8 minute read
Bob Gustin, On Consuming News
~by Boris Ladwig
Evansville schools last year put out litter boxes in bathrooms for students who identify as cats. At least that was the rumor spreading in the community.
The rumor was so persistent that EvansvilleVanderburgh School Corp. Superintendent David Smith addressed it in a school board meeting. “There are no litter boxes in our schools. Period. There never will be,” Smith said, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.
Brown County resident Bob Gustin, a retired newspaper editor, worries about those kinds of incidents, which have increased in frequency in the last few years, primarily because of social media. Gustin has given presentations in Brown and Bartholomew counties to provide people with tips on how to distinguish real news from fake news, whether satire, rumor, misinformation, or disinformation.
Gustin is a Colorado native who got a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. After working for papers in Colorado and Nebraska, he joined the staff at the Evansville Courier in the mid-1980s. He switched to the Evansville Press and, when that paper folded, he moved to Brown County and became managing editor of The Republic, in Columbus. He retired from there as editor in 2011.
Gustin lives in rural Brown County with his wife, Chris, who runs the Homestead Weaving Studio. The couple have two adult children, Erin, a psychologist; and Andrew, a geologist.
Gustin said that in retirement, he has tried to engage in the community in meaningful ways, joining the Brown County Literacy Coalition, the Brown County Community Foundation Scholarship Committee, and later the board of the Brown County Library, where he recently gave his presentation on fake news.
The term itself has become a victim of falsification, of sorts. Fake news used to refer to news articles that were intentionally false, but it’s been lumped in with rumors, satire, and erroneous reporting, where the author made a mistake but did not mean to. More prominently, and in a more sinister way, the term is being appropriated by politicians who label as fake news anything that makes them uncomfortable or that doesn’t conform with their preconceived notions (or that of their supporters).
While some types of fake news merely make people who believe it look silly, other types can have serious consequences, such as when people spread false information about polling places, terrorist attacks, or the effectiveness of vaccines.
Bob as “The Cat in the Hat” during a literacy festival at the Village Green, sponsored by the Brown County Literacy Coalition. photo by Chris Gustin
Gustin said the more he researched the topic, the more he came to understand the nuances and extent of the problem.
“There’s fake news on the left. There’s fake news on the right. There’s fake news in the center,” he said.
To home in on that point, Gustin in his presentation uses a chart from Ad Fontes Media, which scores news sources on bias and accuracy.
“Media such as The New York Times might be high on reliability but have a left wing bias. And media such as The Wall Street Journal may be high on reliability but have a right-wing bias. And (podcaster) Joe Rogan might be right in the center for political bias, but way down at the bottom in terms of reliability.
Gustin said he most trusts the Associated Press, which ranks high on accuracy and low on bias.
“I also contend that your local daily newspaper is one of the best sources of unbiased news reporting. And our example here in Brown County of the Brown County Democrat is a case in point. That newspaper has been the best or nearly the best weekly newspaper in Indiana for over a decade, as determined by the Hoosier State Press Association.”
“But local newspapers are struggling,” he said. “They’re struggling financially. They’re struggling circulation-wise. And as their financial struggles continue, staffing is cut. And as staffing is cut, it becomes harder to produce the same newspaper… with fewer people. And so that makes newspapers even more important now than they have been because of all the other sources of information and primarily the Internet where basically anybody can post anything they want, without any regard to the truth. So it becomes a very confusing landscape.”
The explosion of electronic media and the ease with which people can put information online also has fractured every American’s perception of reality, in part because people can choose a news slant that fits their own biases.
Gustin urges people to consume their news from multiple sources and to be aware of those sources’ bias and reliability for accuracy.
“If you like CNN, watch Fox once in a while to see what Fox is doing. And if you like Fox, watch CNN once in a while to see what the other side is presenting,” he said.
And, Gustin said, don’t rely on either of those two as your sole news source, because the channels actually present little news, and a lot of people talking about the news.
“If people watch those talking heads giving their opinions about the news, and believe that is the straight, unfiltered news, then that becomes consumption of fake news,” Gustin said.
People also should pay attention to how often they see news outlets acknowledge that they’ve made mistakes, he said. Human beings, even in the best news organizations, make mistakes, and they should acknowledge the mistakes they’ve made and correct them.
“When I was editor of The Republic, I put corrections on the front page. I thought they were important, and we put them in a prominent spot,” he said. “I think that helps news media credibility, rather than hurts it.”
While false information has existed for as long as information has existed, Gustin said false information now travels much more quickly because of so-called social media, which amplify and spread primarily news that generates strong feelings, and usually negative ones.
It’s a sad thought, he said, that many people get their news primarily from Facebook, which has few filters or “truth patrols.”
“When I was a kid, if I wanted to find the answer to a question, and it wasn’t in my family’s set of encyclopedias, I had to go to the library to find…the answer. And maybe that’s why I love libraries. Now you can research things and find good credible answers (online), but you can always also find all of these lies and misrepresentations. So it becomes harder, instead of easier to find the truth because there’s so much information available so readily.”
Brown County resident Randy Jones, who attended Gustin’s presentation at the library, called it informative and useful.
Jones said he has shared the media bias chart with friends and family, so that they’re aware of the leanings and accuracy of the news source they consume.
“I think it’s a real concern that more people need to hear about.”
Jones, 69, was an environmental scientist with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management but moved to Brown County with his wife, Marcia, from the Newcastle area after retirement.
The self-professed bibliophile serves on the Friends of the Library board because he said he believes libraries serve as a “vital resource for any community.”
They are “refueling stations for the mind,” he said.
They’ve become even more important as people are being bombarded from every direction with information. A lot of people unfortunately don’t access newspapers and instead rely on information they get from social media, where, as Gustin points out, there are few filters or truth patrols that protect people from false information.
Sometimes, Jones said, people have to do a little bit of work to figure out whether the information they’ve been given is accurate and fair.
Jones said Gustin’s presentation provides people with some help on how to figure that out. And getting people to read, listen, and watch with a bit more skepticism can help inure societies against threats both foreign and domestic.
“It’s a lot easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled,” Jones said.
How to be a more skeptical news consumer
Former newspaper editor Bob Gustin has put together some tips on how to spot fake news: Bias and accuracy: Be aware of where your news source stands on bias and accuracy. Check the Ad Fontes Media bias chart, which you can find at <tinyurl.com/hznkpsx2>.
Diversify: Get your news from multiple sources, especially if your primary news source has a particular slant.
Be skeptical: If it sounds outlandish, be suspicious. Check to see whether other news outlets are covering the story. Ask yourself who benefits from this story being out there.
Sources to trust: Associated Press, local newspapers, network news (Gustin says the 10 p.m. shows on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox are generally unbiased and accurate.)
Beware of social media: Before you hit that “share” button, run a quick internet search or check with fact checkers to verify the story’s accuracy, especially if the story is on a site that seems sketchy.
