Reading the news with a pencil: seven questions I ask before I believe a headline

We don't have a newspaper at home, so I read them at the library on Saturdays. Three papers, same event, three different headlines. The first time I noticed it I thought one of them must be lying. Now I think it is more complicated than that. This is not a perfect method. It's just what I do, in simple English, with a pencil.

1. Is this a report or an opinion?

Newspapers publish news reports and also opinion columns and editorials. A report tells what happened: who, what, when, where. An opinion piece tells what the writer thinks about it. On a phone they often look exactly the same. I look for labels like "Opinion", "Analysis" or "Editorial", or a small photo of the writer next to the title.

2. Who is saying this?

"Sources said", "officials said", "it is learnt that". Anonymous sources are sometimes necessary. But if the whole story stands on one of them, I trust it less. A named person on the record, a document, a court order or numbers I can look at myself are better. Also, alleged, accused and booked are not the same as convicted. A person who is accused is not yet proven guilty. I used to ignore that difference.

3. Numbers need a denominator

"Cases up by 50 per cent." From what to what? If something goes from 2 to 3 that is also a 50 per cent rise. A percentage without the actual numbers tells me almost nothing. I look for the real counts and for the comparison (this month with the same month last year, or with last month?). A graph whose vertical axis does not start at zero can also make a small change look dramatic.

4. Correlation is not cause

Imagine a headline: "Students who eat breakfast score higher." Maybe breakfast helps. Or maybe the families who have time to cook breakfast also have more time to help with study. The headline says breakfast causes marks. The study, if it exists, usually only says the two go together. This is an example I made up to explain, not a real study.

5. What is the date?

Old stories get shared as if they are new. Photos of a flood from a few years ago appear again during this year's rain. I check the date at the top of the article, and the date of the photo or event if it is given.

6. Do other papers agree on the basic facts?

I do not mean "two papers say it so it must be true". I mean the basic facts (what happened, where, when, how many) should be the same in every paper even when the headline and the framing are different. When the basic facts do not match, I wait.

Here is what happened on one Saturday. Water supply in our area was cut for a day for pipeline repair. One paper's headline said "Residents face water crisis". Another said "Pipeline repair completed smoothly". Both were true. They just picked different things to highlight. The first headline made me feel everything is falling apart, the second made me feel everything is fine. The boring truth, from the notice put up by the water department: supply was cut for a day, repair was done, supply came back in the evening.

7. How do I feel?

If a story makes me suddenly angry or scared, and it asks me to share it right now, I stop. Strong feeling is exactly when I check less. People who want to spread false stories know this very well.

What I don't do

I do not think all media is lying. That is also a trap. "Everything is fake" is as lazy as "everything is true". Good reporting exists and it takes real work. I also try to read at least one article a week from a side I disagree with, to see how their argument is built. I still do not enjoy it. And I try to read the whole article, not only the headline, because headlines are written to be clicked.

Local news matters to me because it is the one place where I can check things myself. If the paper says the road near the market has been repaired, I can cycle there and look. Big national stories are harder to verify, so I trust them slowly.

I made a small card with these seven questions and stuck it on my study table. It is not a rulebook. It is a pencil mark in the margin that says: wait a minute. Try it on one article this week and tell me what you find.