I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
If you don’t have independent confirmation for the specific event, you could do a simple application of Bayes’ theorem.
If (say) FOX is reporting something and you’re not sure how much credence to give it, ask yourself:
A. How often does this sort of thing happen in general? (Check historical sources.)
B. How often does FOX claim this type of thing happens? (Check Google trends.)
C. How likely is FOX to report this if it actually happens? (If it fits their narrative, probably close to 1.)
Then you can estimate the likelihood of the report being true as AC/B.