As is only appropriate, the day after April Fools Day is now International Fact-Checking Day, an observance that began last year. Someone has to be there to confirm that Burger King is not offering a Chocolate Whopper (dang it!), and that Lego is not coming out with a vacuum designed to pick up those plastic bricks and sort them by size and color (sorry, parents).
But are those of us who believe people should verify stories before passing them on just fools?
Sometimes it seems we might be, but I'll stick with my hope that we're not. Some days, though, it's pretty hard going. With rampant tribalism and confirmation bias all around us, it can feel like swimming in molasses. And I can't swim, so ...
Though there are plenty of people who want facts no matter their inconvenience to this political party or that one, there are also too many who want only what fits in their world-view. The blinders come on the moment something that might challenge their views appears.
A well-researched and sourced story may just fall by the wayside because it came from somewhere some believe to be a biased source. Yes, there are biased sources out there on all parts of the political spectrum, and many put out cherry-picked stories that fall apart at the slightest touch. Yet they tend to be the ones those with blinders on seem to trust the most because they confirm what they already believe.
The 2016 election certainly didn't help matters, especially when a charismatic campaigner who told followers exactly what they wanted to hear also told them that news that was less than glowing about him was fake. Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty wrote on Politico: "To some conservatives, Trump's surprise win ... simply bore out what they had suspected, that the Democrat-infested press was knowingly in the tank for Clinton all along. The media, in this view, was guilty not just of confirmation bias but of complicity. But the knowing-bias charge never added up: No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story, and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style. Practically speaking, you're not pushing Clinton to victory if you're pantsing her and her party to voters almost daily."
Just like the traditional media did not ignore the rumors about Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign. But you'll never convince some people of that. Or that Fox News wasn't covering it from the first whisper even though it didn't begin airing until October 1996.
And dang it, I can't get that pantsing image out of my head.
Some have attributed the perceived slant of news coverage to the percentage of media employees who identify as Republican or Democrat, and that the dearth of self-identified Republicans proves that the media is liberal. But not everybody identifies with a party (I certainly don't), and at newspapers, the layers of editors between reporters and the readers generally keep the overall tone (excepting the opinion section), if not nonpartisan, more toward the center. That's in danger, though, as newspaper jobs are cut.
The decline in journalism jobs points to another theory of why audiences have sensed bias in reporting, according to Shafer and Doherty. More of the national jobs, both in traditional and online media, are in the major cities and along the coasts than in "flyover country," primarily because that's where the power brokers they cover are. Local newspapers are more wedded to their territories, but as those papers close, we'll see even more nationalization of our politics. The more there is of that, the more people will withdraw into their little echo chambers.
In the blinders many willingly put on to appease their confirmation bias, I see a little bit of a toddler digging in when caught in a lie. It doesn't matter what the truth is if it doesn't fit what you believe; if someone tries to tell you your information is wrong, you'll become even more determined that it's correct.
Plus, the other side is full of doodyheads.
A University of Winnipeg study asked 200 participants to read opinion they agreed with for a chance to win $7 in a raffle pool, or $10 if they read something with which they disagreed. Sixty-three percent of those participating chose the $7 option, suggesting that it's unpleasant to deal with opposition views. Jeremy Frimer, who led the study, told Vox: "They don't know what's going on the other side, and they don't want to know." One of the study's co-authors, Matt Motyl, called this "motivated ignorance."
"We tend to view the other side as immoral, or evil, or crazy," Motyl said. "And when we do that, it doesn't make sense to say, 'I want to understand immorality, or a crazy person's perspective, or an ignorant perspective.'"
But maybe we should ... or at least try. Just because our neighbor has a different perspective doesn't mean he's wrong (and it is possible to be biased and correct). Listen. Seek out the facts. Be open-minded.
And for God's sake, take off those blinders. They make you look ridiculous.
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at blooper@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 04/04/2018