Become Your Own Fact-Checker

Become Your Own Fact-Checker PDF Author: Eric Sentell
Publisher: Author Eric Sentell
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
You want to be well-informed, but how do you know what’s true? You try to fact-check the issues, but whom can you trust? Who has time to become an expert on every issue? What news sources can you rely on? All these questions have a simple answer. You. “Become Your Own Fact-Checker” will help you decide for yourself whether a person, group, or news story can be trusted. To become my own fact-checker, I had to get a masters degree in Composition and Rhetoric, a doctorate in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies, and over a decade of experience studying and teaching college writing. But you just have to read this short book. It will help you form your own judgments based on thinking carefully about how people say what they say. It will also teach you how to apply the strategies of misinformation ethically and effectively, helping you persuade others. You’ll learn the difference between assertion and argument; how emotional appeals affect logical reasoning; how to distinguish authentic and false trustworthiness; the value, use, and limits of skepticism; the nature of belief and how it affects our thinking; the rhetoric of polarization in its best and worst forms (mostly worst); how to spot fabricated news stories and altered images; how to recognize and ethically use 13 of the most common “argumentative fallacies;” how to argue ethically and effectively; and how to use “audience-based rhetoric” to persuade the seemingly unpersuadable. People who don’t know what to believe in today’s media, who want to be truly well-informed, or who want to persuade others will benefit from the short, insightful chapters. Teachers who want to teach media literacy, current events, communication, or rhetoric will gain an engaging, accessible resource for their students. Anyone who cares about truth and facts should read “Become Your Own Fact-Checker.” Customer and Editorial Reviews: I rarely read non-fiction, self-development books, or textbooks in general. However, this one grabbed my attention. For starters, it was written by one of my favorite professors. I know first-hand how good he is at what he does. Second, the book aligns with a career path that I'm passionate about. The book delves, in simplified details, into the subject of proper communication. We can all agree (not really lol) that most of us struggle in that department. Some of us have trouble winning arguments or making sense of who's being truthful and who's trying to manipulate us. This book is a blueprint for proper conversation navigation. Heck, the tagline says "How to Decide What to Believe in the Clutter of News, Noise, and Lies". And it delivers on its promise. The book takes you on an expedition of Rhetoric. It starts off by explaining why arguing is healthy and finishes by showing you how to do so ethically. In between, you're taken on a progressive journey that traverses the shores of argument types and crossing the sea of logical fallacies. You get the chance to sight-see through the imagery of concrete examples adding value and understanding to the adventure. Overall, this book is a must for every responsible individual who wants to get ahead in life, to vote better, to make better decisions in life, and to sort through the "clutter of news, noise, and lies." -- Firas Anouiet, The Know It All, Sort Of Sentell’s work is timely, thorough, and thought-provoking—promoting empathy over apathy, this book is a crucial read for sustainable human decency. -- Nicole Teghtmyer

Become Your Own Fact-Checker

Become Your Own Fact-Checker PDF Author: Eric Sentell
Publisher: Author Eric Sentell
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Get Book Here

Book Description
You want to be well-informed, but how do you know what’s true? You try to fact-check the issues, but whom can you trust? Who has time to become an expert on every issue? What news sources can you rely on? All these questions have a simple answer. You. “Become Your Own Fact-Checker” will help you decide for yourself whether a person, group, or news story can be trusted. To become my own fact-checker, I had to get a masters degree in Composition and Rhetoric, a doctorate in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies, and over a decade of experience studying and teaching college writing. But you just have to read this short book. It will help you form your own judgments based on thinking carefully about how people say what they say. It will also teach you how to apply the strategies of misinformation ethically and effectively, helping you persuade others. You’ll learn the difference between assertion and argument; how emotional appeals affect logical reasoning; how to distinguish authentic and false trustworthiness; the value, use, and limits of skepticism; the nature of belief and how it affects our thinking; the rhetoric of polarization in its best and worst forms (mostly worst); how to spot fabricated news stories and altered images; how to recognize and ethically use 13 of the most common “argumentative fallacies;” how to argue ethically and effectively; and how to use “audience-based rhetoric” to persuade the seemingly unpersuadable. People who don’t know what to believe in today’s media, who want to be truly well-informed, or who want to persuade others will benefit from the short, insightful chapters. Teachers who want to teach media literacy, current events, communication, or rhetoric will gain an engaging, accessible resource for their students. Anyone who cares about truth and facts should read “Become Your Own Fact-Checker.” Customer and Editorial Reviews: I rarely read non-fiction, self-development books, or textbooks in general. However, this one grabbed my attention. For starters, it was written by one of my favorite professors. I know first-hand how good he is at what he does. Second, the book aligns with a career path that I'm passionate about. The book delves, in simplified details, into the subject of proper communication. We can all agree (not really lol) that most of us struggle in that department. Some of us have trouble winning arguments or making sense of who's being truthful and who's trying to manipulate us. This book is a blueprint for proper conversation navigation. Heck, the tagline says "How to Decide What to Believe in the Clutter of News, Noise, and Lies". And it delivers on its promise. The book takes you on an expedition of Rhetoric. It starts off by explaining why arguing is healthy and finishes by showing you how to do so ethically. In between, you're taken on a progressive journey that traverses the shores of argument types and crossing the sea of logical fallacies. You get the chance to sight-see through the imagery of concrete examples adding value and understanding to the adventure. Overall, this book is a must for every responsible individual who wants to get ahead in life, to vote better, to make better decisions in life, and to sort through the "clutter of news, noise, and lies." -- Firas Anouiet, The Know It All, Sort Of Sentell’s work is timely, thorough, and thought-provoking—promoting empathy over apathy, this book is a crucial read for sustainable human decency. -- Nicole Teghtmyer

The Vaccine Race

The Vaccine Race PDF Author: Meredith Wadman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143111310
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
"A real jewel of science history...brims with suspense and now-forgotten catastrophe and intrigue...Wadman’s smooth prose calmly spins a surpassingly complicated story into a real tour de force."—The New York Times “Riveting . . . [The Vaccine Race] invites comparison with Rebecca Skloot's 2007 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”—Nature The epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus. Meredith Wadman’s masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who “owns” research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives. With another frightening virus--measles--on the rise today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency than The Vaccine Race.

The Lifespan of a Fact

The Lifespan of a Fact PDF Author: John D'Agata
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1529404630
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
NOW A BROADWAY PLAY STARRING DANIEL RADCLIFFE 'Provocative, maddening and compulsively readable' Maggie Nelson In 2003, American essayist John D'Agata wrote a piece for Harper's about Las Vegas's alarmingly high suicide rate, after a sixteen-year-old boy had thrown himself from the top of the Stratosphere Tower. The article he delivered, 'What Happens There', was rejected by the magazine for inaccuracies. But it was soon picked up by another, who assigned it a fact checker: their fresh-faced intern, and recent Harvard graduate, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment, and beyond the essay's eventual publication in the magazine, was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D'Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction. This book includes an early draft of D'Agata's essay, along with D'Agata and Fingal's extensive discussion around the text. The Lifespan of a Fact is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between 'truth' and 'accuracy', and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other. 'A fascinating and dramatic power struggle over the intriguing question of what nonfiction should, or can, be' Lydia Davis

Deciding What’s True

Deciding What’s True PDF Author: Lucas Graves
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542224
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Over the past decade, American outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Cited across social and national news media, these verdicts can rattle a political campaign and send the White House press corps scrambling. Yet fact-checking is a fraught kind of journalism, one that challenges reporters' traditional roles as objective observers and places them at the center of white-hot, real-time debates. As these journalists are the first to admit, in a hyperpartisan world, facts can easily slip into fiction, and decisions about which claims to investigate and how to judge them are frequently denounced as unfair play. Deciding What's True draws on Lucas Graves's unique access to the members of the newsrooms leading this movement. Graves vividly recounts the routines of journalists at three of these hyperconnected, technologically innovative organizations and what informs their approach to a story. Graves also plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution from the blogosphere, reflecting on its revolutionary remaking of journalistic ethics and practice. His book demonstrates the ways these rising organizations depend on professional networks and media partnerships yet have also made inroads with the academic and philanthropic worlds. These networks have become a vital source of influence as fact-checking spreads around the world.

The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition

The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition PDF Author: Brooke Borel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226817903
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book will help you: Recognize what information to fact-check Identify the quality and ranking of source materials Learn to fact-check a variety of media types: newspaper; magazine; social media; public and commercial radio and television, books, films, etc. Navigate relationships with editors, writers, and producers Recognize plagiarism and fabrication Discern conflicting facts, gray areas, and litigious materials Learn record keeping best practices for tracking sources Test your own fact-checking skills An accessible, one-stop guide to the why, what, and how of contemporary editorial fact-checking. Over the past few years, fact-checking has been widely touted as a corrective to the spread of misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda through the media. “If journalism is a cornerstone of democracy,” says author Brooke Borel, “then fact-checking is its building inspector.” In The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Borel, an experienced fact-checker, draws on the expertise of more than 200 writers, editors, and fellow checkers representing the New Yorker, Popular Science, This American Life, Vogue, and many other outlets. She covers best practices for editorial fact-checking in a variety of media—from magazine and news articles, both print and online, to books and podcasts—and the perspectives of both in-house and freelance checkers. In this second edition, Borel covers the evolving media landscape, with new guidance on checking audio and video sources, polling data, and sensitive subjects such as trauma and abuse. The sections on working with writers, editors, and producers have been expanded, and new material includes fresh exercises and advice on getting fact-checking gigs. Borel also addresses the challenges of fact-checking in a world where social media, artificial intelligence, and the metaverse may make it increasingly difficult for everyone—including fact-checkers—to identify false information. The answer, she says, is for everyone to approach information with skepticism—to learn to think like a fact-checker. The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking is the practical—and thoroughly vetted—guide that writers, editors, and publishers continue to consult to maintain their credibility and solidify their readers’ trust.

The Mummy Congress

The Mummy Congress PDF Author: Heather Pringle
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0786871865
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Mummies, experts, and breaking science revealed in journalist Pringle's fascinating dive into a little-known arena of human studies. Perhaps the most eccentric of all scientific meetings, the World Congress on Mummy Studies brings together mummy experts from all over the globe and airs their latest findings. Who are these scientists, and what draws them to this morbid yet captivating field? The Mummy Congress, written by acclaimed science journalist Heather Pringle, examines not just the world of mummies, but also the people obsessed with them.

The Fact Checker's Bible

The Fact Checker's Bible PDF Author: Sarah Harrison Smith
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307428540
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
These days fact-checking can seem like a lost art. The Fact Checker's Bible arrives not a moment too soon: it is the first—and essential—guide to the important but increasingly neglected task of checking facts, whatever their source. We are all overwhelmed with information that claims to be factual, but even the most punctilious researcher, writer, and journalist can sometimes get it wrong, so checking facts has become a more pressing task. Now Sarah Harrison Smith, former New Yorker fact checker and currently head of checking for The New York Times Magazine explains exactly how to: *Reading for accuracy *Determine what to check *Research the facts *Assess sources: people, newspapers and magazines, books, the Internet, etc. *Check quotations *Understand the legal liabilities *Look out for and avoid the dangers of plagiarism For everyone from students to journalists to editors, the methods and practices outlined in The Fact Checker’s Bible provide both a standard and a working manual for how to get the facts right.

Regret the Error

Regret the Error PDF Author: Craig Silverman
Publisher: Union Square + ORM
ISBN: 1402774494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This look at careless journalism—from hilarious mistakes to egregious ethical lapses—is “chock-full of amusing historical anecdotes” (Publishers Weekly). Winner of the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism We regret the error: it’s a phrase that appears in newspapers almost daily, the standard notice that something went terribly wrong in the reporting, editing, or printing of an article. From Craig Silverman, the proprietor of www.RegretTheError.com, one of the Internet’s most popular media-related websites, comes a collection of funny, shocking, and sometimes disturbing journalistic slip-ups and corrections. On display are all types of media inaccuracy—from typos to “fuzzy math” to “obiticide” (printing the obituary of a person very much alive and well) to complete and utter ethical lapses. While some of the errors can be laugh-out-loud funny, the book also serves as a sobering journey through the history of media mistakes (including the outrageous hoaxes that dominated newspapers during the circulation wars of the nineteenth century) and a serious muckraking investigation of contemporary journalism’s lack of accountability to the public. Regret the Error shines a spotlight on the media’s carelessness and the sometimes tragic and calamitous consequences of weak or non-existent fact checking. “Mixing humorous corrections taken from large and small newspapers alike, Silverman gives historical context to the current problems . . . and then proposes solutions for busy newsrooms.” —Variety

Merchants of Truth

Merchants of Truth PDF Author: Jill Abramson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473523974
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
The gripping and definitive in-the-room account of the revolution that has swept the news industry over the last decade and reshaped our world. The last decade has seen the News industry face unprecedented change. The sometimes-century old institutions which were once the bastions of truth have had their dominance eroded by vast innovations in viral technology and, as millennial appetites force the industry to choose between principles of objectivity and impartiality, the survivors must confront the horrifying cost of their success: sexual scandal, fake news, the election of President Trump and the shaking of democracy. Taking us behind the scenes at four media titans - BuzzFeed, VICE, The New York Times and The Washington Post - Abramson reveals the human drama behind this shift: one involving deal-making tycoons, thrusting reporters, hard-bitten editors, egomaniacs, bullshitters, provocateurs and bullies, with some surfing and others drowning in the breaking wave of change. 'A cracking, essential read... Abramson knows where most of the bodies are buried and is prepared to draw the reader a detailed map' Guardian

Journalism, fake news & disinformation

Journalism, fake news & disinformation PDF Author: Ireton, Cherilyn
Publisher: UNESCO Publishing
ISBN: 9231002813
Category : Fake news
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description