Becoming a discerning internet user

Anyone who has spent any time on the internet knows that there are an abundance of fraudulent claims, hoaxes, and conspiracies. Cartersville, Ga. was the centerpiece of a 2008 hoax about rigged gas pumps and countless Georgians have received variations of the Nigerian email scam. The proliferation of such lies means that internet users need to learn how to separate fact from fantasy.

There are steps that that internet users can take to become more discerning about the information available on the internet. The first and most obvious step is to distinguish between trustworthy and unreliable websites. When looking for factual information, be leery of blogs and other websites that do not meet journalistic standards.

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia site, but its articles can be edited by users. There have been several cases of false or unreliable information on Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be useful for an overview of a topic, but information found there should be verified elsewhere. Fortunately, Wikipedia entries are often footnoted with links to the source information.

Other websites have no such saving graces. World Net Daily is a news website that is less than credible. It is associated with a wide range of conspiracy theories including questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The websites of Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet, are notorious for propagating outlandish conspiracies on topics from 9/11 to UFOs. Documentaries posted on Youtube or other internet sites should also be treated with skepticism unless the creator of the piece can be determined to be credible. Articles by mainstream political groups and politicians may be so slanted that the truth is barely recognizable.

As a general rule, information should not be believed unless it can be independently verified by more than one source. In many cases, this can take a little searching. Sometimes this can be accomplished by following links in the article to the source. In other cases, it will involve using an online search engine such as Google or Bing.

Internet users should hone their innate BS detectors. If something sounds either too good or too outlandish to be true, it probably is. Atlanta consumer talk show host Clark Howard offers a list of resources for use in cases of suspected financial fraud. For internet rumors and conspiracies, there are several resources as well. The most famous of these is Snopes.com, but the Urban Legends page on About.com and Hoaxbusters.org are recommended as well. Politifact and Factcheck are good resources for political claims, but both of these sites sometimes lean left.

Even on reliable sites, it is important to distinguish between commentary and factual reporting. For example, the Atlanta Journal is usually considered to be a fairly reliable source, but its columnists and bloggers merely state their opinions. Therefore, news items from AJC.com can generally be trusted. On the contrary, statements by its famously left wing editorial writer Cynthia Tucker (who recently left to teach journalism at UGA) should be taken with a grain of salt.

Another clue that a website is unreliable is a fixation on how one group is conspiring for nefarious purposes. This could include racial groups, religious believers, corporations, or the government. Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons are favorite targets of conpiricists. The Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, UFOs, the United Nations, and a shadow U.S. and world government are also frequent topics on conspiracy sites.

In one recent example, the Atlanta Conservative Examiner was sent a link that purported to show recently unclassified National Security Agency documents detailing how extraterrestrial messages were decoded by government cryptologists. These documents immediately set off the BS detector because of the incredible claim that aliens had contacted Earth and that the government had decoded their message, published it on the internet, and all this had somehow been missed by the major news outlets. Googling the author of the report and the report’s title yielded only links that referred back to the original source document as proof of alien contact. Snopes and the debunker sites had no information.

Finally, an article on Open Minds (admittedly not a first tier site when it comes to credibility) was found several pages into the search results. It detailed how the messages were part of an NSA cryptology exercise from the 1960’s. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Don’t believe everything you read. Use common sense and look for verification from objective, reliable sources.

 

Read this article on Examiner.com:  http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/becoming-a-discerining-internet-user

Photo credit:  Stuart Miles/ http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Russia beams propaganda to US hotel rooms

(RT Russia Today/Fair Use)

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Pravda was synonymous with laughable propaganda and cover-ups.  The Communist Party newspaper was akin to “Baghdad Bob,” the Iraqi Information Minister who denied that Saddam’s regime was collapsing even as American tanks rolled through the streets of Baghdad.  Soviet-era Russian journalism is perhaps best exemplified by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in which the Soviet regime delayed the announcement of the accident for two days while radiation spread around the world.

Today, rather than being confined to Eastern European tabloids, Russian propaganda is beamed directly into American homes via the cable news channel, RT.  RT was previously known as Russia Today and was started in 2005.  The channel broadcasts in English, Arabic, Spanish, and, of course, Russian.  RT is available around the world in over 100 countries, including the United States.  RT America has bureaus in Washington, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. 

RT is not your father’s Russian propaganda.  Shows on RT are hip and slickly produced, but are permeated by an anti-American perspective.  Some segments seem to have a libertarian bent like a segment on Adam vs. the Man featuring a US law that makes it illegal to transport unpasteurized milk across state lines.  It mentions that Ron Paul has introduced legislation to allow interstate sales of fresh milk.  Others sound more like the ramblings of a far left blogger, such as a segment on the Alyona Show which discusses how the “US military agenda is in fact growing to possibly wage war on the world.”  Another recent story featured Carlos Santana criticizing Georgia for its new immigration law. 

There is no broken English on RT.  The accents are as American as any you would hear on CNN or Fox News because many of reporters and hosts are Americans.  Adam Kokesh of Adam vs. the Man is a former Marine who received a less than honorable discharge after wearing his uniform to anti-war protests as a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.  Thom Hartman is a left-wing radio talk show host who also hosts The Big Picture on RT.  Alyona Minkovski is a Russian-American who grew up California and majored in Political Science at UC Santa Cruz.  She hosts the Alyona Show on RT.

By appearances, the only thing that separates RT from the mainstream US media is a far left slant on the news that makes no pretense of being unbiased.  It is, however, consistent.  RT is as critical of President Obama and the Democrats as it is of the Republicans.  It is consistently anti-American. 

The television channel is accompanied by a website, RT.com.  The site features stories ranging from “Texas Hottest Sex Offenders,” detailing a Houston tabloid that featured the list, to an interview with 1960s hippie Bernadine Dohrn in which the former Weather Underground member says, “Demilitarizing the entire American economy is our last hope.  In the war on terror the US is also a terrorist.”

Adam Kokesh (Wikimedia Commons)

The website also features other not-so-typical content.  There are numerous links to information about Russia including the country’s history, cuisine, and tourist information.  There are also Russian language tutorials, a social network, and a daily political cartoon, which pokes fun at national leaders from all over the world… with the exceptions of Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. 

According to a Canadian Broadcasting Company story on RT (which is quoted on Wikipedia, but no longer available on the CBC website), the goal of RT is to present an “unbiased portrait of Russia” although in reality very little is said about Russia on RT America.   To that end, the channel receives billions of rubles in funding from the Russian government.  One of the most noticeable differences between RT and the major American networks is the almost total lack of commercials.  In fact, the commercials on RT are almost exclusively for RT.

Ironically, the Russian government and Vladimir Putin are also suspected of complicity in the deaths of more than twenty Russian journalists and dissidents since 2000.  Even today, Russians still do not have the freedom to satirize Putin.

RT is available on several American cable networks in some markets including Comcast, Cox, Verizon and Time Warner.  However, most Americans who have seen RT have probably done so in a hotel.  Many hotel television channel selections include RT.  In Atlanta, you can see it at the Renaissance Atlanta Airport, the Westin Atlanta North, the Sheraton Gateway, and the Wyndham Garden Downtown among others.  RT’s programming is streamed live on RT.com for those whose cable companies do not carry the network.    

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