Bob as“ The Cat in the Hat” during a literacy festival at the Village Green, sponsored by the Brown County Literacy Coalition. photo by Chris Gustin
makes them uncomfortable or that doesn’ t conform with their preconceived notions( or that of their supporters).
While some types of fake news merely make people who believe it look silly, other types can have serious consequences, such as when people spread false information about polling places, terrorist attacks, or the effectiveness of vaccines.
Gustin said the more he researched the topic, the more he came to understand the nuances and extent of the problem.
“ There’ s fake news on the left. There’ s fake news on the right. There’ s fake news in the center,” he said.
To home in on that point, Gustin in his presentation uses a chart from Ad Fontes Media, which scores news sources on bias and accuracy.“ Media such as The New York Times might be high on reliability but have a left wing bias. And media such as The Wall Street Journal may be high on reliability but have a right-wing bias. And( podcaster) Joe Rogan might be right in the center for political bias, but way down at the bottom in terms of reliability.
Gustin said he most trusts the Associated Press, which ranks high on accuracy and low on bias.
“ I also contend that your local daily newspaper is one of the best sources of unbiased news reporting. And our example here in Brown County of the Brown County Democrat is a case in point. That newspaper has been the best or nearly the best weekly newspaper in Indiana for over a decade, as determined by the Hoosier State Press Association.”
“ But local newspapers are struggling,” he said.“ They’ re struggling financially. They’ re struggling circulation-wise. And as their financial struggles continue, staffing is cut. And as staffing is cut, it becomes harder to produce the same newspaper … with fewer people. And so that makes newspapers even more important now than they have been because of all the other sources of information and primarily the Internet where basically anybody can post anything they want, without any regard to the truth. So it becomes a very confusing landscape.”
The explosion of electronic media and the ease with which people can put information online also has fractured every American’ s perception of reality, in part because people can choose a news slant that fits their own biases.
Gustin urges people to consume their news from multiple sources and to be aware of those sources’
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