No Texts, Only Readers: You are the News
It’s always been a big problem for anyone who takes a minute to reflect on it: where do I find reliable information? How do I know the sources I’m using are credible? It’s an even more urgent set of questions now, with endless spin and manipulation of information in the news, and the aggressive promotion of deliberate misinformation to support various agendas. During the global pandemic, especially, it feels urgent to find the best, most accurate and reliable, up-to-date information, since it could have life or death consequences.
For example, all of the weird, absolutely unsupported, yet endlessly propagated and pernicious flat-out bullshit about the supposedly harmful health effects of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19. You’ve seen, or maybe you believe, that masks “make you re-breathe your own germs,” “cause oxygen deprivation,” or “don’t even work,” with these weird claims popping up on social media (there’s always that *one guy* in your friend’s comment thread….), in spite of a great many reliable, convincing, expert, science-based and common sense sources that clearly refute each of those claims, and show them to be absurd.
There’s no easy answer to the questions related to which sources to trust, which sources are reliable most of the time, how to spot biased sources, and how to fact check anything that seems off to you. I do go to Snopes sometimes (which has been oddly discredited in an ad hominem way, especially by people who are more conservative politically, and yet most Snopes articles do include actual citations and a lot of evidence for their analysis), Fact Check, Politifact, FAIR, etc. There are ways to delve and do legit fact checking. Many in the “post fact” world of total bullshit, who would like to believe whatever they want and feel they are “entitled to their opinion,” also claim that there is no reliable way to fact check, but that is usually merely a fairly transparent dodge and an irresponsible, willful denial. Again, it is mostly more conservative people who push back against facts, because, currently, there are a great many well-supported facts that undermine conservative ideology (regarding, for example, climate change, or racism, or vaccines, or face masks, or gender, or, well, it’s a long, long list)
It’s especially amusing and/or frustrating when someone claims an absolutely and egregiously unhinged something or other as “fact” (for example, that Bill Gates manufactured COVID-19 so he could force vaccinate the world in order to implant a microchip in every member of the human race). On the face of it, you’d think it would be enough just to reply: “That’s some batshit nonsense that is obviously false, Chad.” Sadly, that often has no effect on the true believer. Of course, neither does presenting reliable facts. I remain in such “conversations” only long enough to provide resources for the unconvinced bystander who might be reading the thread. The cult-like, ardent, poisoned conspiracy believing person is probably beyond epistemological hope.
The key to developing fact-based savvy is to flip the script. Like a good reader-response advocate, I believe that the reader is far more important than the source. Literary theorist Stanley Fish famously wrote, “there are no texts, only readers.” This might sound like ridiculous anarchic subjectivism, but it is also refreshing, and excellent…news. I think skeptical reading, critical thinking, and staying open minded with a full heart and intuition leads to the best, most useful, most accurate and relevant world view. This goes along with the good Bayesian willingness to change one’s mind when presented with convincing new evidence. In this way, I am engaging with the world creatively, and probably have a much stronger chance of avoiding being manipulated, used, exploited, or caught in the cheap symbolism, easy conclusions, algorithms and distortions that are driving so much discourse these days.
I do not hold with those who reject all “mainstream media” as unreliable, but I also try to develop knowledge of sources, so that I understand exactly what size grain of salt to employ while reading. I try to avoid simply supporting what I already think is true and I work on avoiding cherry picking sources to find support for my beliefs. I rely on fact checking sites or claims sometimes, especially when really weird claims are being made. Some really weird claims end up being true, lo and behold. But at least I got further down the line of having a reliable place to stand, belief-wise.
I especially try to avoid conspiracy thinking at all times. I believe the conspiracy mindset simply by default is one of the most dangerous, toxic, poisonous, and intellectually barren manipulative tools being used at this time by many people. I feel it is a type of mental and intellectual illness. I know from history, of course, that nefarious things do indeed get orchestrated by evil cabals behind the scenes, but I do not believe I can gain access to those plots and horrors via any available sources that are contemporaneous with those plots. All of the awful and toxic channels for supposed current, ongoing and contemporary conspiracies are simply exploiting and profiting off of gullible, already fearful and paranoid personalities who like to think they have special access to secret information. I have seen many otherwise wonderful souls be literally destroyed by that poison.
In short, I believe it is of the utmost importance how we research and read, and that we as readers are much more important than our sources, most of the time. We make the news, and we are the creators of our own beliefs. We choose what to post and re-post on Facebook and elsewhere. We choose how we go in search of information and how we vet our sources. We are the agents, and we make the world through our choices and how we evaluate those choices, and, especially, how we communicate them. This is why I advocate so strongly for the Bayesian value of remaining open to new evidence. We are not simply consumers, or reporters. We are the actual builders of the world, by what we choose to accept, believe, communicate to others, and promote as truth.
The addiction to being right, and knowing we are right, and thereby, the addiction to poisonous, manipulative, propaganda-driven, biased, highly politicized and agenda-driven sources, such as Fox News and MSNBC, is probably the greatest danger our species faces, currently. Conspiracy thinking is poison, spin is poison, manipulation is cult-like and lobotomizing. We are the agents in this process, and we have the power, not our sources. So, instead of lamenting the lack of reliable news, or clinging ardently to one or two biased and toxic sources, or jumping to believe some fanatical, deluded, power hungry, manipulative whacko on YouTube who is obviously lying, remember that you are a lot more powerful than that.
