When you read the news, don’t see the article you are reading in isolation. Try to see it in the context that produced it to draw understanding of our world from it.
It is the simpliest answer. Totally correct, but I hoped for more, when clicking title.
It is not enough to read news media to get the context, allowing to judge reliability of news. I’d propose to read some books, to take a bigger picture, to grasp historical process which we are part of. To grasp some idea of metaphysics of human history. I couldn’t explain what it is, because it is too complex and difficult to explain, it seems like my neural networks have learnt some generalizations from a very wide context, but how it often happens with neural networks no one could explain how they work. It gives ideas of what is possible and what is not, what is probable and what isn’t.
We could move on level lower and search article for signs of bias. If we knew bias, we could undo it. The good example of the most blatant signs s the journalistic art of Rita Skeeter in Rowling’s Potter. Speaking of which Rowling failed to show how to work with such a journalism, her heroes either ignored Rita or (like Harry in the last book) felt pain from inability to separate lies from facts. It is possible to extract facts from Skeeter’s articles, to throw away everything else, and to see a picture which is as real as it is possible. But Potter dived into a reality pictured by Skeeter and then painfully tried to resurface. It was a mistake from the beginning (though understandable, Potter was 17 at that moment, and one of his hiddens powers to fight Voldemort was his emotionality).
To measure bias we could evaluate not just the single article, but a lot of articles of the author of the article, or from the same publisher. To do it I systematically read news from several resources. Even when I cannot find nothing interesting for me, I pick some article at random and read it. This way you learn a style, you learn a narrative, you learn to predict what this media would write for any occasion, and your mispredictions will be very informative.
Read different sources. Truly different. If you read NYT, add Fox News to your reading list, but do not stop there, add something completely different, something outside of the system you watching. It is very hard to understand a system being a part of it. Some believe that it is even impossible. Though it is a deep philosophy.
Read a textbook on experimental psychology. I believe no science know about experiments as much as psychology. Physicists do not know as much, because they deal with simple systems without brains. They are not forced sometimes to abandon experiment and use pseudo-experimental plans, or other reseach plans. They need not to invent a new physics each few years, so they know how to exist with a ready-made theory, but they know a little how to deal with reality where all theories were failed. Sociologists deal with too complex phenomena to be successful, and they mostly stuck with correlational research plans (so no reasoning about causality). Psychology is in the between, it could struggle with inability to devise an experimental plan, and at the same time it have a chance to devise it and to test it on real subjects. Textbook on experimental psychology could give you the theory and some practice to learn how to evaluate a validity of a research. It helps a lot even if I read an anonymous comment in internet, not just when I’m reading a psychological paper.
We could move on level lower and search article for signs of bias. If we knew bias, we could undo it.
It’s easy to know that the New York Times and Fox news both have a pro-corporate bias. If you however are not exposed to the knowledge of how the Egyptian military competes against corporate actors in their economy you can’t undo the bias when reading either source on the Egyptian revolution.
If you read NYT, add Fox News to your reading list, but do not stop there, add something completely different, something outside of the system you watching.
I’m skeptical that orienting yourself towards big news publishers is a good. One of the main problems is that their articles intend to stand on their own and usually don’t link out much. A lot of articles contain little important information.
I either read articles because someone recommends an article or because I research a given topic and then go to Wikipedia/Google/StackExchange.
Read a textbook on experimental psychology. I believe no science know about experiments as much as psychology.
Do you have one that you would recommend in this context? I consider Stanovich’s How to Think Straight About Psychology good in explaining how knowledge can be aquired in psychology. Gwern’s essay on Causation is worth reading to remind oneselves that knowing things about the world is really hard and it’s easy to be mislead.
It is the simpliest answer. Totally correct, but I hoped for more, when clicking title.
It is not enough to read news media to get the context, allowing to judge reliability of news. I’d propose to read some books, to take a bigger picture, to grasp historical process which we are part of. To grasp some idea of metaphysics of human history. I couldn’t explain what it is, because it is too complex and difficult to explain, it seems like my neural networks have learnt some generalizations from a very wide context, but how it often happens with neural networks no one could explain how they work. It gives ideas of what is possible and what is not, what is probable and what isn’t.
We could move on level lower and search article for signs of bias. If we knew bias, we could undo it. The good example of the most blatant signs s the journalistic art of Rita Skeeter in Rowling’s Potter. Speaking of which Rowling failed to show how to work with such a journalism, her heroes either ignored Rita or (like Harry in the last book) felt pain from inability to separate lies from facts. It is possible to extract facts from Skeeter’s articles, to throw away everything else, and to see a picture which is as real as it is possible. But Potter dived into a reality pictured by Skeeter and then painfully tried to resurface. It was a mistake from the beginning (though understandable, Potter was 17 at that moment, and one of his hiddens powers to fight Voldemort was his emotionality).
To measure bias we could evaluate not just the single article, but a lot of articles of the author of the article, or from the same publisher. To do it I systematically read news from several resources. Even when I cannot find nothing interesting for me, I pick some article at random and read it. This way you learn a style, you learn a narrative, you learn to predict what this media would write for any occasion, and your mispredictions will be very informative.
Read different sources. Truly different. If you read NYT, add Fox News to your reading list, but do not stop there, add something completely different, something outside of the system you watching. It is very hard to understand a system being a part of it. Some believe that it is even impossible. Though it is a deep philosophy.
Read a textbook on experimental psychology. I believe no science know about experiments as much as psychology. Physicists do not know as much, because they deal with simple systems without brains. They are not forced sometimes to abandon experiment and use pseudo-experimental plans, or other reseach plans. They need not to invent a new physics each few years, so they know how to exist with a ready-made theory, but they know a little how to deal with reality where all theories were failed. Sociologists deal with too complex phenomena to be successful, and they mostly stuck with correlational research plans (so no reasoning about causality). Psychology is in the between, it could struggle with inability to devise an experimental plan, and at the same time it have a chance to devise it and to test it on real subjects. Textbook on experimental psychology could give you the theory and some practice to learn how to evaluate a validity of a research. It helps a lot even if I read an anonymous comment in internet, not just when I’m reading a psychological paper.
It’s easy to know that the New York Times and Fox news both have a pro-corporate bias. If you however are not exposed to the knowledge of how the Egyptian military competes against corporate actors in their economy you can’t undo the bias when reading either source on the Egyptian revolution.
I’m skeptical that orienting yourself towards big news publishers is a good. One of the main problems is that their articles intend to stand on their own and usually don’t link out much. A lot of articles contain little important information.
I either read articles because someone recommends an article or because I research a given topic and then go to Wikipedia/Google/StackExchange.
Do you have one that you would recommend in this context? I consider Stanovich’s How to Think Straight About Psychology good in explaining how knowledge can be aquired in psychology. Gwern’s essay on Causation is worth reading to remind oneselves that knowing things about the world is really hard and it’s easy to be mislead.