Personal Method of Fact- and Bias-Checking While Reading

If you are reading something online or even printed, such as a textbook, you need to make sure to separate the facts from the opinions. Once you separate the facts from the opinions, you can make your own conclusions about whatever you are reading about. This can sometimes be difficult to do when only looking at one source, however, so here is a method you can use to find the facts from the story and use them to come up with your own conclusion.

There are always going to be biases in writing and media. It is inescapable. Even in my own writing you may find unintentional biases in it, or things that sound like they are biased. However, we can fix the issue of the spread of unconscious biases by being conscious of them while we learn in our daily lives.

A good method for fact-checking is to look at multiple sources by different authors on the same topic. Try to get at least four sources together that were written by different people with different backgrounds, platforms, and probably genders. They can include academic writing, blogs, websites, books, videos, or podcasts. Then, watch, read, or listen to all of them and on a piece of paper or on a note app write all the statements that you would take as fact. If the statement or claim is supported with tangible evidence such as a formal study, make sure to take note of that, because it is more likely to be factual. After you are finished finding information from these four or more sources, you can turn to your paper or notes.

The more mentions there were of a particular claim or statement among the sources, the more likely that statement is to be factual. If multiple writers of different backgrounds and with different ideas can agree on a statement, it is not likely to be highly biased. Chances are it was found by using a sound method that has resisted being disproved. Remember that the statement could still be disproved in the future. Nonetheless, statements that are in all of the sources or the majority of them are more sturdy to rely upon. If the statement is agreed-upon in an even split between the sources, chances are it may be a controversial topic that has not been concluded yet.

Now, once you have decided what the facts are, go back to the sources and read them again. Pay attention to which parts you found to be fact. Much of the rest is probably influenced by personal experiences that the authors had in the past. Much of learning is based on experiences, but personal experiences should not always be used to teach people new topics because the experience may not be transferrable. So, read the sources again, or just one if you like, and then decide what you agree or disagree with. Make sure that while you are thinking about this you are trying your best to think about the situation from multiple points of view.

After you are done reading and hearing what the authors have to say, decide what is closest to your experiences. Maybe ask yourself why you think a certain part does or doesn’t make sense. You could try to think about how a person close to you would interpret this information. Obviously, the writer cannot control how readers/listeners interpret their piece, and your conclusion can be different from another person’s ideas from the article. Think about how the individual statements or facts are related to the larger topic, and how changing a factor of the study could change the outcome. Re-evaluate as many times as you want at the time or later on.

Once you have gone through this process, you are likely educated on the facts and have hopefully thought deeper about the connection between the individual statements. You will have thought about how this related to the author’s life and how it may be related to yours. Bias and individual opinions are unavoidable and sometimes a good thing, but we need to think about what we are told before believing it. It is like the food samples in stores; you need to try a little bit before you buy into the whole thing. Keep in mind that everyone has had different experiences, we have all been taught differently, and that no one can know everything on a topic.

Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!