We find ourselves in a “post-truth” age, where feelings are becoming more important than facts for many, people are increasingly comfortable bending reality to their beliefs, and millions of Americans have lost faith in notions of facts and expertise.

A major factor contributing to these trends is the manner in which the news media landscape has changed in recent decades.

This should be the age of good information. After all, Americans have easier access to factual information, and more of it, than ever before. But many have a difficult time identifying what is reliable and what is not, and/or have become addicted to the junk.

Imagine sitting at a table in a restaurant. Along comes your server with a plate of healthy food and places it on your table. At this point, 100% of the food in front of you is healthy. But before you can take a bite, another server places three more plates on the table containing unhealthy food. Now only 25% of the food on the table is good for you.

If you desire to eat healthy during this meal, have these additional plates made your goal less attainable? Only if (a) you are unable to identify which plate contains the healthy food and/or (b) you are unable to resist the temptation to eat off of the other plates. This is a good metaphor for the current news media landscape.

The human brain is not wired to do a very good job of identifying reliable news sources. Our hard-wired cognitive biases ensure that what we hope to be true about the world biases our perceptions of what actually is true.

Generally humans rarely evaluate whether information they receive is true or not. When we do, we tend to look for information that confirms our existing beliefs, avoid information that does not, and interpret information to make it consistent with what we already believe. We look for information that makes us feel good about ourselves and sheds a positive light on the groups to which we belong. When our beliefs and reality are misaligned, one would think we would change our beliefs to match reality—but instead we often try to bend reality to fit our preexisting views.

Humans want their own beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to be in harmony, and prefer for them to be in harmony with those around them. Indeed, we often just channel the people around us without thinking through issues ourselves.

We try to avoid information that might destabilize our view of the world and/or threaten our core beliefs, identities and deeply held opinions. When this information makes it to us anyway, we tend to interpret it in a way that is as favorable to our sense of self as possible.

As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt notes, “When the facts conflict with. . . sacred values, almost everyone finds a way to stick with their values and reject the evidence.”

Humans have always had these cognitive biases, so why are we so worried about them at this particular moment? Because changes in our information ecosystem have unleashed them. In Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs do not pose too much of a threat to patrons when the security systems are working. But once Dennis Nedry deactivates them? Well, hold on to your butts.

A variety of factors have removed the guardrails that kept our cognitive biases somewhat at bay. These include extreme partisanship, the dawn of the internet, a decline in trust in institutions which create and disseminate information, the decline of traditional news outlets and rise of partisan ones (including cable news, talk radio, and partisan websites), and the advent of social media.

Because of all of this, many Americans now have difficulty differentiating legitimate journalism from biased partisanship, are locking themselves in ideological silos, and are becoming addicted to low-quality news sources.

Luckily, there are tools that can help. There are a variety of online news literacy courses available from reputable places like the Poynter Institute and Stony Brook University. There are also several fact-checking websites, including Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, AP Fact Check and Washington Post Fact Checker.

While we believe all of these things are valuable, we also know it is useful to have a shortcut. That’s why we have compiled a list of 50 high-quality news outlets that provide reliable information with limited bias.

Building a healthy news diet with a handful of these news outlets would limit the amount of misinformation and disinformation one is exposed to.

Here is how we built our list of trustworthy news outlets. To be on the list, an outlet must pass all five of the credibility standards used by NewsGuard and cannot be rated outside of the green “most-reliable” zone by Ad Fontes Media. Additionally, an outlet is disqualified if it is rated as hyperpartisan by either Ad Fontes Media or AllSides.

We consider using all three of these news-ratings tools in conjunction to be akin to a “Swiss cheese defense.” While it is possible that one of these organizations could make a mistake in their analysis of a particular news outlet, it is highly unlikely that all three would give an unreliable outlet high marks.

In a nutshell, these organizations employ multiple analysts to rate the content that individual news outlets produce. These ratings are rigorous, objective and rule-based.

As one example, NewsGuard employs analysts like James Warren, who amassed a wealth of journalistic experience and knowledge in his five decades in the industry. This experience included working as managing editor at the Chicago Tribune, chief media writer at the Poynter Institute, and Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News.

When NewsGuard analysts rate a news outlet, they first rigorously assess the outlet’s content against nine objective criteria. During this process, they draft a “Nutrition Label” for the outlet consisting of a grid showing its performance on each of the nine criteria and a written explanation of the rating. If it is believed that the site fell short of their standards of credibility and transparency, then the analyst will call the outlet for comment.

The analyst’s work is then reviewed and fact-checked by at least one senior editor, and then reviewed and fact-checked again by both of NewsGuard’s CEOs to ensure that the rating is as fair and accurate as possible. The outlet is then given a rating and the analysis is posted online for transparency purposes.

Using the tools at our disposal in order to consume reliable information is one way to help in the battle against post-truth.

There are no “right” or “wrong” answers to many of the big decisions facing our country. There are facts and data that support a variety of positions, but how this information should be prioritized is subjective. But whatever we decide to do, we should insist that the information we use to make our decisions is factual and of the highest possible quality.

Misinformation and disinformation are demonstrably dangerous. They help diseases once thought to be a thing of the past to rear their ugly heads again. They destabilize democracies. This is not some minor problem.

But it must be overcome.

Lawrence M. Eppard is a faculty member at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Contributing to this piece were Michael A. Deas, a former Chicago Tribune editor and a faculty member in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; Alison Dagnes, a former C-SPAN producer and a faculty member at Shippensburg University; and Steven Sloman, a faculty member at Brown University.

First Published June 13, 2021.

Healthy news diets help guard against dangers of misinformation

LAWRENCE M. EPPARD, MICHAEL A. DEAS, ALISON DAGNES, & STEVEN SLOMAN

JUNE 13, 2021