Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them. Remember Al Franken’s book from 2003? It was a blistering look at Conservative Talk Radio. Al of course, went on to be one of the first Liberal Talk Radio hosts on the old Air America. And, of course, a US Senator from Minnesota who resigned after being accused of sexual harassment during the #metoo movement.

But I digress, the book’s title is what I want to talk to you about today. As news sources thin, and news is pumped out via social media, how can we tell if it’s true or a lie? And then if we spread it amongst our people and they further dramatize or even embellish a story, now it’s really become a different version of the truth, am I right?

What about Facebook, where any number of pages or people with followings post “news” stories and those are repeated to followers, friends, family members, you name it.

Facebook is considered to be the top social platform for news. Back in the day they had trending news and a whole team of people who made sure the news was credible. But those days are done. 

Pew Research, a non-partisan American think tank and polling company located in DC says 85% of Facebook users say they get their news from friends and family and not journalists who post to the platform. They further say Republicans are more skeptical of news on Facebook than Democrats or other party members. A third of Americans polled by Pew said they thought the news they got from the platform was probably not true.

But here’s the thing, Facebook used to fact check, they gave that up last year. Now they do something called ‘Community Notes’. That basically means community members on the platform can add notes to a story. But again, we’re left with someone’s opinion of a story, like a gut check, not a fact check. 

We’ve just got to do better. Hold your family and friends to account and actually ask them where they got the information they’re sharing. I just had this happen to me! The site was not fake that I was using, but it leaned heavily in a direction I didn’t necessarily align with so I deleted the story.

We all need to be doing this more often. Let’s bring sanity back to news gathering. ✊🏼