How to Stay Informed

after this most recent election a lot of people have lost a bit of trust in the media and the news hi I'm t1j we have polls that don't accurately predict political outcomes and a sudden awareness of clickbait and fake news and even outright propaganda that's designed to make us distrust mainstream media sources not to be honest it's always been kind of a challenge to find a solid source of unbiased and accurate information there's a race to be the first to capture people's attention and individuals and organizations will often resort to unscrupulous methods to achieve this whether that be click bait or sensationalism or even just straight-up lying but the information is out there we just have to be smart and diligent about obtaining it so in this video I'm going to share some ideas about how to find accurate information and how to avoid bad information and to be honest this is something that even I can benefit from so this will also serve as kind of a self analysis and of course this all assumes that you're actually interested in finding accurate information and not having your biases confirmed over and over but I guess all of my videos kind of make that assumption so if you're the type of person that refuses to believe things that contradicts your convictions this probably won't work for you in order to be truly informed you need to be prepared to change your mind when confronted with facts and compelling arguments so first let's talk about a couple things that aren't really a good source of news so a lot of the most popular figures in news and politics are pundits people who offer commentary and opinions about current events and over the past few years I feel like a relatively small number of pundits has contributed heavily to what has become mainstream opinion about a lot of different topics like we just sort of adopt these people's views on things now opinions are fine they're the foundation for debates but I think too often we hear these opinions from people that we consider to be savvy or educated and then we're just like well I guess that's what I'm supposed to believe now of course if someone makes a compelling argument and convinces you that their opinion is correct that's cool that happens but good arguments are always based on facts and you should know and understand those facts before you decide to trust someone's opinion on something otherwise you're just being told what to believe so there are a few comedy shows out there that talk about news and politics and most of them are fine to be honest and I think that most of them put an effort into not deliberately misleading their audience about the topics they cover that being said I still think it's a mistake to use any of these shows as your primary source of news which kind of sounds obvious but I know people who do this these shows are for entertainment first and foremost so if they have to choose between providing the full context of a topic or telling you a good joke they're gonna pick the second thing every time much like political pundits comedians are better appreciated once you're already informed about the topics that they cover so we got that right news is the presentation of factual information about current events people have opinions about this information people analyze this information people make jokes about this information but getting the information in the first place is where we need to start so most of us probably get our news from the internet or TV which means we don't directly pay for it this news model is funded by advertisements whether it be commercials or those super-annoying auto-playing video ads that some news websites have this is why organizations go to great lengths to get you to watch or click because it doesn't really matter if the information has any merit what matters is getting the highest number of people possible to see advertisements so ad funded media is more likely to use sensationalism or click bait to capture your attention and even if they don't directly mislead people they're still likely to add a bunch of lowest-common-denominator to the mix just to further broaden their audience we'll get back to coverage of the newest executive order signed by the president but first check out this guy with super long toenails that's weird subscription-based media like print or digital newspapers does it really have this problem because they're mostly funded by their audience so they have a much higher incentive to provide high quality content because they don't people will just unsubscribe this is essentially the same reason why shows on HBO and Netflix are usually way better than the shows on ABC or Fox now this doesn't mean that subscription-based news is infallible and even if it did a lot of us if not most of us are not gonna pay for our news so we still have to understand how to find good sources of information it's very unlikely that you're going to find any information source that doesn't hold some kind of bias the bias can be super over and strong or it can be subtle it can be in favor of a certain political philosophy or it can be in favor of a certain individual or group or organization now bias can result in dishonesty or hypocrisy but just because bias exists doesn't necessarily mean that the information is inaccurate like if I was a milk enthusiast and I ran a pro milk website probably most if not all of the articles are gonna be pro milk the information in those articles could be a hundred percent accurate but there's still a clear Pro milk bias now I'm gonna tell you what site you should go to what channel you should watch what sources are accurate like you can figure that on your own over time if you haven't figured that out yet it's okay just go to any site you've heard of or just google something you're interested in click the first link we'll go from there I think it's much better to learn how to analyze information from any source rather than just picking certain sources and assuming that some are always good and some are always bad so the first thing we have to do is to learn to identify when someone is making an assertion an assertion is basically when someone states something as if it is a fact now sometimes assertions our opinions disguised as facts and we have to watch out for those so for example imagine someone says for-profit health care doesn't incentivize the best medical treatment that sounds like a statement of fact but it's actually an opinion now it's possible that you can make a compelling argument for this statement backed up by facts and in fact it's something that I personally believe but this doesn't count as information it's an opinion it can't be objectively verified because there are too many variables but sometimes assertions are statements of fact and these are good for us because these can be verified and you should always always verify any statement of fact that you come across don't accept something as fact just because some website or some reporter or some tweet told you that it was true now keep in mind I did not say disbelieve everything until you have verified it a lot of people these days seem to think that skepticism means being cynical and incredulous about everything but that's not how this works in fact if someone makes a claim and you have no reason to doubt it I think it makes more sense to give them the benefit of the doubt until you can verify it yourself just don't blindly accept it and start spreading it around if you haven't made the effort to check on it so the easiest way to determine if something is true or accurate is to just go straight to the source now of course this requires knowing what source to check but often a source will be cited so for example in a recent vlog brothers video John Green made this claim the US economy has added jobs for 76 consecutive months so say I didn't know whether or not that was actually true he doesn't provide a source in that particular video but I happen to know that a good place to look up job statistics is by looking at reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics the BLS has a neat tool on their website where you just plug in the parameters you want and it automatically generates a graph or a table and when we search for the number of created jobs over time you see a clear stretch of uninterrupted gains over the past few years so a source can be something like a report or a study but it can also be a person especially if we're talking about something that person did or said like in a video I made a couple months ago I got a lot of criticism because I claimed that Donald Trump said that Mexican immigrants are rapists which is weird to me because there's actual video of him doing that they're bringing drugs they're bringing crime they're rapists and some I assume are good people like the they in that statement refers directly and specifically to Mexican immigrants and no one else so things like video and audio and photographs can't be used to verify information but keep in mind that those things can be altered although it's usually pretty obvious when it has been I actually have a theory that realistically altered media is going to be a problem in the future but we'll tackle that when we get there and of course sometimes it's hard to find a reliable source or you may just not know where to look and in those cases I think you might consider just asking around like just make a post on social media asking for information and sources directly contact someone you know that is involved in or interested in the subject you'd be surprised at how often that works so as you can probably tell staying informed with up-to-date and accurate information can be a lot of work and probably most people don't want to put in the effort so I think most people just sort of pick a couple sides pick a couple channels and don't stray too far from there and depending on what media sources you choose this may be an OK way to stay decently aware of what's going on in the world but the problem is that most people are going to pick sources that appeal to their biases that routinely have guests and opinions that they agree with so even if the factual information is accurate this still keeps us as an echo chamber and limits our perspective so I'm in favor of going out of your way to verify and confirm information from various sources and then from there you can listen to viewpoints and opinions even ones you don't agree with that's just me though what do you think thank you for watching my video this video was made in partnership with aj+ if you liked this video you should go check out their new channels so wedding they have great videos that help you understand different facets of life in society and pop culture everything from rap music - diamonds to emoji it's like a combination of interesting trivia as well as like real educational and informative stuff and since we're talking about news you should check out this recent video they made about fake news on Facebook because fake news goes viral easily there's a whole industry dedicated to profiting off false information and they're making mad money in fact people outside the US have been able to capitalize on Facebook's algorithm click up there to go watch that video and while you're over there make sure you subscribe to their channel leave them a comment tell them t1j sent you be sure to subscribe to my channel if you're new here if you want to say hi ask a question or leave feedback feel free to email me at hello at the 1 janitor com and if you'd like to support me so I can keep making videos like this consider becoming a patron on patreon all those links will be in the description below and remember be honest be assertive be kind and be open-minded stay [Music]

Channel: T1J

Views: 14,560

Rating: 4.9418483 out of 5

Keywords: social justice, funny, social, issues, topics, hako, feminist, feminism, mra, men's rights, vlogging, video blog, video blogging, t1j, dreads, the1janitor, with dreads, black guy, dreadlocks, news, information, current events, accurate, info, bias, fake news, clickbait, how to detect bias, how to stay informed, how to keep up with the news, how to find accurate news

Id: CvZxAv9xhZk

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2017