then question whether someone is controlling what you can see and how it is presented to you.

You can't only trust first hand evidence.
That would mean that I don't know that the earth is round (haven't seen that first hand) nor that climate change is real ( I'm not a scientist but if the overwhelming majority of them agree based on their findige it's probably true)
We have to rely on reporting which does not mean that we have to believe everything blindly.
Check different news sources spanning (different political spectrums) and follow the cited sources.
Don't believe that X doesn't have a political bias too .

You can use your own critical thinking skills. Why would a far right protestor of any background attack a Christmas market - killing women and children - rather than target the usual target of the far right? (Eg a mosque)

What ideology regularly targets women and children? (Manchester bombing, Taylor swift dance class, Taylor swift concerts). That should help you make sense of who might be lying here.

On a separate note, the idea that the BBC are any kind of reliable objective source is absolutely laughable.

Any good Q drops lately?

So many incredibly silly posts.

Because he hated Germans and wanted to kill as much as possible. A huge gathering
seems logicql and an easily accesible weapon like a car wouldn't really work in a mosque would it?
Breivik explicitly targeted children and the youngest victim of th Christchurch shooter was three. Seems targetting the most vulnerable is a thing for terrorists in general.
Anyway OP lokk at different news sources and see where they lead.
The attacker also posted on X which seems tobe a reliable news source according to some.

I’ve been looking on X and there are a lot of theories. I’ve read:

He was a Saudi spy who lied about denouncing Islam in order to get refugee status and live in Germany

He was wanted for rape in Saudi so claimed to denounce Islam in order not to be extradited and given the death penalty

He converted to Judaism and was anti-Christian as well as anti-Islam

He was atheist anti-Muslim and decided to take it out on Germans because they were encouraging the spread of Islam in Europe (I think is the BBC line)

He was one type of Muslim and he hated Germany’s policy of importing the other type

He had a gripe with the German establishment for treatment of some specific Saudi refugee women he was helping

I personally prefer to weight each likelihood myself even if it means I can come to no definite conclusion in this case.

The BBC will be better at doing this than me given their access to the evidence, but the BBC will be putting their conclusions through a filter to protect public order. I regard them as a decent source but not the only one to look at.

There's a world of sources between BBC and randomer on X. Read around and create some context for yourself.

The BBC has an agenda I’m afraid. They are told by the government not to report news that may provoke riots & unrest. The fact they have reported the perpetrator’s views to be islamaphobic is laughable. Most of us can see what’s happening.

Did you actually read what he posted and what posts he liked?

Telling people not to look at X reminds me of people being told never to Google their health symptoms.

They assume everyone is too stupid to judge what they read, people will start injecting themselves with Domestos if they veer off the NHS website.

Agree there is a problem with algorithms promoting biases/bubbles, but to get around that I think the answer is to look at a wider bunch of sources.

Nicely put.

Go on a German media website

about a media which knows that a program used to make kids happy but attracted kids to be abused and did nothing to stop it....you would trust that? You must be totally sick

Based on the responses to this post it is clear that many people really can’t evaluate information at all though.

So they consider the musings of X user OpenYourEyesSheeple3940738 to be of equal value to verified news reports confirmed by multiple sources across the political spectrum.

But given we know the media pick and choose their sources selectively to highlight or suppress information that suits their agenda they can’t be trusted either.

Since the bbc agenda is to puslish trustworthy reliable reports that maintains their status as an unbiased reporter I think we don't need to worry too much about it

Once you believe that bbc has a hidden political agenda you are an easy victim for conspiracy theories

One way to see that the bbc isn't terribly political is that it gets accusations of left and right wing bias

Most of the main UK broadcasters and papers use female pronouns for transwomen.

I have some issues with the way the BBC discusses trans people, but for news I still trust it over a bunch of random posters and conspiracy theorists on social media.

Agreed. The BBC isn't perfect, but the fact that both left and right accuse it of bias against them is telling.

It's not just pronouns though, the BBC reported Blake was a woman.

They also for years (maybe still do? Not sure) described Caster Semenya as 'a woman with naturally high testosterone' even after official legal documents from the court of arbitration proved that Semenya is a biomale with XY chromosomes and 5ARD. The BBC should be reporting facts, but they don't if it conflicts with a political agenda.

BBC should be better than randoms on social media, that's not a very high bar for our national broadcaster.

Most of the other main news organisations do the same.

You're right, and it's a problem. I think we should be able to trust the national broadcaster to tell the truth because they aren't beholder to powerful shareholders as other media outlets are. So I hold the BBC to a higher standard in a way, as they don't have to bend to political will or pressure from vested interests/owners as other media outlets do.

I'm sorry that you believe the BBC agenda is to publish trustworthy reliable reports. That evidently isn't the case. I've seen with my own eyes how they have presented some cases that I've known about with quite a different spin from what happened.

And of course it is possible for the BBC to get accusations of left and right wing bias. There has been a strong right wing bias on a lot of political programmes - take Laura K on a Sunday for a start. And a more left wing bias on certain comedy shows. Both are probably true. But only one has quite the impact on how people perceived what is happening in the news.

Once you believe that bbc has a no hidden political agenda you are an easy victim for conspiracy theories, I'd say.