How to check a claim before repeating it
Launch library · evergreen read
Before repeating a claim, it helps to ask three simple questions: where did this come from, does the source say what the claim implies it says, and is there a more recent or more reliable source that says something different or more precise about the same issue.
Searching for the original source, rather than trusting a summary of a summary, often reveals that a claim has drifted from what the underlying evidence actually supports, sometimes through nothing more sinister than each retelling simplifying it a little further than the one before it, until the final version bears little resemblance to the source.
This kind of checking takes a small amount of time but protects a campaign's credibility considerably, since a single debunked claim can be used to cast doubt on everything else a campaign says, even when the rest of its case rests on far more solid ground than that one claim.