How wonderful of you to give me a platform to rant about my take on skepticism and the media.
There are many sources now on the web about
media literacy, which is where everyone should start if they haven't already educated themselves on this topic.
Media literacy has the basic rundown on the topic from a to z.
Media Literacy Online Project is an excellent source for sources on the subject.
For kids,
Don't Buy It, Get Media Smart is a great place to start. I can't believe how many adults are clueless about advertising persuasion tactics. It's clear we need to add this critical information to basic public education.
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With any science news regardless of the source, I start by hunting down the original research being reported on and read the abstract for myself. It's such a simple step.
Better news articles will cite the source making it easier to find. Newspapers give you hints to go on like, "reported in xyz conference today" or they might name a researcher or a university or company and you have to use Google to find it. It takes a bit of time at first but it's faster once you get used to which url addresses are more fruitful and which retrieved links are not.
Sometimes the report is from an early news release or conference report and not yet published. And sometimes you run into paid subscription access only. When that happens and I'm really interested, I'll look for additional research on the same topic. One thing about research, if it isn't repeatable, it isn't yet reliable.
Keep in mind,
the news is a for profit enterprise in the US and in most countries. They will often take free news from anyone willing to provide it. If you are a company which wants to sell something, you give the news media press releases and "video news releases" ready made for screening or publishing.
Advertisers, because they research their tools, learned a long time ago that people trust the news more than they trust advertising. Since that time an entire industry has grown up making advertisements that look like news.
The news media that use these ready made products don't have to have connections to the company selling the product though sometimes that is involved. More often it is a matter of zero production or investigation costs. A number of media outlets have used
video news releases without revealing as the law requires the source of the piece. They have even gone so far as to fake inserting their newscaster into the video supposedly asking questions of the person in the pre-made video.
Another thing I do when I see a story, be it about science, or more often it is making some political or religious claim of fact, is to
investigate the source first. You might find out the source is an 'institute' (there are thousands) and they have a religious or political agenda. If the Discovery Institute is behind the release of some breaking science news or the Heritage Foundation releases a report on how well things are going in Iraq, you can assume the story is not likely to be what it appears to be.
Source watch reports on the background of information sources and the political history of people in the news.
PR Watch reports directly on the marketing industry or on the use of marketing by various groups and people. Both of these sites are maintained by
The Center for Media and Democracy. As is their excellent
Spin of the Day feature.
Fact checking (if it is science and political like global warming or government interference with science reporting):
Media Matters is a political fact check site. Contrary to popular belief I have seen some left wing stories called on their facts along with the right wing spin that is exposed on the Media Matters website.
While there is a right wing equivalent,
Accuracy in Media or AIM which claims to be a source disclosing lies from the left, they do not support their claims with much evidence. I read their information, and I cite them here to avoid the usual accusation I merely look for confirmation of what I already believe. I would hope by now it is obvious I look for supporting evidence, not confirmation of beliefs. None of us is perfectly unbiased. If you show me the evidence, I might interpret it differently than someone else, but I won't dismiss it. AIM has a lot of opinion and a lot less supporting basis for those opinions.
If you don't believe me about AIM, check out last month's feature,
AIM Report: Media Promote Global Warming Fraud - March A; March 8, 2007. One clue is the subheading following the introduction. It reads, "Faith-Based Science". This month features
AIM Report: Reed Irvine Awards Recognize Media Excellence - April A; April 6, 2007
Michelle Malkin and
Mark Alexander were named the recipients of the annual Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award. Following are their remarks accepting the awards, and AIM chairman Don Irvine's comments about the legacy of his father, AIM founder Reed Irvine.
And there you have some revealing information on the source of the AIM website. Media Matters also admittedly has the goal of checking conservative facts.
I'll be happy to add any valid right wing source to my list of source checking sites if anyone wants to suggest some better sources. And by all means, expose away if you see false claims on the left wing sites. There are plenty of woo supporters who manage to get their unsupported claims accepted by these organizations.
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Other useful sites:
The Skeptic's Dictionary's
Critical Thinking Mini-Lessons
The
Google Scholar search engine narrows the results one is looking for in science research.
Wikipedia while not always reliable is a great place to find information sources, often with convenient links. Go to the bottom of the article. Linking to the highlighted words in an article links to other Wiki articles. But sometimes I do go to another article to track down a source.
For the medical field:
PLoS Medicine is a "peer reviewed open-access journal published by the
Public Library of Science".
PubMed is the common search engine used for a lot of research. Most of the links are to abstracts or titles only. I have sometimes found free sources for the full articles by searching on Google or Google Scholar.
The CDC, WHO, local, state, or any country's public health agencies are usually reliable sources of infectious disease and vaccine information. During the SARS outbreak I found the Hong Kong public health web site had a very useful English webpage.
For all science fields:
Science blogs can lead you to the blogs with your interests at heart. I don't know how or if they review the blogs before linking them. Maybe someone else can comment on that.
UWTV has some wonderful science programs if you have an hour.
If anyone has similar links from other universities, I'd love to see them. I've seen all these programs I have had an interest in and I want more! It's school without the homework or tests, and just the electives you really wanted.
I'd also be interested in the journal search sites for other fields besides medicine. They need to be open access to at least the abstracts or they won't do those of us not in those fields any good.
TIA
