"Don't do your OWN research!" warns liberal media or you'll end up a conspiracy theorist | Redacted
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If we have one rule on this show, it's that we don't know everything, and you should always go out and do your own research. I mean, that's why we have guests on the show on topics that we don't know anything about, or we have a maybe tangential understanding of it. So, we bring on experts, and we deep, you know, do deep-dive interviews with these individuals to learn more about these topics. And then we try to share them with you, and then you can go out and do your own research. Well, the left really doesn't want you to do that. They do not want you to go out and do your own research because you end up hurting yourself, and you might just end up swimming in fake news. Just leave the research up to the corporate media and shut up and believe what they tell you, and you'll be okay. You'll live a happy life from climate research, gender research, to election interference and beyond. The corporate media has you totally covered on all of these topics. You don't need to think for yourself at all. No need to do your own research. Like, say, picking up a book or reading scientific papers yourself and trying to understand the methodology involved in these papers.
I've noticed a strange pattern emerging from the corporate media over the past few months, and I have been bookmarking a number of these articles, and I was like, what is going on here? As we head into the 2024 election cycle, I'm seeing more of these stories from the liberal press. The corporate media doesn't want you to think for yourself. Take, for example, the Washington Post. "Doing your own research" quote is a good way to end up being wrong. They write, "Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong," and they're specifically talking about January 6th right there. That's the implication with that photo, right? And what's implied then is, "But what we've done, the research we've done is rock solid, so trust us. You can't do it yourself. Trust the experts." Exactly right.
Someone else in our chat says, "Two weeks to flatten the curve." Right, exactly. Here's another one. "Why doing your own research may make you believe fake news?" That's from Forbes. So Forbes getting in on the liberal action there. "Why doing your own research may make you believe fake news? You're just not smart enough. You're a real dumbass." Here's Vice News. "Scientists explain why doing your own research leads to believing conspiracies. Researchers found that people searching misinformation online risk falling into 'data voids' that increase belief in conspiracies." It's like the government at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode. "We'd have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling researchers. You pesky kids going out there and reading books and learning. How dare you?"
Here's an NPR interview. "How doing your own research can confirm fake news." Now NPR, of course, we did a big takedown on last week and highlighted their own fake news and research and what they're trying to do with the news and shoving it down your throat. So that's NPR. So in doing my own research, which is not what they wanted me to do, I was able to track down and track back all of these liberal headlines back to a report conducted by the University of Central Florida School of Politics. And the report says, quote, "Doing your own research biases towards right-wing conspiracy theories, and that's why you should avoid doing research, because your results may be right-wing information." Oh, like Hunter Biden's laptop, that was right-wing? No, that was true. Or vaccination preventing the spread? You're getting ahead of me. That's okay. No, no, no. It's only true because you did research. If you wouldn't have done your research, like they're telling you not to, that would not have been true. Okay. Yeah. Is that what I'm saying?
So, these topics, Kevin Aslet and his research team asked more than 3000 people in six different experiments... There he is... to rate the accuracy of news stories using search engines. Okay, he looks like a happy guy. The results show that using search engines like Google... Now, this is their results and their research, not me saying this... Okay, using results from search engines like Google to evaluate false news sources led to a 19% greater likelihood of rating false claims as true. So, the results found that doing your own research can actually mislead the person trying to verify the information. Again, these are their words, not mine. Quote, "We discovered that contrary to conventional wisdom, searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation actually increases belief in misinformation," Kevin says. So, NPR did an interview with the research author just in time for the anniversary of January 6th. And they wanted to use this as an opportunity to say that what happened on January 6th was falsely reported by Republicans and therefore conspiracy theorists.
Tomorrow marks three years since the deadly attack at the US Capitol. Earlier in the show, we heard about a poll finding one-third of Republicans believe the FBI instigated January 6th. Not true misinformation. Why does fake news travel so well? Well, in a research paper, informs that question. When we go online and we do our own research about a questionable claim, the authors find we are more likely to buy bogus info. Let's talk to a co-author. Kevin Aslet is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida. He's in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. Kevin, welcome to "Here and Now." Thanks for having me.
So, "do your own research" sounds reasonable enough. I'm thinking of how many times my mom said that to me, right? Go figure it out. But your group did several experiments on this question. And just to be clear, we're talking about search engines. Is that right? People who hear something that might be dodgy and they Google it. That's what we're talking about. Right, exactly. We're talking about people who decide to fact-check news that they are exposed to online. Yeah. I really hate those people. Both of them. They're just proving themselves wrong, though, because if that were true, what they're saying, then their shows would be getting more views and listens. Right, right. We would all be flooding to them as the source of great news and information and arbiters of truth. Right, right. Also, okay, when we tell you to do your own research, we never mean Google it. Never. Right, right. My mom will say that sometimes to the kids. Right. Like my mom was really trying to tell our kids that you shouldn't stand on a boat without a life jacket because fish could jump and knock you unconscious and then you'll drown. Like, and she's like, "Google it." And I was like, "Mom, that's not how we do research around here. You don't just Google it. Flying fish are going to hit you in the head, knock you out like a car." When we say "do your own research," mostly we mean read a book or something like that. We never mean Google it. But okay, let's, yeah. And if you want to tell me things about people getting knocked out by fish, please do. And certainly, we mean never, ever use Wikipedia, which is an abomination. Right. If you use Wikipedia for research, you should be shot. That is an absolutely awful website. That's maybe even worse than Google. So in other words, in their research, they've identified through their own fact-checking sources whether or not a story is true or false. And they are passing along these stories to their researchers, the 3000 individuals of them. And then those researchers will go online to confirm or deny the story. So they gather up some articles. This is what they did. I went through the methodology here. They get it. They got a few articles and they handed them out to those 3000 researchers. And then they were told, either in the control group or not, either go and research this, use Google, use search engines, and confirm it and look it up, or don't. And they said that when they were passing along these false stories, these individuals then go online and confirm what they label as false as false. But what do they label as false? Because as we've seen from the NPR whistleblower, they went with a lot of false things during the COVID pandemic and the Hunter Biden laptop story and Russiagate. And they never apologized. Well, we'll get there in a second. We'll get there in a second. And this quip about January 6th had no FBI involvement. He's like, "Yeah, that's misinformation." You lack the curiosity. So, give us... If you're a real reporter, you might say, "Well, this is why some people say this, and this is unconfirmed. Or we think that..." Like, no, it's just, "You're wrong. Leave that there. Don't pick that up. That's dog poop on the floor." That's condescending and not journalism. Yeah, exactly. So, figured something out. The YouTube, whenever they have a claim on our videos, they're using Google to fact-check us. That's the problem. Right. We need to show them how to do research. We should tell YouTube, of course, which is owned by Google, "Google, you need to stop using Google. And you need to use something that has more authoritative sources." Anyway, here's... Here's how Kevin explains how they did this methodology. Listen.
And one of your experiments I found fascinating. You asked people to vet, to research information by going to search engines. Some of the information was bogus, was misinformation by design. And you found that some of the people who checked out this information were more likely to believe in the fake news. Yeah, so we ran an experiment where we encouraged one group of individuals to go search online to help them evaluate the veracity of the news that they were viewing. We had another group not be encouraged to search online. And what we found was the group that was encouraged to search online was actually more likely to believe misinformation and rate misinformation as true than the group that was not encouraged to search at all. So how do you explain why? So what we found was it appears that exposure to low-quality news results, listen, in their Google search engine results, listen, appeared to correlate with this belief in misinformation. So individuals who got bad information in their search engine results were more likely to believe that misinformation, bad according to who, right? Low-quality websites, low-quality sources. That's what their methodology is in their paper. So, let me give you a few examples. If this is a little confusing, I went through some of the research here to report so you can see that the articles they labeled, and I dove through this research report and looked at the articles specifically, and then cross-referenced them online to see what sources they were coming from. So, these are the ones that they've labeled. There's just a few examples I pulled out here just to show you some of the ones that they labeled as false or misleading. Here's this one on your screen. It might be a little hard to read, a little small, but your indictment against the head of Burisma reveals Hunter Biden was receiving payments from money raised through criminal means, siphoned, laundered from Ukraine. They labeled this false and misleading. Right. So, these are just a couple of examples here, except and that it leans conservative. Right. Only because Hunter Biden's dad is the Democratic president. Exactly. Otherwise, that's true. That's the only reason that they would label that conservative. Well, here's a conservative source confirming that this story was true. Here's, I mean, so here's Bloomberg. It's not a conservative source. Excuse me. Explaining that this was Hunter Biden made millions amid non-stop debauchery. Hunter Biden earned more than four million dollars from Ukrainian energy company, a Chinese private equity firm, and other sources during two years in which he descended deeper into substance abuse, according to his proposed plea agreement to federal tax charges. So, in his indictment and then his federal plea agreement, this is all in there. And even the New York Times, not exactly a conservative newspaper, read the tax indictment against Hunter Biden. And you can see how much he made, millions of dollars he's made working with foreign companies. So, there are sources and methods I found fascinating. I just want to show you this is their sources and methods from their article, their article selection process that they gave out to these 3000 individuals. And these are the mainstream liberal news sites that they claim here. Okay, these are liberal news sites, mainstream. So, these are high-quality liberal news sites: The New York Times, CBS News, you can see them all here. These are the mainstream conservative news sites. Okay, these are the top of the list for conservative news sites. Okay, that's the top. These are credible conservative sources according to this research. Okay, and we scroll down a little bit further. Here are the low-quality news sites that we sourced from. These are all the conservative ones, low-quality conservatives. They have The Daily Caller, they have The Daily Wire, which then you've got a lot of other ones in here that I read on a regular basis as well. I mean, The Daily Caller is great. But I also love this. They included The Babylon Bee as one of their news sources, which is a satirical comedy website, forgive me a break. I mean, come on. Then you have other great ones on here that I read make the other one. Sorry. No, you think The Onion would have made the no, it didn't. Here's The Gateway Pundit, a great website with great coverage of January 6th, the Alex Jones InfoWars, Judicial Watch.org. So, these are all considered low-quality. Now, there's 43 on that page. It continues. This is still low-quality conservative sources. Continued scrolling down, goes all the way down to 60, 61 sources. Okay, 61 low-quality conservative sites that they use for their research paper. Okay, now let's see how many low-quality Democrat or liberal sources they have. Let's scroll down. And here we go. Sixty-one low-quality conservative sources to six low-quality liberal sources. So, you get how this goes. Nice. I just want to highlight one more here kind of story. I just thought this was hilarious where they called this false or misleading. They took a... What they labeled false or misleading story, they handed it to one of their research participants. And they wanted to see how they would... When they believe it, would they go and Google it to learn more information? And this is an example here. Back home in Pelosi's San Francisco, homeless drug addicts are now taking dumps in supermarket aisles. First of all, that's not... I mean, it's hilarious, right? So, is that true? Well, they labeled it false or misleading. No, it turns out it is true. And we have the photos. And we have other news sources that confirm Yeah, this is actually happening. People taking dumps in the middle of supermarkets. It's exactly what's happening. And other sources, San Francisco logs 16,000 complaints of pooping on sidewalks in one week. And as David loves to point out, there's even an app. The call, I think it's called Brown Out or something like that, right? That shows you all of the poops all across San Francisco, poop tracker. Okay. But citizens who live there call it a brownout, a brownout app. Like, they're like, "Yeah, it's a brownout because all the crap on the streets." So that's misinformation. No, it's truthful. But these are your sources. So, don't do your own research, folks. You might wind up as a conspiracy theorist getting accurate information online. You know, it gets me too is that it's so condescending because this is coming from journalists, right? These people that want to find something out, and they just accept the narrative that they're handed, whether it's from CNN or their little trusted box. But they're not going down and doing the research themselves to see why would a person be led in a different direction when something doesn't make sense? Like, are they going to those low-quality sites and verifying that it's low quality and counter-checking it with actual factual information? No, they're just taking what they're told and pretending to be a journalist and then judging other people for not doing the same damn thing. Right. But it's worse than that. It's also academia because they source this from this one Florida professor who had a biased and flawed research method because he got to decide what was trusted and what was not. So to my mind, those mainstream media sources should have been dinged for their coverage of COVID, for their coverage of the war in Russia, for their coverage of Hunter Biden, for their coverage of January 6, but they don't get dinged for that. So it's just the professor and his research team deciding that and deciding that they lack curiosity about various topics and are labeling those things false. So it also shows the capture of the liberal capture of academia, which we lament a lot. Yeah, you're right about that. Think about... They've elevated these mainstream sources and they've devalued sources. Like, regardless of what you think about Alex Jones and whatever, it's like they put Infowars on the low-quality sources for conservative websites, right? How many stories has that guy broken and covered that, like, two years before then the mainstream media finally comes around and covers the story? No, and I'll fully admit that, you know, for a while I was like, "I'm not going to Infowars. I'm not going to touch that. That's full of junk." And then there was a couple of times when Clayton was like, "You need to look at this," and I will dig for myself. Not on Google. I'll read either the academic paper or a surrounding book or I'll read a different book that actually refers to something that he said years ago. And I'm like, "If you follow this trail, there's something here. That's not crazy." But I've been told that it's crazy to even touch my browser to those sites. And so they are influencing you and your perception of yourself for even going to those websites stigmatized. So, it's working. It's highly effective, right? I don't know how many times even Dr. Laura, she did this interview with a mom whose child was transitioned at the school without the mom's permission and the school in California went behind her back to hide it and she sued them. And I sent it to a friend and I was like, "This is pretty crazy." And she's like, "Girl, I'm not watching Dr. Laura, right?" Because it doesn't matter what is being said there, which is important, something that's happening to parents, it matters what your reputation is if you even touch these brands with a 10-foot pole. That's what sort of liberal elitist become worried about. I can't even be seen looking at that stuff. I cannot even click it, right? That's highly effective propaganda that's working on you and has worked on me in the past, but no more. Well, we've got more news to get to. Go ahead. I was just going to say real quick, there are certain channels like, more like really far-left leaning channels, I cannot stand them, but I still watch because I want to know what they're saying, where are they getting their information? What, like, if you want to do your research, you got to go down both sides and work your way to the middle is where you'll usually end up, but you can't get to the middle by just going down one side of information. Yeah, I mean, I had to listen to a whole bunch of NPR today. I mean, shoot me in the leg. I had to listen to that stuff. We have to listen to these things. You have to hear these different viewpoints. You have to read different books from different perspectives on climate, on all of this stuff to know what the arguments are and to shoot. Frankly, to do your own research and shoot holes in it. So go out there and do your own research, everyone. But not on Google. Don't just Google stuff. Read a book. I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. YouTube thinks that you'll actually like this next video right here. It's personalized based on your own viewing habits. So if you watch the video, please leave a comment. Let us know what you think about it and we will see you next time, everyone.