Poop Detectors

How do you know the media (or anyone) tells you the truth? OK, how can you even be sure they are lying? While you may never know for sure, if you use that mass of tissue that sits atop your shoulders, you've got a chance to make some pretty good judgments about what to believe.

As you read or watch a news story, ask questions. Is the author reporting something he or she actually observed with his or her own senses? What evidence did the reporter offer to convince you of the "facts"? Were the words chosen to describe the facts precise and clear, or do you still have questions? And which elements of the story are interpretations or inferences of the known details?

If something is observed directly, the reporter can describe how it looks, smells, feels, tastes, or sounds. The facts will be concrete and clear. For example, just a moment ago, I returned to my computer and the folks in the office were "reporting" about some police activity they had just observed. They reported that they saw the street below blocked off by numerous cars, with marked and unmarked police cars. They heard one officer demand that a gray and red cab stop and that the occupants get out of the car with their hands showing. Somewhere between 10 and 15 people surrounded the cab with guns and rifles drawn and continued demands that both the driver and passenger get out of the car. These were all observations that my friends made with their own eyes. We knew we could trust these facts. Several people observing the same events and they corroborated one another's observations.

Still, the words my friends used were not always precise. They referred to everyone with guns as cops yet we only know who the uniformed officers were. We reasonably inferred that the others gun-toting participants in the scene were some kind of cop, though they might not have been Seattle Police officers.

The kinds of questions suggested above are useful tools for critically examining the basic facts of a story, but there are problems of critical thinking that must be considered as well. What are the beliefs that influence what is reported? What has the reporter assumed? Has the reporter or those quoted in the story judged the value or worth of any elements of the story? What is the perspective of the reporter as well as those cited in the story?

In the example above, my friends drifted far from the verifiable facts in their description of the excitement below our window. They assumed it was a drug bust and that the plain clothed officials were either undercover cops or DEA. When they reported a brown sack being taken by a uniformed officer from the back seat of the cab, they drew the conclusion that it was a sack of money rather than the cab driver's lunch. Their opinions about what was going on definitely colored their ability to observe and they all judged the cops as being good guys and the two people in the cab as bad. When the cab driver returned, now uncuffed and unescorted, to drive his cab away after his passenger had been taken from the scene, the team of office "reporters" made the bold statement that "he must have been undercover."

From the viewpoint of those in the office, police activity of this type is appropriate (and exciting) because drug dealers (oh yeah?) are bad. This viewpoint meant that had they made no observations about whether there were any children or other bystanders at risk with 10-15 guns and rifles drawn. Across the street from us is an elementary school with a playfield just around the corner.

If this incident had been reported in the media, the reporter would have gathered information from others than my co-workers and some of our conclusions could have been verified or debunked. Even so, what the reporter might choose to relate would depend greatly on the elements mentioned already. It would depend on what the reporter could verify as fact or had directly observed. Where no facts exist, the reporter would no doubt present conclusions based on interpretations of the facts and the precision of the reporter's words would affect what we could know. As the reader or viewer of such a report, we would apply our critical minds to what is presented and try to decide for ourselves what is true and real.

In addition to trying to verify what's fact and what's opinion, an important part of thinking critically about news stories is trying to identify the biases both in the story and that we bring ourselves. This is where trying to understand the perspective or broad viewpoint of the author and those described in the report can help. Each of us bases our final conclusions on our own experiences and our own perspectives. The value systems of all those presented in an report as well as our own influence what we ultimately consider truth. Remembering this can be helpful both when reading articles in the mainstream media and in the alternative media where some of us might tend to drop our critical filters.

Whether analyzing an article on the City Council races here in Eat the State! or in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, remember that only you can decide what you believe. The tools of critical thinking are aids in making those judgments.