I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
We are all prone to biases established over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Even if you’re aware of all of them and vigilant you’re going to fall for them sometimes.
No source lacks bias, but you’re not trying to find the least biased source. Instead use multiple sources where you can identify the general biases a source supports. Rotate multiple sources and reference the same stories and events from multiple agencies knowing which biases they generally push to get a better overall model of what is actually going on and why. Fox, Al Jazeera, RT, BBC, CNN, PBS, Reuters, France 24, AP, common dreams, democracy now, etc. include at least 1-2 geographically local sources.
My preferred method is rss feeds so I can aggregate many sources into one place. Also avoiding articles that are just person X says Y, focus on actions and events instead of people using journalism for PR like politicians and oligarchs.