Unbelieving Americans

#里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀 

本週的外師專欄，大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。
 
From reading Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf, it is possible to learn a valuable lesson about the perils to society of the false claims being made by fake news in the modern era. When a large percentage of the population relies on an untrustworthy media source, such as with the huge number of Americans who have complete faith in Fox News, and that media deliberately tries to distort, misrepresent and cast doubt on the veracity of important issues affecting the world, it creates a segment of the population that is unable to accept facts or comprehend reality. This can be seen with the blatant support of corporate interests in denying that climate change exists, and it is also evident in the deliberately misleading opinions spouted by Trump about COVID-19, which is subsequently parroted by Fox News.

If people are blinded by their prejudices, their political affiliations and their distorted world-views, and they only rely on “news sources” that confirm those biases, then they are supremely susceptible to misinformation. Of course the reverse is true too, because when they are confronted with facts that discredit or disprove their misconceptions, they are just as likely to dismiss the facts out of hand, leading to the situation that exists in the USA right now where there are millions of Americans who do not believe anything that they have not been told by their sole source of news. It is ironic that this kind of situation, which we commonly associate with authoritarian states that have total censorship and where the people are brainwashed by the government as in North Korea and China, can also be so prevalent in a country that prides itself on having totally free press and almost universal access to information. Unfortunately, it is not only confined to the USA.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/us-coronavirus-death-toll-public-opinion-poll-accuracy
 
===我是分隔線===
 
💡這個專欄目的是訓練同學聰明閱讀。
 
上面的貼文內容是我們的實力派外師Alex，針對每週一篇英文文章閱讀後，親自寫出的批判性思考文（不是copy & paste的東西啊）。旨在讓同學知道如何用不同的角度來讀文章。你可以選擇先讀Alex寫的批判文，也可以選擇先讀本次的英文文章連結，但最好兩處都要閱讀才能達到最好的效果。
 
這是個訓練批判性思考的好機會，希望同學不要被文字牽著鼻子走，在閱讀時可以多思考。大家可以善用這個寶貴的資源～
 
舊文連結：
https://www.leedsmayi.com/alex-column
 
Alex是我們的御用老師，每週都會幫梅姨、托托、慕華、金金上英文課。目前星期一晚上有開一班 #里茲螞蟻外師應用英文課程 ，程度高級，充滿知識性與深度。有開放單次付費上課。若你想學習用英文來深度探討各項主題，check it out！
 
Alex老師的應用英文課：
https://www.leedsmayi.com/applied-english.html