Previous Subchapter → 8.5 Our key tips for Media Literacy
Let’s take a small example to show why all of these points matter, this example is unrelated to the Ukraine conflict, it’s just a story we happened to come across whole writing this script:
So, here we have a very interesting story, apparently the Chinese military can force their own soldiers to self-destruct through a bomb in their helmet, horrifying!
But wait! A military killing its own soldiers with self destruct bombs? That sounds pretty like a pretty extraordinary claim doesn’t it? Let’s investigate.
So, if we look up the person who reported this claim, Roman Balmakov, we can find pretty quickly that he’s a reporter for the Epoch Times, so what kind of outlet is the Epoch Times?
Well, another quick search indicates that they are strongly opposed to the Communist Party of China, which runs the Chinese government, and by extension, the Chinese military, so there may be a bias problem here.
The Epoch Times is a far-right1 international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.29 The newspaper, based in New York City, is part of the Epoch Media Group, which also operates New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television.30 The Epoch Times has websites in 35 countries but is blocked in mainland China.31
The Epoch Times opposes the Chinese Communist Party,323322 platforms far-right politicians in Europe,91122 and has supported former President Donald Trump in the U.S.;3435 a 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself.303622
But just because they’re a biased outlet doesn’t mean they’re lying, so let’s go a step further and follow the sources.
If we look at Roman’s video, he shows an article from the Epoch Times titled “China Develops Helmets for Soldiers With Self-Destruct Button: Report”, now we just have to follow the source chain to the end:
The source in this Epoch Times article is an outlet called the China Observer, this seems to be the “Chinese state media” Roman was talking about, helpfully the Epoch Times provide an archived link to the China Observer article, and if we read it, it does make the same claims about weird sci fi helmets that Roman and Epoch Times did.
But there’s a problem, the Observer says they got this info from “Observer.com”, aka, themselves, it’s just something they’ve come up with without any evidence behind it, so we’ve followed the chain to the end and ended up with no source to back up the story.
Well, then there’s one last thing to do, let’s look up this story and see if anyone else is talking about it!
Ah, here we are, here’s another report on this topic from an outlet called “Lead Stories”, called “Fact Check: Chinese Military ‘Self-Destruct Helmets’ For Soldiers NOT Reported By Chinese State Media — Report Source Unclear”, it dissects Roman’s claims and reveals that “Observer.com” is actually an outlet from New York, it also provides an analysis of the story from another reporter:
All I can say is that clicking through to the Chinese-language source article cited by the Epoch Times does not appear to provide a clear statement that the ‘self-destruct’ function on the gear being discussed would trigger a bomb or kill the service member wearing it.
It could be read to imply that, but it could also imply mere bricking of the gear such that enemy forces could not access information or capabilities.
Some googling doesn’t bring up obvious further sources, but rather repetitions of the same basic narrative. Without further evidence, I would assess this as vague information from a minimally authoritative source.
Now that we’ve followed our 4 steps, we can look at this claim in full: Did the Chinese state media claim that their country’s military was mounting self destruct bombs into the helmets of soldiers?
No. We can see that none of the publications along this chain of sources were from the Chinese state media, and when we get to the end of the chain, there’s no evidence to back up the original claim about the bombs.
So there we go, we found out that this story is at best unproven and at worst, complete bullshit.
Now what would’ve happened if we didn’t follow the steps?
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If we never followed any of them, we might have just taken the story at face value, and fallen prey to misinformation.
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If we only got up to Step 2, we might have been sceptical, but we wouldn’t have understood why the creators of this story would be motivated to mislead us.
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If we only got as far as Step 3, we might have known that the reporter of this story was sketchy, but we still wouldn’t know whether or not his claims had any evidence supporting them.
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And lastly, if we hadn’t followed Step 4, we wouldn’t have gotten the big picture, which showed us that there was no supporting evidence to the story, and showed us how the story was misleading.
So each of these 4 pointers are equally valuable, and they can each help you avoid falling for fake stories or getting lost in the whirlwind of narratives out there, and that’s important, because if we let ourselves be influenced by distorted or false stories, our own worldviews could become distorted or based on falsehoods. The more understanding we have, the more positive our influence becomes.