How to Be Sure

The subtitle for chapter eight in UnSpun is “How to Be Sure.” Well, how can we really be sure that our facts are actually facts? After all, we are misled so often and pulled in so many different directions that it is hard to know what is real and what is illusion. We fall so easily for the traps that propagandists and advertisers so often set for us.

I like that this chapter gives us ways we can try to avoid this deception. It is one of the few chapters in the book that tells us what to do and not just what to avoid. Rule #4, Check Primary Sources, was one that really caught my attention. I feel that people just believe the first stories they hear because they do not feel like digging deeper for real information. We are all guilty of doing this. Even newspaper headlines can sometimes be deceiving because they often include words which have been taken out of context. However, chapter four says we should read newspaper articles thinking, “Does this story really back up the headline?” If we read the article in depth and search for details, we can tell whether or not the headline is appropriate.