"Well Marge, there's the truth... and then there's the "truth""
Mr 13, when he was Mr 6, coined a brilliant phrase that I still use today. Some things are true. Others, in his words, are “true enough to believe.”
In a world where many of us get a lot of our news from social media, True Enough to Believe has become the criteria for whether or not to share a story. But should we be a bit more discerning? How do we tell the truth from the “truth”? It’s easy to just click “share” when all we’ve read is the headline and number of likes. I think we can do a little better than that, though, so here’s what I try to bear in mind before I share a news story:
A is for address. Is the story from time.com, or is it from realchemtrailtruth.org? I’m not saying one is always truthful and the other is always not, but it's a good place to start.
B is for background. If you haven’t heard of the site, what does the “about” say? Is it a satirical site? What are the other stories on the site about?
C is for check it… the two best places to do that are Snopes.com (a dedicated debunking site) and plain old Google. With Google, just copy and paste the entire article into your search window and see what comes up.
And D (bonus!) is for date. Always worth a look before you share that story about the latest outrage or scandal. Wait… that story is from 2009?
A, B, C and D… something to think about before you share that “true enough to believe” story.