print:Looking for Truth in all the wrong places | Media Critiques |Axisoflogic.com

On Tuesday mornings I do a few local radio shows around the US. One of them asked me this week how I tell misinformation from information with regards to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Obviously I'm not perfect or trained in this, but I do have a framework that I use which folks might find helpful. This isn't a list that will tell you 100% what is and isn't true, but it will nudge your confidence levels up and down the true/false scale.

Would I want this to be true? If so, it's important to be extra careful when vetting new information. We're all blind to the things we want.

Would someone else want this to be true? Even though I might not be the intended target, could the misinformation be targeted toward other folks' confirmation bias. The Ghost of Kyiv is a great example, I had a couple friends who were very much infatuated with the story - which was a great story to be sure, but not true.

Could this even be plausible? The Ghost of Kyiv definitely failed this test - there's no way there's a Canadian or American with a spare MIG-29 lying around who also has access to ordinance and their own private airfield that no one's been able to locate. Unless it's run by British puppets from the 1960s, that is.

Who's verifying this stuff? I've been following a list of Ukraine experts put together by Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo which is pretty helpful - especially since they don't all agree with each other. When a bunch of these folks pop up and confirm something at the same time, that's a good sign. However, sometimes everyone still gets something wrong in the same way.

Is this a lie someone would actually make up? Most lies are pretty basic, for example Ukraine says 11,000 Russian troops have been killed while Russia says 1,500 have. Are either of these true? I doubt it. I also have no way of knowing for sure. Are these lies someone would actually make up? Definitely - both sides in a war would want to overstate their situation. However, whenever I see a story that's particularly weird, I start to hedge that it's probably true. Especially when an unnecessarily weird detail pops up in a longer piece. Years ago, I forget when and who, someone published a longform article that was supposed to be a candid interview with an anonymous GOP operative who was speaking their mind. Lots of folks questioned whether the piece was true.I don't have any confirmation it was true, but I think it was due to a very odd detail that was included in the much larger piece - that members of Congress, GOP and some Democrats as well, were super angry with Nancy Pelosi because she "screwed up the congressional cafeteria" by getting metal silverware banned. It was a throwaway detail, but if I'm going to tell a bunch of lies about how things work behind the scenes, that's not a lie I'd include or even think to include. Could still be a lie but my point is, there are way better lies than that.

You're welcome.

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