It is called `deliberate ignorance’

Visiting with a new group of penguin friends

By Ken Tingley

Two decades ago most of us probably wondered if our search engine needed to have its oil changed.

We’ve come a long way since then.

The internet and the information it provided opened up a world where gigabytes of data were at our disposal. With this torrent of information came nefarious email scams and a flood of low-quality information we often found hard to believe.

But sometimes we believed it anyway.

And worse, we shared it.

This relentless stream of information turned human attention into a resource to be seized and exploited by advertisers and content providers.

Attention-grabbing headlines are often used to grab our attention and our time to help monetize page views to earn someone advertising revenue.

As students of life, we were taught that critical thinking was the key to unlocking the solution to any problem by weighing the facts and logic. The more information we had, the better chance we had to solve the problem. That is not necessarily the case when the information is suspect or slanted by bad actors.

New research is promoting the need for new skill set to help us fight back against “fake news” with something called “deliberate ignorance.”

It’s kind of like reading a movie review where the writer issues a “spoiler alert” about how the movie ends. We deliberately choose not to read it because it will ruin the movie- watching experience. In this case, we choose not to read it because we don’t believe it is worth our time.

As a newspaper guy for four decades, I think I came into the internet age with a heightened sense of what was affectionately called in the newspaper business a “BS meter.” It was a skill set that allowed you to identify bogus stories and facts quickly and not waste any time on them.

That skill became essential over the last two decades and is one we all need to develop.

For me, it was simple: When I saw an attention-grabbing story, I immediately searched for it elsewhere online. If no other website in the entire world had the information, it made it suspect and not worth my time.

Secondly, I check the source of the information. If it came from a news source I have never heard of before, it was suspect. A quick search will often reveal the source’s validity or political persuasion. There are many fake sites that piggy back on the names of legitimate sites. There was once a website called “Houston Chronicle TV” that had absolutely nothing to do with the totally legitimate Houston Chronicle or any TV station.

In writing this article, I found that there is a Wikipedia page that lists dozens and dozens of fake news websites. You might want to check it out to see what I mean.

The goal is to develop “critical ignorance.” By being hyper vigilant about the source of what you are reading, you will know what you should NOT be spending your time reading.

There is a new article from the folks at Harvard who study this stuff. They cited a new paper just published in “Current Directions in Psychological Science,” of which I do not have a subscription. They write:

“Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competitive of critical ignoring - choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities.”

Think of it as avoiding those long and involved posts that your friend posts about their cat, or kids, or their latest exercise regimen. You know what they are going to say and you are not benefitting from this information in anyway.

Essentially, what they are promoting is there is value to paying less attention to things. They conclude:

“Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps and information disorders of today’s attention economy.”

If you work at it and avoid the attention-grabbing traps, eventually you will know “fake news” when you. Reading less may just make you smarter.

One of my new friends at the aquarium in New Orleans.

New penguins

My son’s move from San Antonio to New Orleans this year means some significant changes for me.

I had to leave behind my season pass to Sea World and it’s incredible penguin habitat in exchange for the Audubon Aquarium of the America’s. I had my first visit this weekend. The penguin habitat was much smaller than the one in San Antonio and there were far fewer penguins.

But at least I got to see some of my favorite creatures. Sunday was the final day of operation for the aquarium before a $41 million in renovations begin that will add 17,000 square fee of exhibit space. The aquarium will be closed for at least six months. When it reopens it will be called the Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium.

For now, the penguins are being moved to another facility. I hope they have a nice summer.

Queensbury senior

One week from today, I will be speaking at the Queensbury Senior Center in a 2 p.m. event.

I will be talking about both my books - “The Last American Editor” and “The Last American Newspaper.” Expect a lot of conversation about newspapers, journalism and their value to the community.

Confederate Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans.

Confederate museum

Just behind the gargantuan National World War II Museum in New Orleans is the tiny Confederate Memorial Hall Museum. But as the woman at the door told me, it is one of the oldest museums in the state of Louisiana at 131 years.

It commemorates the military history and heritage of the South and has one of the largest collections of Confederate Army memorabilia.

After he died, the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis, lay in state at Memorial Hall. Included in the collection are artifacts from Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

The interpretation of history can be a dicey proposition. In one description on why the Civil War happened, the museum lists state’s rights first, then slavery. At another point, it declares that after Fort Sumter was attacked in South Carolina by Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln called out the “Army to help put down what he viewed as a rebellion.”

Obviously, it escalated into something far greater.