What's Fact and What's Not? A Look at News Sources

Hey, have you heard about this new study from Nature magazine? It says that right-wing folks share news that some people call low quality. But who decides what’s low quality anyway? Spoiler alert: it's often the same people who are supposed to be checking facts. And guess what, they can make mistakes too! This study had five authors, all called "Google Scholars." Sounds fancy, right? But remember when Google’s AI created weird images like black Nazis and female Asian Vikings? Oops! Seems like some stuff that goes into this study might not be perfect either. So what makes news “low quality”? Often it’s because the sources don't rely on "fact checking." But what if those facts aren't always right? For example, people said that COVID-19 wasn’t made in a lab. Turns out, even the U.S. government says it could have been.

The New York Times was big for lefty users, while Fox News was popular with right-leaning ones. But who got more things right since 2016? The Times was wrong about lots of stuff, like Russiagate and COVID. They even tried to hide problems with Joe Biden’s memory. And what about these “fact checkers”? CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times got super high ratings from them. But regular people didn't agree as much. Maybe it’s because these big news places make mistakes too? It’s important to ask questions about who decides what’s true and what’s not. And remember, the First Amendment is there for a reason – so we can say what we think without being silenced.

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