Ten Ways to Spot Fake News: Scott Adams
Trump was clearly in league with the Russians — there’s a laundry list of evidence to show it. Nancy Pelosi is an alcoholic who slurs and stumbles her way through speeches — there are videos to show it.
Fake news may not be anything new, but has it ever been this convincingly presented, this pervasive and this often repeated?
To head off being fooled, hoaxed or tricked by the fakery, here are ten tips I've learned from Scott Adams, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and creator of the Dilbert cartoon series, that will help you avoid being manipulated by news media outlets that no longer pretend to objectively report the facts.
1. Be wary of attention-grabbing provocative news
If you read something that has you saying, “Oh my God! Did that really happen?” There is a good chance it didn’t — or at least not as first presented. The two examples that start off this article are good illustrations. So the next time you are presented with a, “I don’t believe it” new flash, best trust your instincts and wait for the uproar to quieten down and for the context to broaden.
2. Question news reported from one side of the media divide only
Should Fox News and Breitbart headline breaking news that is all but ignored by CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times — or vice versa — then wait till the news has properly broken before accepting it.
Likewise, if both sides report the same breaking news, then chances are it’s true. But not always. Don’t forget the Covington Kids debacle that took in everyone.
3. Pundit predictions should give pause aplenty
Hillary was going to win the presidency in a landslide because Trump had ZERO chance, right? Too many such predictions are driven by wishful thinking, emotion or confirmation bias.
Future AI prognosticators aside, no human pundit brave or foolish enough to predict something of import is unaffected by these psychological frailties. That said, one of the least prone is Scott Adams, who predicted early in 2016 that Trump would win the presidency. And should you need reminding, Adams is the guy who came up with these ways of delineating fake news.
4. Dismiss mindreading consultants who state what someone is thinking
Not even magicians can read minds. When political commentators resort to mindreading and proffer it as fact, they are guessing what their subject is thinking. Like chimps depicted in the infinite monkey theorem, the commentators may strike lucky once in a blue moon, but best treat what they say today as loony talk.
5. Don’t get taken in by fake science
Earlier this year, I wrote an article on Japan’s efforts to launch flying cars in the next few years. After the story was published, I got an email from one of the government officials quoted praising me for “getting the facts right,” the implication being that it did not often happen.
A 2017 PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science journal) analysis of biomedical research covered by newspapers found almost half the studies could not be replicated and were often contradicted by later studies. Yet despite often dramatizing these initial studies, the writers rarely followed up and reported the later findings.
6. Beware the fine art of framing facts
The media today is not the media of pre-Internet days. News outlets are now driven by and depend on the number of clicks they can generate, for which they then charge advertisers accordingly.
Clickbait headlines and facts framed in a way to appeal to the cognitive biases of a particular TV network’s audience or a newspaper’s readership keep these consumers of news tuning in and reading. Hence, the news cycle has been transmogrified into a news circle that is mutually-sustaining.
7. Consider news based on anonymous sources to be manufactured by anonymous writers
Given the overwhelming economic imperative to appeal to our cognitive biases when it comes to delivering hard news, imagine what the media can do with anonymous sources when there is no comeback for the writer or the quoted.
So ask yourself the following. Is the journalist quoting the source correctly and without bias? Is the full quote given (see №8)? Could the source have an agenda? Does the source really remember what happened accurately? Is full context provided by the journalist? Has the journalist or source succumbed to manipulative framing? Is the source real?
8. Quotes in news can be distorted just like every other content component.
To illustrate, Adams shows how a Trump quote of two years ago was maliciously edited and then repeated so often it is still widely believed today. The edited Trump quote that follows came after opposing marchers clashed violently in Charlottesville, W. Virginia in May 2017. Note that non-extremist supporters both pro and against Confederate statues — the ostensible reason for the demonstrations — were also in attendance. Trump refers to these latter groups in his answers to a journalist’s question.
TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were fine people on both sides.
This partial quote resulted in the Charlottesville Fine People Hoax that has Trump appearing to say the neo-Nazi marchers also included some “fine people,” as did those who opposed them.
It was masterful misdirection by mischief-makers. And it was immediately picked up by the TV talking heads and news commentators and repeated so often it’s become a “fact” for many people.
Yet after a reporter’s follow-up question on the statue issue, which Trump answers, the president then went on to clarify his earlier “fine people” point:
“…and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats — you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.”
Check all this for yourself. Adams provides the full quotes here.
9. A laundry list of possibilities does not a telling fact make
Adams used reporting during the Mueller investigation into Russian presidential election interference to illustrate the laundry list concept. During the two-year investigation, Trump was tried and convicted by many in the anti-Trump media based on an accumulation of apparently relevant reasons.
These included his numerous and complex business dealings in Russia, his relationships with those indicted by the Special Counsel, his firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the infamous Steele dossier.
The mass of so much “evidence” overwhelming showed Trump was guilty of conspiring with the Russian and would be forced out of office.
Yet the Special Counsel came to no such conclusion, despite an exhaustive investigation over two years.
For Adams, the longer the laundry list, the less it is convincing, for it shows the list compiler is striving to substitute possibilities for the missing telling fact.
10. As with quotes, videos can be edited to misdirect and deceive
We’ve known for a long time how photographs can be altered to tell a new story. It used to be harder to do this with video. That is no longer the case. As the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows: just by slowing down the video to 75% speed made her sound drunk.
Check it out for yourself. The Washington Post provides the verified and altered Nancy Pelosi videos here.
The edited Covington Kids video is another example. Consequently, video can no longer be trusted any more than other components (see Nos. 1–9) that make up today's news.
To find out more about Scott Adams, check out his daily live streaming on Periscope. Or watch it later on YouTube
