Column: Tips for ferreting out fake news offered

ANITA CARROLL
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When I was a newly minted librarian, way back before Google, I worked for the Chicago Public Library. Every day, a kindly gentleman called our reference desk and asked politely if Rose Kennedy was still alive. He never missed a day. Sure, we could have quickly answered his question without looking. But all librarians are taught while getting their Master’s in Library Science how to verify information from a reliable, credible source before answering any question. It is hard to prove someone is alive, actually, especially one who is older and not currently in the public eye. So, to do our job right in the pre-Internet world, staff would log into an online service called Dialog, which charged by the minute for its use, to search if the New York Times had published Kennedy’s obituary in the last 24 hours. We did this every day for years because that was our standard.

So it is likely every librarian has been watching closely the nation’s new focus on “fake news.” To us, rooting out what isn’t reliable is second nature. To others, it might not be so obvious what is to be believed and what is to be questioned. As the Internet came in to the picture, the amount of false, biased and unverified information became more common, more slickly produced, and easily passed off as journalism. The good news is that this same Internet access to false information can help you determine the validity of information.

Because of the new focus on where people get news, libraries are promoting guidelines for evaluating information. I thought it was worth sharing what you should ask yourself whenever you read or hear information.

Timeliness: How old is this information? Is the piece citing data that is old, out-of-date or superseded by newer information? Is this poll asking information from respondents at a time or place or in a way that makes the answers irrelevant or biased? Has there been new science, research or data conducted since the cited information was published?

Credentials: Who wrote or reported this piece? If not already provided, a quick check of the writer or reporter is worth doing. Is he/she a respected journalist? Has he/she done work for a reputable information source that you recognize and know is valid?

Sources: Was the information verified by a reliable source? Can the source be verified? This is probably the trickiest of component of the news that can result in false information. Anyone can be an anonymous source, but a good journalist using an unnamed source will indicate the source’s tie to something credible to bolster the truth of the assertion. Named sources with proper credentials are always better. That said; beware of unfamiliar but official-sounding organizations, non-profits, research publications and charities. Many sources can be extremely biased, inaccurate or created for the sole purpose of pushing false information. It is worth a quick internet search to see what other kinds of work the source has produced.

Judgment: Does the information seem too good to be true? Can you find that story, or main components of that story, from any other news outlet? Does the information seem to be very favorable to a particular mindset? This component of determining what to believe is the most personal. How information, however real, is presented, can truly influence how a number of people remember and create opinions of information. There is no true fix for this, except to make a practice of reading and watching information from more than one outlet.

After all this time, I never forgot that man who asked the same question about Rose Kennedy. I thought of him sadly on January 23, 1995, the day after the Kennedy matriarch did actually pass away. I envisioned the librarian in Chicago that day citing the obituary in the New York Times to tell him that Rose Kennedy, in fact, was no longer alive. We never asked why he wanted to know this information, but I will always appreciate that he depended on his public library to tell him the truth.

Anita Carroll is director of the Granville Public Library. Visit the library online at www.GranvilleLibrary.org and www.facebook.com/granville

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