This is Part 3 of a multi-part series on digital literacy, fact-checking, and mis/disinformation online. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.
SIFT Move 1: Stop
In Part 2 of this series, I went over the four moves that Michael A. Caulfield advises we make whenever we encounter a claim online: Stop; Investigate the Source; Find Better Coverage; and Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context. Caulfield refers to this four-move approach to digital literacy with the acronym SIFT.
The first move is straightforward enough. Stop. Before going any further, consider what, if anything, you know about the source in front of you. What do you know about the author? What do you know about the website or publication? What reason do you have to trust it?
As I mentioned in Part 1, the link my father sent me in April 2023 was to TB Daily News, a site I’d never heard of. I had no knowledge of it and therefore no reason to trust it. Had I followed Caulfield’s advice to the letter, I would have stopped right there and moved on to investigating the source. At the time, though, my curiosity got the better of me. I clicked the link.
Immediately, I had concerns.
The headline, for instance, seemed more inflammatory and less informative than I’d have expected from a legitimate news source. In rhetorical terms, it was long on pathos (appeal to emotion) and short on logos (appeal to reason). Words like “corrupt,” “innocent,” and “coverup” carry a strong emotional charge, but unless accompanied by more precise language—“accused,” “indicted,” or “convicted,” for example—they tell us very little. Had the trooper’s corruption been proven or merely alleged? Had the girlfriend been acquitted by a jury? Had a grand jury refused to indict? The headline gives no indication. The photos, too, seemed chosen to provoke rather than inform. Smiles, scowls, and middle fingers divide the players into two camps—heroes and villains—but who are they? Four people are referenced in the headline, while six are pictured. Who is who?
As I read on, I saw more of the same. Here’s the opening paragraph:
The first two sentences establish an objective, “just the facts, ma’am” tone. Aside from some clumsy wording in sentence two—which, if we notice it at all, might suggest to us a lack of editorial oversight—there is nothing overtly unjournalistic about what we are reading. Although sentence three reintroduces some pathos (Read was “castigated widely” and “face[s] decades in prison”), it too is factually accurate.
This changes in sentence four: “But as it would turn out at least a dozen people likely witnessed O’Keefe being violently beaten to death, before hatching an elaborate plot to frame Read for killing him.”
This, dear reader, is a masterstroke of misinformation. The phrase “as it would turn out” strongly implies that what we are about to be told is established fact, while the only indication otherwise, the word “likely,” is buried in the following clause. In sentence five, it is dispensed with altogether. We are given the simple declarative: “The coverup was aided and abetted.” No “likely,” no “allegedly”—just “was.” The phrasing is identical to that used in the first two sentences to report undisputed facts. John O’Keefe was found dead. Karen Read was charged with a crime. The coverup was aided and abetted. The three statements are made to appear equivalent, yet two refer to matters of public record and the third to what is still, a year later, an unsubstantiated claim.
With this rhetorical sleight of hand, allegation takes on the appearance of fact. Lest our reason catch hold of the misdirection, the final sentence of the paragraph once again appeals to our emotion: “This is the story of one woman, alone, facing down some of the most powerful, well-protected people in the state. . . .” Who wouldn’t be stirred?
It goes on like this throughout, adopting a pose of faux journalistic objectivity one moment, then replacing it with incensed subjectivity the next. What appear to be genuine court documents and booking records, for instance, are juxtaposed with nakedly prejudicial rants. One individual is described as “the loser of the family,” another as an “out of control meathead.” You get the idea. Somewhere around those lines, I decided I had seen enough. The answer to Caulfield’s question—did I know and trust the source—was no on both counts.
It was time to move on.
SIFT Move 2: Investigate the Source
Up to now, I had been doing what Stanford researchers Sam Wineburg and Sara McGrew call vertical reading, that is, scrolling up and down within a single website, trying to determine its credibility based solely on internal clues. It’s what most of us do when we encounter information online, but Wineburg and McGrew have shown it to be a particularly ineffective way to evaluate a source’s credibility. This shouldn’t be surprising, really. It’s a bit like interviewing a job candidate and hiring them without first verifying their employment history or checking their references. A more effective and efficient method is what Wineburg and McGrew call lateral reading—i.e., opening additional browser tabs (arranged laterally on the screen, hence the name) and finding out what other websites have to say about the site we’re evaluating.
I did a limited amount of this last April. I had learned enough about TB Daily News from vertical reading alone, I felt, that I could confidently dismiss it as a source and begin looking for more reliable coverage elsewhere. In the year since, however, I have circled back, done my lateral reading, and, in the process, learned a good deal more about the site and its owner, Aidan Kearney, a.k.a. “Turtleboy.”
One way I did this was by searching other websites for the domain name tbdailynews.com. In other words, I excluded TB Daily News itself from my search so that I could see what others had to say about it. Google makes this easy to do; just use this search syntax:
Because I excluded only tbdailynews.com and not any of its affiliated social media accounts, my search results still included a lot of TB Daily News’ own marketing. Among the other results, though, was Media Bias / Fact Check, which a bit more lateral reading revealed to be generally well regarded (though some consider its methodology unscientific).
Keeping this caveat in mind, I clicked on the link and saw that MB/FC had labeled TB Daily News a “questionable site.” The two main reasons were “sensationalism,” which I had already noted myself, and “lack of transparency,” which I hadn’t. According to MB/FC, as of June 2023, TB Daily News “d[id] not offer an about page, mission statement, disclose author names, or who owns the website.” Opening another browser tab, I hopped back over to tbdailynews.com and confirmed that, with the exception of author names (all articles were now attributed to Aidan Kearney), that was still the case.
Why does transparency matter? Because, as Caulfield explains, an important part of evaluating a source’s reliability is assessing its process, aim, and expertise. How does it ensure accuracy? What is it trying to accomplish? How much knowledge and experience does it have in the subject? Legitimate news organizations provide this information (see the Washington Post, New York Times, and Boston Globe, for example), whereas TB Daily News does not.
A little more lateral reading, and I learned that lack of transparency had long been a hallmark of Kearney’s writing. He had blogged anonymously until 2015, when an article by Clive McFarlane in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette identified him as the author of what was then called TurtleBoy Sports. According to McFarlane, even after his identity was revealed, Kearney “still claim[ed] that Turtleboy [was] a number of different bloggers,” though McFarlane’s reporting indicated otherwise.
Sensationalism, too, seems to have been a part of Kearney’s repertoire from the start. McFarlane describes TurtleBoy Sports as “a crass and craven local blog that peddles the cheap thrills that dehumanizing groups and individuals bring to some people.” He takes particular offense at the “vile and degrading terms” that Kearney—a former track coach and history teacher—uses to describe children and parents in the local school system, all while “hidden behind a veil of anonymity.”
In lifting that veil, McFarlane revealed two things about TurtleBoy Sports that the site itself had not publicly disclosed: its ownership and its aims. In 2015, when the article was published, Kearney was “the registered and sole owner of Turtleboy Digital Marketing, a domestic limited partnership described as a ‘blogging website that will raise revenue through selling AD space and possibly merchandize [sic].’” Another lateral hop back to TB Daily News suggests that advertising and merchandise remain the central prongs of Kearney’s business model. The ads today are plentiful enough to slow my browser, while the merch store—dropping all pretense of objectivity—includes a bountiful selection of “Free Karen Read” apparel and accessories.
Sometime after McFarlane’s article appeared, Kearney changed the name of his blog to TB Daily News and began referring to himself as a journalist, investigative journalist, and on one social media platform “Journalism Jesus.” This despite having had no prior training or experience in journalism. Most reporting on Kearney refers to him as a blogger rather than a journalist, and a glance through the editing history of his recently created (January 2024) Wikipedia page reveals this to be a point of contention among editors. Another point of contention: whether to refer to the felony charges he is currently facing for witness intimidation and wiretapping.
Although a year ago I wouldn’t have found Kearney’s yet-to-be-created page on Wikipedia, I would have found McFarlane’s article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and possibly the entry on Media Bias / Fact Check. A little time spent reading laterally would have told me not to waste my time on TB Daily News, but to go on instead to Caulfield’s third move, find better coverage.
I’ll do this in my next post. I’ll also go through Caulfield’s fourth and final move, trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.
In the meantime, see this recent article from the Boston Globe on Kearney, his role in the controversy surrounding the Read case, and the public’s often problematic obsession with true crime.
