Quick Lesson on Media Literacy

A brief exploration of obvious but overlooked principles. Reading terrible news outlets can be highly instructive from the standpoint of media literacy. I agree with Scott Alexander that the media rarely if ever outright lies when reporting stories. That’s why you need to be much more scrutinizing and vigilant in order to avoid getting misinformed.

Here’s an example from a recent Al-Jazeera story. I try to simulate the perspective of someone reading this article with little to no prior knowledge about the events in question.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the United States- and Israel-backed organisation established to supplant the aid work of the United Nations,

All of this is factually accurate! And yet, it’s odd that the most important thing they thought worth mentioning about GHF is that it is “backed” by the US and Israel. I can glean that it means GHF is receiving some sort of support and/or coordinating with the US and Israel, but why is this important for me to know? What information does this fact impart?

The only explanation I can think of is that the negative opinion one would assume Al-Jazeera readers to have about US and Israel would hopefully be conveyed onto GHF as well.

…has accused Hamas fighters of killing eight of its staff and wounding multiple others in an attack on a bus en route to a food distribution centre.

Note the above construct, and compare it to a parallel sentence further down:

On Wednesday, 57 people were killed and more than 363 injured as they tried to access aid at the sites, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said.¹

Both sentences are identical insofar as they present information, and then cite the source of said information. Typical journalistic conventions.

And yet there’s a very obvious difference between “he said she slapped him” versus “she slapped him, he said”. The first prioritizes the accusation, while the latter prioritizes the conduct, even though in reality both claims are accusations. But those not paying close attention might inadvertently dismiss the first as hearsay and accept the second as factual. Sneaky.

Moving on back to the GHF:

The GHF, which is led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been mired in controversy since beginning operations on May 27.

Again, all of the above is factually accurate! Having no idea who Johnnie Moore is, it isn’t explained why the most important things they thought worth mentioning is his religion or what political campaign he was involved in 8 years ago. Why is any of that relevant? It would have been more interesting and directly relevant to know if Moore had any prior experience in humanitarian aid distribution (maybe he has none!) but whoever wrote this didn’t agree.

Similarly, the intent again appears to take negative opprobrium about evangelical Christians and Trump and impose it as a transitive association upon Moore as well.

But whatever, they do say the GHF is “mired in controversy”, maybe they explain that!

The UN and aid groups have boycotted the foundation over concerns that it does not meet basic humanitarian standards and is not independent of Israel.

…That’s literally their only attempt to explain this supposed “controversy”. Not meeting basic humanitarian standards sounds bad, but which standards are we talking about exactly and how are they not being met? Some of the ways I would assume humanitarian aid could fall short would be if there was insufficient quantities, or if it didn’t meet basic nutritional standards, or if it was spoiled. Do any of those apply here? No clue.

I have no idea what to make of the point that GHF is not independent of Israel. Why is that a problem exactly? Perhaps I’m advertising my naivety, but I can’t think of a reason why an aid recipient would or should care about the “independence” of the organization handing them desperately needed food. With no other information to go off, I’m left speculating for possible explanations

That entire sentence contains no meaningful concrete information, but yet again it makes an admirable effort at imparting vaguely negative connotations. GHF is not meeting standards (bad!) and also Israel (bad!!).

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Misleading reporting is obviously not unique to Al-Jazeera, and I’m explicitly not telling you that you should dismiss everything Al-Jazeera reports on. The problem I’m describing is broader and much more prevalent.

One of the most tedious forms of sophistry I regularly encounter is reflexively dismissing any inconvenient claim whenever the claim is reported by a disfavored media outfit. I never do this, and you shouldn’t either. Even if you have a very good reasons to distrust said media outfit, you should nevertheless endeavor to be precise with your scalpel.

If you’re skeptical about something, be specific about why. If you encounter that same reason elsewhere, pay attention to whether it engenders the same level of skepticism as before. If not, it’s a good indication that you’re using motivated reasoning to artificially boost what you want to be true rather than what is true.

That’s why reading newspapers on topics you know they’re going to be atrocious at is such good practice. If you know that Al-Jazeera will be a shitshow on anything adjacent Israel, then at least you’re primed to pay close attention to how. After all, I didn’t uncover a single lie in that Al-Jazeera article, and their sourcing is remarkably transparent. It’s like taking apart a toy to see how it works underneath. Once you understand the mechanism of action, you’re better equipped to spot it again out in the wild — even when it flatters you into ignoring it.

Despite my litany of criticisms against the traditional press in general, their practices are still miles ahead what the corps of new media personalities in the business of serving confirmation slop do to their eager audiences. These people literally make shit up out of nothing. Some of them even used their experience to bootstrap themselves into official government positions. It’s crazy!

Me telling you to “read the news a bit closer” assumes you already read some news. That alone is miles ahead anyone who passively absorbs headlines and tweets through osmosis. I wish I had better advice for helping the millions who are wallowing in this epistemic quagmire.

In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to hold ourselves to a perpetually higher standard.

1. The article never prefixes the Gaza Ministry of Health as “Hamas-backed” but that’s a well-known cliche in media reporting by now.