I Can't Trust Anything Online
As the title states. I cannot trust anything online anymore. Every web page, 'news' article, or post has serious slant to the underlying facts.
This has been on my mind for quite some time. And I wish I could remedy the whole situation but it is something I can't. I am looking at this through the eyes of an accountant/finance guy.
As in my previous post about filters, I will be setting up high lenses to combat other's thinking from creeping into my own. In order to so I will be throwing out all secondary + sources of information. If I am looking at a company or reading a news article, I will go to source documents to obtain the best information I can. The news is only there to grab attention and steal your focus.
I remember reading (wish I could remember the book) about cost of information. The highest quality sources of information are ones that you have to pay for, or there is a large cost to produce. When a company issues statements, those statements carry a lot of cost to the organization (in terms of human time and dollars to produce). If they are lying on those statements, the executives can face stiff penalties. There is a cost to factually incorrect data.
For regular news sites, there is no cost. They can (for the most part) produce what they want for an author's time. They don't have to be factually correct, only attention grabbing.
Going forward, I will not be reading analyst reports or other low quality information. If something hits the news wire, I will revert back to the source documents (SEC docs in the case of company information). If it is normal news and I hear something, I am just going to assume the following: 1.) It isn't nearly as bad as being reported 2.)The opposite side of the argument probably has some merits 3.) If I can't verify through any sort of source docs, I am going to assume something happened and leave it that.
I am going to be going to a verify first model of thinking. Everything else has to go into the "something happened bucket but how it's being reported probably isn't close to accurate."
I'm taking my attention and focus back.