The Fight Against Fake News Starts at the Local Library

Seattle librarian develops class to help the public combat misinformation.



This guy is a warrior in the fight against fake news.

Di Zhang, an adult services librarian at Seattle's Central Library, helped developed a new curriculum, "Fake News Survival Guide: Resources and Tips for Staying Informed." The free class, offered twice every three months in a library computer lab, promotes media literacy and helps participants -- mostly adult seniors -- navigate the ridiculous amount of misinformation on the internet.

Sounds like the perfect class for your uncle who is still forwarding you those insane Obama-is-a-Muslim emails.

More here: Fake News? A Seattle Librarian Offers a Class to Help Separate Truth from Fiction

Dogs in a Chinese restaurant? It's not what you think.

But the San Antonio Express-News led many to believe a Chinese eatery was serving up something gross.


Over the weekend, the San Antonio Express-News posted a bland weekly roundup on local restaurant inspections. One of them included an area Chinese restaurant, Lee's Garden Chinese Restaurant, where an inspector saw a dog on the premises. Like, somebody's pet. Perhaps not particularly sanitary, depending on where the dog was hanging out, but whatever. It got the necessary citation.

However, when the restaurant inspection report was posted to the San Antonio Express-News' Facebook page on Saturday, they used the headline "Inspectors Find Dogs in Chinese Restaurant" accompanied by a photo of food. The insinuation, of course, is that the Chinese restaurant was caught serving dog meat.

When you click through to the article, the actual headline on mysanantonio.com simply reads "San Antonio restaurant inspections: February 17, 2017." The report notes that "roaches and dogs were seen in the establishment." And that's it. (Okay, the roaches are gross.) That was apparently all they needed to put together a racist, misleading Facebook post. Guaranteed to get some clicks.

Of course, nobody actually reads anything. The misleading headline inspired a deluge of Facebook comments along the lines of "Ooh hell no I just had Chinese last night... Mfs trynna kill us" and "Fuck Chinese lol."