This is kinda a follow up to your previously answered anon. I also found your blog a couple months or so ago now and have read through several of your posts. While you (and others) have made me reconsider previous stances and have changed my mind on several key factors about the I/P conflict, admittedly there is a lot that i still wrestle with and somewhat disagree with. That being said, I do respect and appreciate your throughness and moral consistency which i find incredibly refreshing. So to continue with this wrestling of thoughts, I'd like to ask what resources you use in your own research. I have followed a few links of your more academic/historcal sources and have found them behind paywalls or to just be snippets of a larger text (as in the case with book previews). I know the most basic thing is to start with a history textbook but those tend to be vauge and lack nuance. Additionally, what online news sources do you use/trust since the MSM is untrustworthy. I find myself lost often in a maze of confusion and contradiction. Again, thanks for what you've done on this page, there are a lot of people out there who could stand to read through it and learn something.
While you (and others) have made me reconsider previous stances and have changed my mind on several key factors about the I/P conflict, admittedly there is a lot that i still wrestle with and somewhat disagree with.
You should be skeptical. You should wrestle with things that don't sit right with you. You should disagree - and you should do so with facts and reasoning! You're Doing It Right, Anon!
(Please consider sharing some of your disagreements, okay? There's nothing I like better than constructive disagreement.)
I'd like to ask what resources you use in your own research.
I was, decades ago, a librarian.
Librarians are trained to take what may seem like an odd position on information: it's all information.
It might be accurate, it might be sloppy, it might be biased, and it might be dishonest...
...but even dishonest propaganda can tell you important things about the time/place/person who produced it.
I don't rule out any source. Al Jazeera English, even while lying, tells you a great deal about what Qataar wants anglophonic people to think. Ha'aretz tells you a great deal about what the international left wants to hear.
All sources have some value - the work of understanding the context and intent of each is on you.
I have followed a few links of your more academic/historcal sources and have found them behind paywalls or to just be snippets of a larger text (as in the case with book previews).
When I wrote for academic publications, I'd produce the citation and move on - that's how academic publishing works. The reader can verify with or without a librarian's help, and the burden is on them to confirm the cited work actually supports the assertion - but most readers were in my field and were familiar with the works I cited.
Writing for non-academics on social media on topics most readers have barely studied is a different thing entirely.
I don't want to assert something and ask readers to trust that the citation supports it, or require them to go hunting for it if another option is available.
We've all seen the dishonest tactic (on Wikipedia and elsewhere) where the writer makes a claim the cited source doesn't actually support. So I try to find sources I can link to with the explicit supporting text visible.
Sometimes it'll be excerpted in a book review. Sometimes I manage to link a pirated copy. Sometimes I'll snag a screencap or snap a photo of a source. When I can, I post links that bypass paywalls. Sometimes a DOI link is the best I can do.
It's all imperfect, but it's better than "trust me, bro" ...which is appallingly the norm right now.
We all need to be more skeptical. Read the links. Check the citations. Require sources for factual assertions. Linking things that are immediately checkable helps builds trust - and if I want readers to see me as credible, nothing matters more than that.
That being said, I do respect and appreciate your throughness and moral consistency which i find incredibly refreshing.
That's more important to me than agreement - thank you. I'm not always right, but I'd like to always be trustworthy.
...what online news sources do you use/trust since the MSM is untrustworthy.
I use all of them. I trust none of them.
Bias is inescapable. I think humans learn from and are driven primarily by narrative - and narrative will always have a perspective. Bias isn't a bug, it's a feature - and it isn't your enemy.
From a previous post on Bias:
You don't need to trust a source completely to learn something from it. In fact, the most valuable sources are often obviously biased.
1. Identify the Bias
Before even reading, know what kind of outlet you're dealing with. Look at its about page, ownership, funding/revenue model, recurring columnists, and core audience. Does it lean left? Right? Is it globalist? Nationalist? Religious? Secular?
Knowing this lets you anticipate the angle and spot distortions more easily. The more you do it, the easier it gets. After a little practice, you'll see clearly (for example) the huge right wing bias of the Jerusalem Post, the huge left wing bias of Ha'aretz, and how The Times of Israel is mostly pretty disciplined (in their news gathering and framing) about minimizing left/right political biases.
None of these three is perfect, but seeing their usual, institutional biases lets you read them against each other.
2. Use It for Contrast
Biased outlets often highlight stories others avoid or ignore. Fox News may underplay climate change but overplay immigration crime. Al Jazeera will underplay Hamas human rights abuses but spotlight in depth the most embarrassing moments in Israeli politics. The Jerusalem Post will underplay corruption charges against Netanyahu and spotlight the most depraved behaviors committed in the name of Hamas.
Use this to your advantage. Compare coverage across ideological lines. The contrast tells you volumes about outfit AND audience.
3. Look for Hard Facts
Don't quote the adjectives. Quote the data. What happened? When? Where? Who said it? What did the video actually show?
Stop taking an analyst's word as truth - see it as a lens to try on at look at the facts through. If the lens helps it make sense, put it in your back pocket for later use.
Strip away the spin, extract the structure.
4. Cross-Reference Across Angles
Treat each biased source as one side of a triangle. To understand the shape of a thing, you need multiple sides. Balance a left-wing story with a right-wing one. Add an international perspective. Compare them.
Over time, you start seeing the shape of the event instead of the biases of each outfit.
It's time consuming and it's hard work - but it's worth doing.
If you like, you can check out the Signal > Noise tag for bite-size lessons in media literacy.
...since the MSM is untrustworthy.
"Mainstream Media," is too broad a term to be meaningful.
There are charlatans and truth-tellers everywhere. We should trust people based on their records of intellectual honesty and responsible journalistic behavior.
I think the NYT has become a sloppy, lazy, ideologically bent advocacy operation instead of a source of journalism, but there are still things to learn from the NYT and there are still people working there whose voices are worth hearing.
I'm not going to assume everything in its pages is shit.
The world just isn't that simple.
Embrace complexity. Read and listen to smart, honest people with whom you disagree. It's time consuming, challenging, and often annoying - but it'll let you see the world far more clearly than splitting all information sources into a false binary of "trustworthy" and "deceptive."
Read everything - skeptically and critically.
There really aren't any shortcuts.
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