How to evaluate news of the shooting
How to evaluate news of the shooting
On trying to stay informed about an assassination attempt.
The image below gives a tiny example of something to watch for. In it, someone who is a Reuters reporter corrects the claim made by a non-Reuters reporter.
We all know by now to watch for this kind of thing but it helps to be reminded. When you hear something startling, pause.
It’s just as useful to watch the claims of people who are who they say they are. Is their statement true? Here are a few questions that occur to me when I read or see anything.
If someone makes a claim about what did happen, ask how they would know. Are they part of a news organization with reporters, editors and standards? It helps if they are, though I don’t automatically assume the news organization is always right or someone else is always wrong.
No matter who they are, do they show their source and their work? If not, they are not persuasive to me and I will wait for better information.
Do they offer an elaborate conspiracy theory involving unnamed actors and dark forces? This isn’t helpful.
Do they push a narrative based on someone’s supposed motivations that they can’t know? That’s a tell.
If someone makes a claim about what could happen, their claim is not actionable. Anything could happen, in theory.
If someone makes a claim about what will happen, they risk their credibility with me. Nobody has a reliable source in the future. Nobody can know what else will happen or what the next few months may be like. We are wise to prepare for different eventualities. And also not to assume anything. Think of how much has happened in the past month.
Above all, it helps to keep our wits about us and have some faith and confidence in our fellow citizens.
Thanks. This is a public service.
I absolutely agree. Here’s another one to dig into, from another perspective - this “sound bite” from JD Vance has been sent to me from many with the header “What’s Not to Like?”
When you listen carefully, which I hope all open minds will, there will be much to ponder and be concerned about:
https://x.com/i/status/1813032966467330404
THIS IS THE FULL TEXT
“I think we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in a country they call their own to raise a family in dignity
on a single middle class job. It is a simple vision. If you work hard and play by the rules you should be able to live a good life in this country that is your own that was built by your grandparents and parents and will be inherited by your children. It is of course more complicated in some ways than it sounds. I think it requires that we respect our history in order to give that to people so that people are anchored in the traditions of this country, so that they can teach their children those traditions, and so they can pass on the feeling of rootedness in their own community. That is, of course, why we worry about the assault on our history in our schools. I think it requires that we give our children and ourselves the right to speak openly and the right to participate meaningfully in this democratic society of ours. That is why we worry so much about censorship whether it comes from the government or from the big corporations. I think that it requires that we live and have work that has dignity and is meaningful. That is why we worry about our trade and economic policies, so that the people who work hard and actually do play by the rules will have good jobs there to employ them. That is why we worry about our foreign policies so that we don’t send people to wars that have no connection to our national interests and end up depleting our country of its most useful resource the young men and women who fight for our military. All of these things, all of the battles we fight, as complicated as they are, affect and implicate this question of whether we are enabling the people, the citizens of this country, to live a good life in their own nation.”