In our OpenCdA post titled Highly Recommended on October 14, 2013, we referred to a book entitled Detecting Bull, Second Edition, by Dr. John McManus. It was published in 2012 and was intended to be a classroom textbook for senior high school and college students to help them “…think critically and systematically about news and purportedly factual information in any medium from face-to-face to Facebook to Fox, from the Huffington Post to the Washington Post.”
At the same time Dr. McManus was writing “Detecting Bull”, he was also writing a more consumer-friendly version entitled Don’t Be Fooled! A Citizen’s Guide to News and Information in the Digital Age.
“Don’t Be Fooled!” contains all the concepts and basic information found in “Detecting Bull” and is now available through our local Community Library Network.
Studying either “Detecting Bull” or “Don’t Be Fooled!” will help you better understand the deficiencies in the local and regional skewsmedia’s reporting of our local news.