MNHQ here: FAKE NEWS!!! and related matters

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We at MNHQ have been asked to take part in a discussion with the LSE's Truth, Trust and Technology (T3) Commission, so we wanted to ask for your thoughts on a few topics so that we can give an impression of what MNers reckon.

The T3 Commission says it is 'dealing with the crisis in public information' and wants to 'work with experts, practitioners and the public to identify structural causes of media misinformation and set out a new framework for strategic policy.'

The questions they've asked us to focus on are:

What media literacy skills do citizens need, given that a functioning democracy requires a well-informed public? What kinds of policy regarding media literacy would enable 'due trust' in democratic processes, and give people the tools to assess competing claims?

Is media literacy for children and young people effective and fit for purpose? What about older adults, who sometimes lack digital skills and have generally not received formal training? Is the nature of media literacy itself changing?

What responsibilities for improving information quality and the conditions of media literacy do platforms, journalists, corporations, public relations, advertising, civil society and government have?

What specifically can be done about the risk that algorithmic selection polarises opinions and beliefs?

What expectations are citizens entitled to have about how information and news is presented to them online?

We'd love to know what you all think about any or all of this - thanks in advance

MNHQ

I think the BBC has a government bias.

I know this sounds a bit “out there” but I think the best thing the government could do is rapidly expand school debating. It’s the preserve of private schools at the moment and it shouldn’t be. Pupils would learn that arguments can be twisted, facts can be cherry picked - arguments on both sides can be seductive, and there’s room for more than one point of view.

Then when the school also talks about media and its political take / owners / advertisers / planned readership - kids would instinctively have a grasp of what that means.

@longtalljosie I'm completely with you on debating. I've wanted to see it as part of the curriculum from KS1 for a while. I think it instils self belief.

We debated around the diner table as a family from when I was a young child. I love a good discussion. Its taught me to be able to politely, non aggressively challenge and offer counter argument. Its helped me through so many tricky situations in life and to be confident in my choices.

Open debate, an essential part of free speech, helps to prevent the insular uncompromising card carrying right wing or left wing attitude when we're all independent beings and the reality of where we fall on most issues is more of a spectrum.

There seems to be a great deal of lazy journalism about. Look at the stuff that's lifted from Mumsnet. Also - fact checking seems to be something that a great many journos don't both with. This happened to me only last week, I was phoned by the BBC to ask about an incident. I told them there and then it was nothing to do with the group I was involved in, that it was something made up out of nothing. They thanked me, and went on their way, but posted their original inaccurate "story". This then appeared in the Fail, the Sun, the Star, the Telegraph. All totally wrong, all copied without any fact checking done. I have complained, but the story is out there, and that's the end of it, all because someone wanted a quick sensational story.

To be fair, journalists are used to people involved telling us “that’s not a story” and quite often it is because they are trying to put you off writing about it. “No story here, nothing to see, move on”. However I appreciate that was not the case for you Wornoutbear.

In an ideal world, I would like kids to have a daily lesson on the news of the day from 2 different, opposing sources - like breitbart vs socialist worker. or Guido vs The Guardian. Or two "news" clips from Fox vs BBC

Kids could look at how the news is presented in both situation - same story, different bias. Have them think about the audience, and the medium. At the heart of every discussion needs to be CONSIDER THE SOURCE.

ANd yes, have the kids learn how to fact check, how important it is to do so, what happens when you don't, how to not blindly follow their favourite blogger, how to analyse statistics...

Give examples from left and right, from centrists and extremists. CHildren need to learn critical thinking, they need to learn how to analyse information.

Also they need to understand the ideas of "its a good day to bury bad news" ; spin doctors, public relations, echo chambers and their dangers... - if they know they are being sold news as a product, that they are being manipulated.

Would it be practical to require social media sites to display warnings to the effect that the alleged factual content that you see is filtered by altgorithms and may in any case be untrue?

It is a bit unsubtle, as a partial solution, but the level of danger from the current atmosphere of falsehood and polarisation is so high that it doesn't seem implausible to adopt something comparable to the graphic warning messages in cigarette packaging.

We all know, or should, that there is a cultural shift which has been going on for the last 40 years in favour of putting all responsibility for security and safety on to the individual, away from the state. Everything is turning into a 'buyer (or consumer, or citizen) beware' culture. Hence all the calls for everyone to be better educated, to have all the tools they individually need to sift through the commercial crap and winnow out the truth.

In short we are asking for everyone - or rather expecting, and insulting and kicking people when they don't match up - to have the skills of a librarian, and the practical knowledge of the working journalist and IT expert. Is this in any way a realistic thing to ask or expect? How are ordinary people supposed to amass all this knowledge in a time of education cuts - not just schools, but adult education has all but vanished given the cost of it. Then of course, even if they amass all these skills and knowledge, who has the time to sit down with all the disparate news services available? We are asking people to work harder and harder than ever before for less and less reward and now they have to achieve all this on top to stand a chance of being aware of what is going on? Women will be harder hit as usual - the single mother working all hours she can spare around her kids does not have this kind of luxury. The people who design this new culture, knowingly or by ignorance, are well aware of this. Assuming we need people to work, to manufacture goods and services, by forcing responsibility for informing themselves entirely onto individual knowledge we disenfranchise the working population.

The alternative is for more awareness of the responsibility involved in providing information services. We need all the professions involved in that to be rebuilt and backed again, after decades spent tearing the public sector down. Ask teachers how well their profession is respected now. Ask librarians, if you can find any, how little of their profession is actually left. Journalism went down the tubes years ago. And every single one of the internet providers needs to be made aware of theirs and have the unofficial social contracts renewed. Bring back a state news provider with a mandate to inform, with a network of news-gathering journalists, not just word-production lines re-writing press releases written purposefully by public relations people.

This question may actually be more important than most realise. It ties into issues around what kind of culture do we want to create, and what kind of state do we want to live in. Information and the education required to access it are intensely political issues. Make no mistake, how we view and access information determines where our culture goes - what is the first thing seized in times of war? And the current complete abrogation of responsibility by the British government and state to ensure decent responsible information services are available for its citizens will either destroy any possible form of a consensual state, built on any form of real democracy - witness the growth in regional identities, even as Britain centralises - or force it to find other more draconian or more 1984-like control mechanisms.

Gosh that was long. Sorry.

How to use 'snopes' and other fact checkers.

Snopes isn’t an unbiased source.

Applause for wrongontheinternet.

After the lat election in an interview the editor of BBC news says he gets a constant stream of letters form both right and left accusing him of bias. His conclusion was that as long as both sides were complaining, then he must be getting the balance right!

I agree with PP about critical thinking in schools. Much of our current curriculum is squashing that. Also getting kids to read things like Bad Science.

More importantly though is that the main news feeds (eg BBC) need to stop with the headlining. Any science etc report only gets shown as 2 line headline, and the subtle meaning etc is lost.
eg Bacon causes bowel cancer!!! Whereas the report says there is a 10% increase from a very tiny number to a very slightly less tiny number, but only if you eat 3 huge bacon sandwiches per day

The other thing that is frustrating is that in the interest of bias both sides are reported. So the scientific community is 99% behind climate change, but in the interest of bias, every single time it is mentioned the climate change skeptics are mentioned too. So the general public goes away with the view that the scientific community are split 50/50, which they aren't.

Finally a steady reminder/teaching /commentary that facts are actually factual and opinion is just that. example of how anecdote does not = data.
That is fighting against the whole of culture though

Critical thinking is important of course but it's a high aspiration in the current environment.

Regulation of the online world is required. Its bizarre that for years we've been developing rules about what can/can't be said on TV and in newspapers, libel/slander laws, watersheds, decency guidelines, misleading advertising and so on, but now the most influential area for most people is virtually lawless.

Stop closing libraries!

The national curriculum is not designed to produce critical thinkers, to be perfectly blunt. If there's any chance of building and maintaining a population that's capable of critically analysing text and it's sources they need to be educated to a high standard.

That means make University free again,
Change the focus of the national curriculum to include critical thinking skills (philosophy!)
Keeping libraries open so that people who don't get on with formal education have a chance to access it at a later point or to educate themselves via reading.

Libraries are staffed with information professionals whose job it is to be amazing at narrowing down the relevant truth, and helping the general public access it.

At the moment Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Support (that's you Matt Hancock) is doing nothing to stop libraries closing and even less to stop trained staff being replaced by volunteers with no relevant experience whatsoever or no staff at all.

Ah my alma mater. The commission led by my mentors etc :)

Look at snopes

If you've ever heard of Chomsky's propaganda model, you'll know there is no such thing as unbiased news

f you've ever heard of Chomsky's propaganda model, you'll know there is no such thing as unbiased news

But Chomsky is propaganda himself, so how can you ‘know’ anything from reading his one, extremely biased opinion?

Perhaps teach critical thinking skills in schools...oh no, because then pupils would start to question a lot of the very flawed information they are expected to regurgitate.

Cristal thinking skills and the ability to identify source material is key. But I'm a social media heavy environment where people rely on memes and sound bytes, critical thinking is dead in the water for millennials

But @MightyMucks isn't that the point? There is NO unbiased view. We ALL have our own filters. Often unconsciously. Bias is innate, but not always consciously so.

Ooh this is my pet subject and has been for years. The key thing to get people to question is 'how do you know?'. How would you go about finding out satisfactorily if something is true - this depends on the 'thing' e.g. if an event happened or not, if the slant put on it was accurate (e.g. 'he sneered' rather than 'he said'), whether 'x caused y' is reasonable or wildly inaccurate.

As a pp has said this is mainly a repackaging of basic science - the scientific method aims to test a hypothesis as objectively as possible.
People also need to be able to spot logical fallacies (these should all be taught in primary school), and false dichotomies, and cognitive biases so they can be avoided.

I'm not expecting everyone to become experts in statistical testing - the secondary aspect is learning how to spot a trustworthy source. E.g. climate change is incredibly complex as a science so we can be fairly sure the 99% of climate change scientists who think it's a problem probably know what they're talking about.

Resources such as 'Full Fact' and even Snopes should be second nature, even if only to spark independent research into whether something is credible.

I do despair at the most obvious hoax crap on facebook being shared without thinking - hard to see how we'll ever get people educated in this at the rate needed to keep up with the use of technology!

Odile -a more recent study showing BBC news and cutrent affairs are overwhelmingly biased towards the right: www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1389295&ved=2ahUKEwjfwOCOm5bbAhUrCcAKHYvjAroQFjAAegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw1Ot3-JSf9NM1X4R565ewEd

I strongly agree with this, and it's similar to what I was going to post.

Critical thinking is important of course but it's a high aspiration in the current environment.

Regulation of the online world is required. Its bizarre that for years we've been developing rules about what can/can't be said on TV and in newspapers, libel/slander laws, watersheds, decency guidelines, misleading advertising and so on, but now the most influential area for most people is virtually lawless.

I think one of the issues with social media, such as Twitter and Facebook is that it's not that different from gossip and obtaining information from friends and random people, but it's often presented by unregulated "news" sites as legitimate news.

I strongly disagree with this:
Teaching people not to believe mainstream media should do it.

Yes, many are highly biased, but less so that your own group of friends or unregulated propaganda sites masquerading as news sources.

I'm left wing, but often read traditionally right wing papers and find them interesting. I'd value most Telegraph stories above any left wing tabloid, tbh.

If anyone really wants to learn where some semblance of truth lies, try to read or watch from different places and make your own judgement.

Even better, go to the source of the news, listen to what people actually said or wrote. Look further than the headline, and even the text of the news or comment.

Exactly. When I used to read the Metro on the bus I would pay a game of reading the headline then trying to guess what the actual fact, quote or event was that the story was supposedly reporting. Usually buried in the last couple of paragraphs and always far less sensational or exaggerated than the headline suggested. The Mail for example had a story about a cafe closing because the smell of bacon offended Muslims. What actually happened was that the cafe just didn't stick to Council regulations about nuisance smells and installing extractor fans.

A better, general, education. I was appalled to find that children don't do history, geography and a language at GCSE any more, unless they specifically choose to - which means not doing e.g. computer science.

To evaluate information you need context. To identify bullshit, you need context.

To identify Russian bots you need grammar.

And teaching kids to identify a specious argument would help - they could start by dissecting Thought for the Day