unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [69]
As that incident shows, it’s wise to get in the habit of reading news with the question in mind, “Does this story really back up the headline?” By the same token, ask whether the lead paragraph—which is nearly always written to be as dramatic as facts will allow, and sometimes a bit more—is really backed up by the details of the story. When you see a partial quote such as “dishonest” and “reprehensible,” look for the full quote to see whether you think the reporter or headline writer understood the context fully.
Even a full transcript can be wrong. In January 1995, The New York Times reported that President Bill Clinton said in his State of the Union address that government should be “leaner and meaner.” What Clinton actually said was “leaner, not meaner.” Also, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we at FactCheck.org and other news organizations quoted David Lokey of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as denying that “New Orleans is filling up like a bowl” at the very moment when floodwaters were rising. In reality, the clueless statement had been made by Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, who was standing next to Lokey at the same news conference. A CNN typist had gotten the words right but put them in the mouth of the wrong speaker. Videotape of the event showed Vitter speaking the words as he stepped in front of Lokey.
We’re not saying that you should track every single fact back to its origin. That’s clearly not possible. You don’t have to go to the National Archives in Washington to read the original copy of the U.S. Constitution; you can read the text any number of places, including the National Archives website. You don’t have to subscribe to The New England Journal of Medicine to get the gist of the latest medical research if you can read an accurate summary in a good newspaper, which is usually easier for nonmedical readers to understand anyway. We are saying that primary sources are more reliable than secondary sources. And when the inferences you will draw from the information are very important to you, it is best to check the primary source. Track your information upstream. Be wary of secondhand accounts, and even more wary of thirdhand stories.
RULE #5: Know What Counts
WHEN YOU SEE NUMBERS BEING USED, BE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT’S being counted, and what’s not. Definitions matter. We wrote earlier about numerical flimflams—“cuts” that are really slower increases, and “average” tax breaks that are much bigger than most people will ever see. Often this sort of confusion and deception can be avoided with a clear understanding of exactly what the numbers are supposed to represent.
Even the simple act of counting becomes complicated in real life, because we have to make choices about what to count. George W. Bush is counted as our forty-third president, even though he’s only the forty-second person to hold the office. Grover Cleveland is counted twice—as the twenty-second president and also as the twenty-fourth—because he served one term, was defeated, then was elected four years later to a second term. And if just counting to forty-three can be a problem, imagine what can happen when numbers get into the billions and the opportunities for massaging the count multiply accordingly.
For example, in his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush said, “Every year of my presidency, we’ve reduced the growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending.” But he sure hadn’t reduced the growth of federal spending, which had shot up 42 percent since he first took office. Look carefully at what he was counting. The word “discretionary” excludes so-called entitlement programs, including Medicare, which is experiencing the largest expansion in its history because of Bush’s addition of a prescription drug benefit. Notice also the term “nonsecurity,” which excludes the entire Pentagon budget