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?
The quickest and easiest version I have for fact checking is to check the source of the story, usually that’s in article. Check the ownership of the company, who owns it and what’s their agenda, that usually leads to who is their audience, who are they writing for and why. Is it to sell ads or actually pass on info. Also, if some thing is too goo to be true, it usually is but do the fact checking to confirm.
I am afraid Fox doesn’t provide with the sources