Correspondingly, in “Do Fact Checks Matter” by Danielle Kurtzleben she establishes that Americans ignore facts and believe in falsehoods especially coming from a politicians on their side. This source agrees with both “Why We Believe Alternative Facts” By Kirsten Weir and “Two Stories, One America: How Political Narratives Shape Our Understanding of Reality” By Stephen Hawkins and Tommy Flint. All four of the authors demonstrate how people will disregard proven facts if the facts do not compliment their beliefs. Kurtzleben focuses on how fact checking is not effective in this day and age because people simply ignore facts and the backfire effect comes into play. The backfire effect is when people hear facts opposing their beliefs and instead of the fact changing their mind it actually makes them dig in their heels and defend what they believe even more. Weir informs that even the most educated people hide behind confirmation bias or as she puts it motivated reasoning. Hawkins and Flint show that people ignore facts just to go along with their ideologies instead of keeping their personal …show more content…
identities. The authors agree that most of humankind has a flaw of ignoring facts unless it benefits them, their beliefs or their ideology. Fact Checking and the War Against Falsehoods: In “Do Fact Checks Really Matter” By Danielle Kurtzleben she declares that fact checking has not failed, but it is not that effective either.
Specifically, she concentrates on the politics and the most recent presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Kurtzleben claims that politicians will continue to verbalizing falsehoods as long as the people keep believing them. This is why fact checking is important. One of the reasons fact checking is not effective is because of the backfire effect. When people hear facts that do not agree with their beliefs they simply dig their heels in and believe in their opinion even more than before. She also reiterates that the fact checking only works in a certain few cases but that does not mean it is failing. One example of fact checking being successful is when it helps push politicians into the right, truthful,
direction. Sometimes fact checking will scare politicians into telling the truth more. This is proven in a study done by Brendan Nyhan from Dartmouth college and Jason Reifler from the University of Exeter. In their study they sent out warning letters to politicians, these letters claimed that politicians who lie and get caught in the lie put their careers at risk. The politicians who received the letters were less likely to spread falsehoods and also received higher ratings from fact checkers. Some people might believe in something called “fake news”. They just assume that if facts are against them then the facts are simply fake news. Kurtzleben declared that fact checking is a way to stop this endless spiral. If we find reputable fact checking and news sources then fake news black hole will be demolished.
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
Judith Viorst is an American journalist. Her essay “The Truth about Lying”, printed in Buscemi and Smith’s 75 Readings: An Anthology. In this essay, Viorst examines social, protective, peace-keeping and trust-keeping lies but doesn’t include lies of influence.
... in question are complex,” and “either side of these debates are often well argued” (378). He proposes that we seek understanding from both sides of the aisle, so that way we may have opinions substantiated by fact. As Zinser puts it, “[a]n informed public is the grease that keeps democracy running properly” (364). Democracy is contingent upon the citizens of America being thoroughly informed about important issues and using that information when it is time to make a decision at the voting booth. The media is rampant with false information, radical ideologies, and skewed perspectives that influence our decisions. Therefore, as Americans it is important that we actively seek the information in order to form our own opinions because passive absorption without scrutiny leaves us vulnerable to strong, influential ideologies that may not represent our beliefs and values.
In “The Truth about Lying” Judith Viorst explains the four different kinds of lying. She categorizes lies as social lies, peace-keeping lies, protective lies, and trust-keeping lies. Social lies are lies that are “acceptable and necessary”, they are the little white lies most people use all the time. Peace keeping lies are told when the liar is trying to protect themselves from getting in trouble or causing any conflict. The protective lies are far more serious, are often told because of fear that the truth would be “too damaging” for the person being lied to. Lastly, there are the trust keeping lies, which are lies in which the liar is lying for a friend in order to keep a promise. Viorst finds that most of these lies, while some are more acceptable than others, are necessary and she can understand them.
Granted, in the present day world, information is easily available to anyone who wants it. Smart phones and computers are able to search through infinite sources to find what they are programed to do. Information is available at people’s fingertips to know the latest news in the world. Although information can be retrieved quickly and plentifully by technology, this information is not always accurate. Technology is unable to be programmed to find truthful sources, or find facts that have any truth at all. Technology looks for any and all information that is
As people look back at history they will see that little posts on Facebook and Twitter can be all lies. It’s not hard to make a post, all you have to do is create something that will draw people's attention. Even if you have to smudge the truth a little. When people find something on the internet they automatically think that it’s true, but in reality news stations sometimes have to “spice” up stories to make people watch their station. This is how the truth is sometimes expendable because the little change of words in a quote could change how people view the story. This is why people need to check who they are watching and shouldn’t take every word said is true unless heard by multiple reliable sources. As we as human beings move on, people need to remember that everything on the internet, new, and social media is true. If you want to know if the piece of information is true look it up, if it is there should be a couple reliable sources that have almost identical information. If you can’t find the same information then it is obviously fake. To help create a better democracy always remember to double check your sources and always check the world around you, because you never know what is true or
“Artists use lies to tell the truth” (V for Vendetta). This passage can be related to all storytelling, whether it is in movies, poems or novels- authors and creators of such a story use certain lies to tell the truth. No matter how great the truth my sound to one person, that same story could be irrelevant to others, making it not enjoyable to watch or read. When a reader picks up a book, does the story give a vague description of what occurred? Or does the author give minute details on every page? We read books and marvel over movies to get away from reality; why? Because reality expresses the truth bluntly and with no sense of detail, while fiction turns reality and the truth into poetry.
There are always consequences for lying, whether it happens immediate or nebulous, a punishment will occur. Some lies cause other people to hurt that have nothing to do with the situation but still get punished. For example, someone stealing an answer key to an important test in class will make the class suffer by taking a much harder test. Another example is a basketball team having to run for a teammate’s lies. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible is based on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and it proves this exact point.
Debunkingmadelaeffect.com states “The tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses.”
“Ignorance of facts” simply means that the education is there but this generation just chooses not to use it. According to one of my sources, 56 percent of 18-to 29-year-olds have low knowledge levels while only 22 percent of 50-to 64-year-olds did. This shows that today’s age knows less than half of what previous generations know. With this much access to education, technology, books and documents that this generation has, the percentile should be much lower than that. In this day and age, people are more focused on social media sites than getting their head in the books. People would rather see false accusations and false information on websites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so forth instead of picking up a newspaper and reading what truly occurred. The world we live in today is nothing compared to past generations. There is so much knowledge in our elders that has failed to be passed on the the youth, it’s nonsensical. Knowledge is power and if we want to help the next generations become more intelligent, we need a great deal of power.
This essay focuses on how spin doctoring became a phenomenon among public relations, journalists, politician and even a massive campaign. This essay considers the tool used by the spin doctoring team to engage and steer public opinion. Spin team must have a strategy in using each tool and we will discuss how this strategy affected how well the result will be. Overall, this essay has been written to show two spin teams use different spin tools in order to change public’s perspectives. The brief explanation shows how well the strategy they use to the success of the campaign and how it can be unsuccessful.
They never pause for just two seconds to think about the possible consequences of their actions. Back to when America found out that Iraq had weapons of mass descriptions people’s first reaction was to attack. This is a do first, think second way. Nobody ever wanted further proof. Neither did the “the French medical team [who] felt vindicated”(par 2) even after “a nurse reported that one morning she found him eating the flowers in his room”(par 1) who saw some signs of negative affects, but failed to pay attention given the better positive effects. People who don’t think things through isn’t just evidence in the average person, but in the more important government officials like the president of the United States. We were quick to start discussion on possible war as an option for this bad proof that Iraq has nukes. Martel points out instances of the government failing to look into the future when “regulatory approval came swiftly”(par 4) for the operation. This ties back to the idea that lack of judgement by people leads to bad results in our government. The idea of fads start to have effects as
People today are willing to do anything to avoid facing the truth, and are willing to go to extreme lengths to silence those who encourage them to do just that. A great example in today’s society would be Donald Trump. He faces an astronomical amount ridicule each day because he tells people the truth about the actions of the government and refuses to compromise his beliefs to please others. It is hard for people to accept and understand something that challenges their beliefs. In fact, a multitude of people today would rather be told a reassuring lie than an inconvenient truth. This makes it easy for the government to keep feeding the people lies with very little opposition. Until people begin to analyze these lies in an attempt to discern the truth, they will remain as gullible and naïve as the prisoners chained in the cave and will forever remain at the mercy of their
What exactly is truth? What is true? These questions are two completely different questions. In order to answer what is true, you must first determine what truth actually is. If we look in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, we see the definition that says “The things that are true”. This is not what we are looking for in a definition of this word, but really there is no defining line between what is true, and what is not.
The introduction of the internet to modern society has brought about a new age of information relation. Since there is no longer a need to wait until the next print day, news from all over the world is available at a person’s fingertips within hours or even minutes of the event. With this advent of such easily accessible information, new problems for the news media have also arisen. Aside from potentially losing good economic standing because newspapers are no longer being purchased in the quantities they used to be, the credibility of the information itself is also put into question. No one would argue that credibility of news sources is unimportant, but there is a discrepancy in what takes precedence; economy and speed or getting the information out correctly at the first publishing by taking the time to make sure all facts are checked. The importance of having a system of checks on all information submitted is paramount. People trust what they read and believe it to be so without always questioning. If all information were to not be checked thoroughly, there would be instances where people read an article only for information included to be wrong and they go on believing such information. This can be very dangerous as misinformed people make misinformed decisions. With an increase in errors being made by citizen bloggers and even major publications, many are worried that journalistic ethics and credibility in the news media are being sacrificed in order to maintain swiftness in the news circuit and to retain personal profits. Though getting information to the masses quickly is a major part of the media’s importance, this should not mean that the credibility of that information being presented should be sacrificed for it...