On May 28, Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was involved in a collision and then charged with DUI. This would be mostly a matter of local interest. Since then, a story has spread on the Internet that the charges against him were dropped. This suggests string-pulling and would be an important story if it were true. In fact, no reliable news outlet has confirmed it. Snopes calls it an unfounded rumor. Anything could happen in the future, but as of my writing this, there’s no evidence that the story is true.
It’s hard to tell where made-up stories originate. A tweet by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert asserted the charges were dropped. Donald Trump, Jr. lied on Twitter. Another source was some “news” sites that employ bottom-of-the-barrel freelancers and instruct them to write articles with a partisan spin. They’re called “pink slime” sites. Why pink, I don’t know. They may have names that sound newsy and uncontroversial. Some sites of this kind don’t use human writers at all, just artificial intelligence.
Another well-publicized case happened about a week ago when the “West Cook News” website reported that a school in the Chicago suburbs would start grading students differently depending on their race. This wasn’t true. The basis for the claim was a proposal for discussion, not a policy. If we’re generous, we might suppose the author of the article has poor reading skills and the editors were sloppy rather than dishonest. Maybe.
Traditional local news sources have had trouble surviving in an Internet-based world. Many have gone out of business. This leaves an opening for operations that aren’t concerned with quality journalism and have other goals. A significant part of their income may come from people with partisan aims. Distrust of big-name media helps them to find a niche, writing to satisfy readers’ confirmation biases. Many readers put more trust in local journalism, but the “local” angle could be an illusion.
To some extent, it’s the direction all business is going. Small businesses find it hard to bear the burden of regulation and taxation, and larger chains are better able to handle it. The goal of many startups is to be acquired at a good price. I’m not saying chains of local media sites have no value, but any information from an unfamiliar source needs careful checking.
Writers can legitimately accept assignments for pieces promoting ideas, legislation, or candidates. What’s never legitimate is doing sloppy research or writing a piece to deceive the public. Not even if you have bills to pay. I’ve seen that excuse for phone scammers and other grifters, and it doesn’t wash. Getting other people’s money by deceiving them is no better than picking pockets.
We need to be careful not to pass such lies on unintentionally, too. Avoiding them requires evaluating the source. If you find a story on an unfamiliar news site, take a look around it to judge its trustworthiness. Does it cite sources? Does it give actual facts, or does it fudge them with claims of mysterious reports from unnamed sources? Does it go off on tangents that promote a viewpoint without providing relevant facts? (Many mainstream news stories fail miserably on this point.)
Not all “news” on the Internet is true. We have to be alert to spot the lies and not spread them.