TDS#1: View news through a skeptical lens
Especially when there's one source, and it's a government
U.S. Marines ready to engage in close combat in Fallujah, 2004.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/02/01/world/middleeast/31reuters-arizona-alqaeda.html
Be skeptical of news when a government, any government, is the only source and there’s no effort to discover further details. The New York Times joined every other media outlet on earth blindly publishing this article from Reuters. The only source is a Department of Justice statement.
It’s delivered as fact that this man is the person they say he is and the Iraqi government’s evidence is irrefutable.
It would be helpful to know how he ended up in Arizona, and that they have the right guy. And that his extradition is based on strong evidence, rather than political motivation or malicious intent. Here, the story is simply “There was a bad guy here, we caught him and will ship him back where he belongs.” Is he a citizen? Resident? Refugee fleeing the government who’s extraditing him?
The government and media framing generates a great deal of emotion by including “Fallujah” in the headlines and story. The Sunni-majority area west of Baghdad was the site of two major battles in March and November of 2004, where there were substantial casualties on both sides. Later, The Guardian and others would report about the long-lasting birth defects and health problems city residents face.
So with the xenophobic narrative of the current administration, how is it harmful for a story like this to go viral without any additional information? Is this helpful for the administration’s narrative and harmful to immigrants and refugees?
Punxutawney Phil, the weather-predicting groundhog. Photo by Gene J. Puskar, AP
Happy belated Groundhog Day, everyone.
Apparently Spring comes early this year, great news for me. But be wary of government cronies using a rodent to predict the weather. Can we trust a woodchuck to predict the weather during a time of unprecedented climate change? The statistics prove that Phil and his government handlers are intentionally lying to us.
If we needed a day named after a rodent, it should be NYC Pizza Day, named after the honest and pure efforts of Pizza Rat. He has no agenda and no masters.
An official monitors passenger body tempteratures at a Wuhan rail station.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/business/economy/wilbur-ross-coronavirus-jobs.html
There’s no getting away from Coronavirus stories – not even here. But I just want to address the misinformation that quickly spread. Here, Wilbur Ross, U.S. commerce secretary, unintentionally lays out one of the most blatant reasons for spreading misinformation: the enormous financial impact.
“ … I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” Ross said. “But … it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain.”
Obviously it’s unhelpful for this administration to address a health crisis in this manner, but my point is that his ignorant comments could easily be used as fuel for a conspiracy theory attempting to address the origins of the virus.