If you read my previous blog on my 24 hour digital diet, you would see that one of my morning rituals is doom scrolling through the Yahoo New feed. I go up and down looking to absorb the critical information of the day.
Well after a few minutes of scrolling I found a an outrageous and questionable headline.
My first reaction is this sounds article sounds fake. But instead of just scrolling past it I decided this would be a fantastic opportunity to practice my digital literacy skills using lateral reading and SIFT to validate this wild claim.
According to Mike Caulfield from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, lateral reading is deciphering reliable information online by leaving a website with questionable claims and verifying the statements elsewhere.
Caulfield has developed a simple-to-follow misinformation verification system called SIFT to highlight how users, instead of going on deep fact-checking dives or relying on Fact-checkers, can use techniques and tools they already know, like search engines and even Wikipedia to determine if a website and its claims are valid.
Caulfield recommends when readers find a questionable bit of information to stop and think who made this and why. He states you should research the source and look for other credible media discussing it. And finally tracing it back to the original context to verify if its true.
Seems like a lot but I will show you that it’s easier that you think and can be done with tools and skills you already possess.
First, let’s click on the post.
First thing you might notice is that Yahoo is not the originator of the story. Yahoo News curates news stories, so you see many garbage clickbait headlines. Their news feed consists of info commercials or outrageous supermarket tabloid-level click headlines.
This article is short takes less than 1 minute to read, It does not have many details and features a single video x post, and its source comes from Salon.com.
In the video near the end Roseanne Barr does clearly states the headline phrase. But is the contex corrrect? Somthing feels off. A few more questions come up. Where did this video come from? The Salon didn’t interview Barr and get this quote did they? And why is this article being posted? Let’s investagate.
Following the first rule of SIFT, I stop to validate the source of the claim. I used a Google search to find the source: a website called Salon.com.
According to their bio Salon.com is a award-winning news and culture, site featuring breaking news and in-depth reporting on politics, science, food and entertainment. Ok but should I take their word for it SIFT says no.
I then dive a little deeper using Wikipedia an free online user edited infromation database. Here I find that Salon.com is labled as a politically progressive news and opinion site. There might be bias at work here.
Next, let’s validate the single source in the story, Which is an X(formerly Twitter) account from a user named PatirotTakes. The account claims, “Dedicated research monitoring and exposing right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.” They joined X in 2018, have over 475 thousand followers and have made nearly 57 thousand posts.
What I notice about PatirotTakes is that they are an anonymous poster, which sets some red flags about the legitimacy of the source.
Is the account a bot?
According to the article 12 Ways to Spots a Bot by DFRLab, a disinformation research group, anonymity is a key indicator of a fake account. DFRLabs says “the less personal information it gives, the more likely it is to be a bot.”
I return to Google Search looking for information on the account.
I find an analysis article using the poster as a Washington Post source, marking the user as a political progressive activist.
However, my attention is focused on the first return result from the lobbying research group Open Secrets, which labels PatriotTakes as a Political Action Committee. I’m not an organic user, but I’m a group with a political ax to grind—something to keep in mind while engaging with their content.
Now, once our source has been verified, let’s see if other sites cover this story.
After another Google Search, the results are slim. Only a site called Mediaite, per Wikipedia, a news site created by journalist Dan Abrams, and the British tabloid site OK Magazine have articles on the post.
Both headlines are way more biased and insulting. Mediate uses the same PatriotTakes video seen in the Salon article, while OK Magazine references it and uses stock photos instead.
Moving on.
The final step in SIFT: tracing the source material. This post uses the video used in the article posted by Patriot Takes. In the video, Rosanna Barr, with a drink in her hand at the Mar-a-Logo, clearly says at the end of her rant, “Isn’t nothing but devil worshipping, baby blood drinking, Democrat donors.”
But is the video fake? Where did it come from? To answer this, I will use the Google Lens search feature.
I searched for the source and got several reposts of the video and image being used, but nothing concrete. But I noticed that in the footage, Barr is clearly saying hello to someone at the start, an “Old Row,” and I find a match for the name.
An anonymous comedy posting group with a link to an apparel company, when searched, is owned by Bar Stool Sports. So, PartiotTakes is not the original poster.
And this is what it’s all about not an political rant but a satirical post for a fan at the event ot post on a comedy site.
Summary:
Using the SIFT system, I was able to quickly and without any fancy technology evaluate a requestable online claim to validate whether truthfulness
During my daily scrolling, I read the posts I found questionable. I stopped reading the article vertically and started reading later with a simple Google search.
I then investigated the sources behind the article, including the poster Salon.com and the source of an X user called PatriotTakes. I found Patriot Takes to be an anonymous front for a political action committee, bringing the article’s validity into question.
After that, I went to find other better coverage of the claim. Which came up pettey lite. I agree with the story’s validity, as other credible media avoided this post.
Finally, I traced the source material using Google Lens. The original post, done a day earlier, was from a comedy posting site and is not from PatriotTakes.
My final verdict is that the quote is taken out of context from the end of a satirical video done for a comedy post. It is not as the article a direct political comment by Roseanna Barr. The footage is legitimate, but the poster used as a source in the article is an anonymous political action committee that is not advertised in the article. The original content is also not the property of the post used as the source. No other credible news outlets have touched the story.
In my opinon it is highly important that consumers of digital information must practice SIFT and lateral reading skills to fight the spread of misinformation.