How to Fact Check Information when Consuming ContentTips to fact check when reading content on social media or through the mediaConsider potential biases: When assessing a source, be mindful of any biases that could be influencing its content. Review previous posts and articles to get a comprehensive picture on the source.
For years, Amnesty employed a researcher named Saleh HIjazi. His Facebook page featured multiple terrorists as the featured photo. Amnesty kept him on as a researcher on Israel, putting hi in videos and allowing him to write reports. He finally left Amnesty to work for the BDS Movement
Is that biased enough for you?
That's only the tip of the iceberg. For example, Amnesty UK once voted down a resolution condemning antisemitism. It has hosted groups that have supported Palestinian terrorists but turned down Jewish organizations from using its facilities.
I once counted the topics of Amnesty tweets for a month, and its obsession with Israel was pretty clear.
If this isn't bias, what is?
Appeal to sensationalism: Ask yourself when watching videos on social media whether the content describes specific events or facts or whether it is meant to prompt an emotional trigger for the audience. You have to harness critical thinking skills, and question information that may come across or overly sensational.
Here's part of an Amnesty report on the 2014 war:
Raisa Mahmoud Mohammad al-Bakri, 62, was watching the news in her living room. She described how her son Mohammad lost his wife Ibtisam and two of his daughters, Asil and Asma, and how her son Ahmad in turn lost his only son, Kamal: “It was horrible. The walls fell over my body. I was just lying there. The neighbours came and started lifting the rubble and carried me to the ambulance. I got injured in my eye and couldn’t see clearly. My two poor children – one lost his wife and two kids, and the other, after spending 15 years in [an Israeli] prison and finally managing to have his first son, is gone.” Four-year-old Kamal spent 10 hours in an intensive care unit before dying of severe internal bleeding. Another of Mohammad and Ibtisam al-Bakri’s daughters, Hanin, and Ahmad al Bakri’s wife, Soua, were transferred to Turkey for medical treatment due to the severity of their injuries
This is an appeal to emotions. Yet even Amnesty, after 13 paragraphs of similar text about how horrible the attack was, mentions as an aside who the target of the airstrike was: "Although family members denied it, both Ramadan Kamal al-Bakri and Ibrahim al Mashharawi were members of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades, as was confirmed when, after some weeks, their names appeared on their list of 'martyrs'." One was a high ranking brigadier-general equivalent.
Amnesty was appealing to emotions, and burying the facts.
Evaluate the source: Investigate the credibility of sources, and be cautious of sources with clear bias or a history of spreading false information.
We've already seen that Amnesty itself is not a credible source, and I have dozens of other examples. Here's another one from the Australian Amnesty site.
A video where they pretend to prove Israel is guilty of "apartheid" is filled with lies and half truths. This screenshot is complete lie:
Look at the map: The Jews are in "settlements" but most of the land is "Palestinian land." But it wasn't Arab land. Over 75% were public lands belonging to the government, who was Great Britain.
Of the private land, about 1/3 was owned by Jews and 2/3 owned by Arabs, not 90%.
Clearly. Amnesty cannot be trusted as a source, according to its own standards.
Even worse, Amnesty doesn't evaluate the credibility of sourses themselves.
In a report updated in April, Amnesty wrote: "More than 33,000 Palestinians, at least 14,500 of them children, have been killed over the last six months, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Thousands more are buried under the rubble and presumed dead." Yet the number of children actually counted by the health ministry was half that amount, and this was known as of the time Amnesty last updated that page. It is impossible for both sets of numbers published by the ministry to be true, but Amnesty chooses the one that has no source outside Hamas.
Be mindful of potential propaganda: Remember to critically assess any political affiliations sources may have as this may be reflected in the information they present.
According to OpenSecrets, of the money given by Amnesty members in the US for political campaigns, 94% went to Democrats.
Sounds like they align politically to only one side, way out of proportion of all Americans.
Avoid echo chambers: Don’t limit your exposure to information that aligns solely with your pre-existing views and challenge your own assumptions when diversifying the information and sources you engage with.
