THE CITIZEN JOURNALISM MANUAL…

13. The necessity of skepticism

Russ Grayson

Published in

PacificEdge

9 min readJul 30, 2022

The skeptical attitude is our basic navigational tool through a media-saturated society.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence…Carl Sagan.

ONE OF OUR BASIC NEEDS in citizen journalism is critical thinking skills. We need this to understand something, to assess how true it is likely to be and to think about what information might be missing. This is why citizen journalists, and hopefully other journalists too, are skeptics.

The skeptical attitude is our basic navigational tool through a media-saturated society. It asks for evidence or, where that is lacking, for what is most likely to be true or what is most likely to eventuate. This might be based on the precedent of similar events as well as on common sense and our own sense of what is likely according to our own knowledge and experience.

The skeptical approach is not foolproof but it is the best tool we have to detect the misleading, misrepresentation, assumptions, the lies and half-truths that would beguile and inveigle.

Skepticism is not cynicism

Let’s be clear that skepticism is not cynicism.

cynicism is a completely negative, everything-is-bad-and-getting-worse-can’t-fix-it do-nothing attitude that allows bad people to continue to do bad things and get away with it; it is a type of serial hopelessness.

The future’s uncertain and the end is always near…Jim Morrison, Roadhouse Blues.

skepticism is a questioning approach that is open to possibilities, seeks evidence and where that is not available it looks to the past and to current knowledge to make deductions about what is likely true.

Skeptics questions

How do we adopt the skeptical approach in our citizen journalism? By asking questions. Here’s some advice from the Richard Dawkins Foundation on questions to ask:

how reliable is the source of the claim?
does the source make similar claims?
have the claims been verified by somebody else?
does this fit with the way the world works?
has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
where does the preponderance of evidence point?
is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
is the claimant providing positive evidence?
does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
are personal beliefs driving the claim?

While this advice is slanted towards scientific claims it is applicable in other fields too.

Skepticism, then, is an attitude and practice that assesses the truth of something. As citizen journalists, skepticism is a tool we wield to help our readers makes sense of the world and to separate myth, misinformation, erroneous belief and lies from what is real.

…advertisers and marketers have no responsibility to provide verifiable information and they can mislead with incomplete or false claims…

Different types of information

Discerning between the different types of information is a basic skill of the citizen journalist. This includes knowing the difference between:

evidence and inference
fact and opinion
assertion and information
fact and marketing/promotion/public relations
journalists and others who disseminate information
journalism and other kinds of writing.

Seek evidence

Evidence is information or physical objects supporting an idea or interprtation of an idea.

Opinion is what someone thinks about something and is not the objective evidence around something, although opinion is best when it is based on available evidence.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth…Albert Einstein.

The skeptical approach places much emphasis on evidence because it is the basis of factual reporting and it can help us counter our own unintentional biases.

Accuracy increases over time. First-hand, direct evidence is preferable to indirect evidence. It includes information obtained through observation by the journalist, eyewitness stories, documents, physical objects, photographs and video. Keep in mind that images can be manipulated.

Indirect evidence is second-hand information heard or passed on, such as hearsay, inference or second hand reports. Beware that it may have become distorted on its journey.

Rumour is an unreliable type of indirect evidence and should be listened to but regarded skeptically. If reported, we should state that what we are reporting is rumour so readers do not regarded it as reliable.

Reporting the opinion of experts with in-depth knowledge of a topic can contextualise it and point to what are the most-likely causes and scenarios. We need to identify this as informed opinion. Expert sources are regarded as more reliable than other opinion.

Truth is journalism is provisional until updated, reliable information and evidence becomes available. This applies especially when covering something that is still developing, such as breaking news. We report the facts available at the time to produce a report that is based on the most reliable information we have. As things develop, more information is likely to become available, enabling us to update earlier reports. This can necessitate revising some of what we have reported.

With breaking stories we expect new information to become available fairly rapidly. That is why some news organisations use Twitter to publish frequent updates and bring their Twitter feed into their website or social media feed. With older stories, new information becomes available less frequently if at all. When it is significant it can be published as a new story to refresh the newsworthiness of the topic. It is helpful to link back to earlier reports so readers can see how the topic has developed.

A public statement from authorities might follow an incident. In assessing this we compare it to information available through direct and indirect evidence and by looking for information that may be missing.

I have placed emphasis on seeking evidence. This is pertinent to news reporting in citizen journalism. It does not prevent us writing speculative stories or any other type of story. What is necessary is identifying the story as such.

Beware marketing-speak

Knowing when we are reading advertising, marketing or public relations copy dressed up to read like a factual article, what is known as ‘advertorial’, is necessary if we are not to be misled. Reputable media clearly identifies advertorial.

It is unfortunately true that advertisers and marketers have no responsibility to provide verifiable information and that they can mislead with incomplete or false claims. They are, after all, paid to say good things about a client or a product. We should also keep in mind that public relations people are not journalists. They are paid to shape opinion around some person, business, organisation or government to influence people’s perception about them. Like marketers, public relations has no ethic about telling the whole truth.

Beware social media claims

Beware taking what we read on social media as fact. While fact is reported there are also misleading claims, misinterpretations of information, fake news, marketing, lies and plain old misunderstanding and disinformation.

Misinformation was illustrated in the story that accompanied a photo of a pack of wolves in the Canadian wilderness. The photo was posted and reposted on Facebook in 2017 and vent viral, attracting around 23,900 responses. Unfortunately, while the location of the photo was reported correctly, the information purporting to explain the behaviour of the wolves and leadership of the pack was incorrect and misleading.

The wolf pack image from Snopes.com that went viral on Facebook. The photo was taken by Chadden Hunter and featured in the BBC documentary Frozen Planet in 2011.

False information

The sentiment that concluded the misleading information accompanying the photograph was a valid one about leadership: “not about being out front. It means taking care of the team.” The rest of the post was erroneous, whether due to error of fact or it being deliberately erroneous is unknown. Why did the author make his/her own interpretation of the wolves’ formation? Was it to make his own point about leadership? If so, was he being dishonest?

As is often the case, the reality was simpler. In response to a stream of complementary Facebook comments about the post and the notion of leadership it purported, Larry Lim, an American, provided a reference invalidating the post by pointing to an analysis of the photo on the Snopes.com website.

According to Snopes:
A photograph of a wolf pack is commonly shared with an inaccurate description of the behavior of wolves. (It) shows a wolf pack being led by the oldest and weakest members.

This photograph is ‘real’ in the sense that it shows a pack of wolves in Wood Buffalo National Park, but the pack is not being led by the three oldest members and trailed by an ‘alpha’ wolf, as implied by a viral Facebook post. Instead, one of the stronger animals leads the group in order to create a path through the snow for them.

Snopes goes on to report that the term ‘alpha’ in relation to animal pack leadership could also be erroneous, citing a 1999 paper by David Mech, Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs. In the paper, Mech argues that the concept of an alpha wolf asserting dominance and leadership over other pack members “doesn’t actually exist in the wild.”

The lesson

For citizen journalists and people posting to social media there are a few lessons in the repeated posting of misleading information around this photo.

the first lesson is not to take at face value what you see in social media (or on websites and other media as well, though misrepresentation proliferates on social media); the photo the focus of this story was an authentic photograph unaltered by photo editing software; the claim about leadership accompanying it, remembering that ‘leading from behind’ is an accepted form of leadership, was misreprentation
the second lesson illustrates the value of skepticism in citizen or any other types of journalism and to social media in particular; skepticism asks whether something might be true or false; it looks for evidence or for what is most likely based on knowledge and experience.
the third lesson is that photographs often require captioning to contextualise and give them meaning; they need words to explain what went on, where it went on and when it happened; citizen journalists and photographers publishing photos will do well to write a succinct caption to describe the image and give it specific meaning; this can take the simple form of who is doing what, where and when.

Without context, a range of meanings can be ascribed to a photo, erroneously or deliberately, and these can reflect the mindset, beliefs, values and political or social agenda of those making the claims.

A photograph can be further validated for viewers by adding to the caption the credit for the photo, such as: ‘Photo: © Kelly Kale’ (and perhaps adding their website so readers can check out their work). That was not done when the wolf pack photo was circulated on social media so there was no way of backtracking to the photographer or the website where the photo might have been used to validate it.

On social media things are not always what they seem or what they claim to be. An open, skeptical approach works best for navigating our way through the deluge of text and image that floods onto our screens.

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence…Christopher Hitchens,God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.