What the Fact?: Finding the Truth in All the Noise

by Seema Yasmin

Overview

From acclaimed writer, journalist, and physician Dr. Seema Yasmin comes a “savvy, accessible, and critical” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) book about the importance of media literacy, fact-based reporting, and the ability to discern truth from lies.

What is a fact? What are reliable sources? What is news? What is fake news? How can anyone make sense of it anymore? Well, we have to. As conspiracy theories and online hoaxes increasingly become a part of our national discourse and “truth” itself is being questioned, it has never been more vital to build the discernment necessary to tell fact from fiction, and media literacy has never been more important.

In this accessible guide, Dr. Seema Yasmin, an award-winning journalist, scientist, medical professional, and professor, traces the spread of misinformation and disinformation through our fast-moving media landscape and teaches young readers the skills that will help them identify and counter poorly-sourced clickbait and misleading headlines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665900034
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	378,192
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.50(d)
Lexile:	1190L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award–winning journalist who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, medical doctor, professor, and poet. She attended medical school at Cambridge University and worked as a disease detective for the US federal government’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. She currently teaches storytelling at Stanford University School of Medicine, and is a regular contributor to CNN, Self, and Scientific American, among others.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Contagious Information

CHAPTER 1 CONTAGIOUS INFORMATION
ON THE AFTERNOON of February 27, 2020, Peter Lee Goodchild, an 84-year-old retired art gallery owner from Buckinghamshire, England, posted a message on his Facebook page. “Last evening dining out with friends, one of their uncles, who’s graduated with a master’s degree and who worked in Shenzhen Hospital (Guangdong Province, China) sent him the following notes on Coronavirus for guidance...”

Peter’s Facebook post offered a friendly list of warnings and tips about a new coronavirus that had sprung up in China around Christmas 2019. The infection was quickly making its way around the world. “If someone sneezes with it, it takes about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne,” wrote Peter, via his friend’s uncle.


A post containing all sorts of nonsense about the novel coronavirus went viral on Facebook in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: Snopes.com.

Pictured is one version of the viral Facebook post that was shared in February 2020. The post “mutated” over time as it was updated, shared, and translated into dozens of languages.

Peter’s post included advice about swishing the throat with liquid to prevent infection: “A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice,” he said. He included a timeline of the illness that said the virus “will first infect the throat, so you may have a sore throat lasting 3/4 days. The virus then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and then the lungs, causing pneumonia.”

Peter also issued this warning: “The nasal congestion is not like the normal kind. It can feel like you’re drowning.” There were even details about exactly how many hours this new virus could survive on metal and fabric, alongside advice to avoid ice-cold drinks.

Peter’s Facebook post was liked by his friends, who shared it with their friends, who shared it with their friends... until it was shared more than 400,000 times in a matter of days. And that was just on Facebook.

A few days after Peter hit “post,” his Facebook message went from Buckinghamshire to Melbourne, from Hong Kong to Cape Town and beyond. Translated into Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, Amharic—around a dozen languages in all—Peter’s list of tips and warnings popped up on websites, on internet message boards, and in private group chats from Bali to Bologna.

Peter’s virus post was read by millions of people all over the planet. Peter had gone viral.

The problem was this: Most of Peter’s viral message about the new virus was nonsense. Throat gargles don’t get rid of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Avoiding icy drinks won’t obliterate the infection. And had you asked any honest scientist back in February 2020 about the exact timeline of infection and how long the virus lingered on metals and fabrics, they would have said, “Umm, can I get back to you on that? We’re still trying to figure it out.”

But it didn’t matter that Peter’s message was mostly nonsense. A new disease was spreading, fear was brewing, and people were desperate for information. And here, right when we were ravenous for facts and figures, was a helpful post from a man whose Facebook profile photo showed a smiling, grandfatherly face.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Hi, Freethinker 1

Chapter 1 Contagious Information 11

Sidebar: Fake News Is Old News 14

When Bad News Goes Viral 17

Social Networks of Contagion 19

Viral Vectors and Patient Zero 25

Sidebar: How to Spread a Lie-The Disinformation Playbook 30

Words Matter 33

Sidebar: Red Flags for False Information 44

Information Disorder … and Pasta 45

Chapter 2 Bias, Beliefs, and Why We Fall for BS 61

Tell Me a Bedtime … Fact? 61

Your Brain on Stories 66

Sidebar: Changing Minds 74

Your Biased Brain 75

Sidebar: Spurious Science 84

The Backfire and Pushback Effects 87

Why Your Brain Is Weird (Answer: Other People) 89

Can You Believe Anything? The Sunrise Problem 95

Chapter 3 News, Noise, and Nonsense 103

Nineteenth-Century Clickbait 103

Not-So-Neutral News: A Partisan Press 110

Breaking News … via Pigeon and Pony 113

"What Hath God Wrought?" Twentieth-Century News, Twentieth-Century Problems 117

Sidebar: Breaking News 124

What Is Newsworthy? Who Decides What Is News? 127

Sidebar: Blavity, the Defender, and Black America's News Publishers 134

All the News That's Fit to Print …? Local News, National News, and the Flint Water Crisis 138

Ghost Papers and News Deserts: What Happens When Your Town Loses Its Local Newspaper? 144

Sidebar: Timeline of (Mostly American) Journalism 150

How the News Is Made: Facts… or Framing? 155

The Framing of Operation Iraqi Freedom 157

Sidebar: Contagious News-The Vienna Subway Suicides 162

Does News Influence Behavior? 166

"Alternative Facts" and the Myth of Objectivity 170

Like Eating Poop 192

Sidebar: Journalists under Attack 194

How to Consume News Like a Pro: Fact-Check the News and Create Your Media Diet 198

Chapter 4 Social Media 207

Algorithmic Bananas 207

Your Brain on Social Media 217

Into the Rabbit Hole 226

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way! 237

Chapter 5 How to Debunk and Disagree 241

Is There a Vaccine against BS? 241

Sidebar: Critical Thinking Feeling? 256

Prebunking versus Debunking 259

How to Disagree 261

The Ten Steps for Effective Disagreements 265

What Is Good Conflict? 283

Sidebar: The Socratic Method (and the Sad Fate of Socrates) 286

How to BS-Proof Your Brain 294

Epilogue: Hi, Critical Thinker! So … What Now? 301

Gratitude 305

Sources 307

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/04/2022

Journalist Yasmin (If God Is a Virus, for adults) effectively explores contemporary media literacy’s barriers and how to overcome them in this eye-opening work told via contagion and vaccine metaphor. “Information spreads from one person to another, just like a virus,” the author writes in an introductory essay. What follows is a “navigation guide for the treacherous terrains of Bias, the craggy mountains of Groupthink, and the slippery ravines of Disinformation,” containing allegorical boosters needed to prevent disinformation infection. A chapter titled “Bias, Beliefs, and Why We Fall for BS” explains how brains process media and why they cling to biases; another, “News, Noise, and Nonsense,” uses Iraq War coverage to demonstrate how purportedly unbiased news outlets can influence a person’s perception of events depending on where—and when—information is dispensed. Insightful sidebars detailing how ideas are spread, along with photos and social media screenshots illustrating the dangers of groupthink, accompany approachable prose. In a time when “social media holds the power to radicalize people” or even cause death, as in the case of widespread misinformative Covid remedies, Yasmin encourages readers to “BS-proof our brain” in this conversation-starting handbook. Ages 12–up. Agent: Lilly Ghahremani, Full Circle Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

12/01/2022

Gr 10 Up—Yasmin is a doctor, journalist, and published author who tackles facts by meticulously moving through topics, such as hoaxes and conspiracy theories, to share tips on discerning fact from fiction in a media-rich environment of the 21st-century, opening with a story about a viral Facebook post related to COVID-19. Adeptly breaking down how information has been shared for centuries, the book provides language to navigate the murkiness of the truth. Yasmin's efficiency means each section is succinct and digestible, not preachy or overexplained. As a guidebook, it features realistic examples coupled with a straightforward method for consuming, processing, and sharing knowledge with a natural flow; accessibility is what Yasmin achieves. Another strength is her inclusion of general principles of information dissemination throughout the ages and then moving into analyzing bias and managing contentious conversation on social media platforms. Her goal to help readers "disentangle the truth" is apparent and commendable. The examination of information by asking questions and sharing tricks is a helpful guide for teens, but deeply relevant for adults, too. VERDICT Educators will applaud a book that helps navigate an already overwhelming problem and curious teens will be rewarded with helpful tips for media consumption. It's a book every library and classroom should have.—Alicia Abdul

School Library Journal

★ 2022-06-08
How to navigate the information superhighway and engage with news like a pro.

The widespread dissemination of false information is not new. In 1683, German explorer Englebert Kaempfer went to Asia to verify centuries-old reports that lambs were growing…on trees! The term fake news is also not new, appearing in the title of a Harper’s Magazine article from 1925. The explosion of social media along with the dwindling of local newspapers has sent people to the internet as a main source of information. Doctor and journalist Yasmin breaks down the differences among misinformation, disinformation, and, perhaps most insidious of all, malinformation, which involves sharing real information in a way that maliciously distorts its meaning. Coverage of the Covid-19 crisis and the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 are offered as prime examples of information manipulation. Complicating matters is Poe’s Law, which describes how satire and parody are often received as fact and vice versa. From explanations of how the news is gathered, who decides what is news, and the myth of objectivity, the book moves on to the addictive nature of social media. Yasmin offers 10 concrete steps for constructively handling disagreement on hot-button subjects. There’s also a clear walk-through of the Socratic method and a useful step-by-step method for protecting yourself from being misled. Laden with entertainingly presented tips and techniques, this informative overview will encourage further exploration and contemplation.

A savvy, accessible, and critical guide to media literacy. (sources, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Reviews