From 1956 until 1963, there was a television show called “Who Do You Trust?” The original MC was Edgar Bergen but he was replaced by Johnny Carson. The show featured married pairs of contestants who were asked to answer questions, the husband deciding whether he or she would answer.

A few weeks ago, at our February seminar, I shared a similar topic except I called it “How Do You Know What To Believe Online?” Since I presented the idea, several people who were in attendance have asked me to share again in a blog post. That’s what I’m going to do but it may take more than one post!

My first rule for knowing what to believe online is to use sites which you know you can trust. For instance, if you’ve been a Keystone Computer Concepts customer for a long time, you know that if I post something on our website or in my blog, I will have fully vetted it before posting. Another example would be to trust the CDC.gov site for information about the Coronavirus since the CDC is the premier agency for infectious diseases in the United States.

Rule #2 is: look for a variety of sites reporting the same thing.  Make sure they aren’t all depending on just one originating site unless that site can be trusted (e.g., cdc.gov). In other words, what often happens on the Internet is that people and agencies pick up something that is posted without knowing whether the information has been verified. For instance, the story and video about Nick Sandmann and the Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips put egg on the face of a lot of media people and the companies they worked for because of misinformation which spread like wildfire on the Net. (CNN wound up paying a ton of money for their part in the false narrative. Click HERE to read the story.)

Next, Rule #3: Don’t accept “as fact” the first thing you read or see. For instance, Betty White has been proclaimed “Dead” so many times online it’s almost comical. Yet, she’s alive and well.

My fourth rule makes you take an honest look at what is really happening. Rule #4: Be open to recognizing when a site has an “agenda.” Certain sites will lean one way or the other when it comes to topics and/or politics. For instance, most people I know think that sites like CNN and MSNBC lean left while FoxNews leans right. It’s okay to go to these sites for information as long as you keep in mind that facts might be presented in a certain light.

That’s it for this post. I’ll share more rules in the next post!