Here are four questions to ask routinely about any public statement, written or spoken. Note these are not judgemental questions; their aim is to help you work out whether the statement is reliable. You will still need to make a positive or negative judgement!
Who is Saying it?
The same statement made by a billionaire and by someone just sanctioned and finding their benefits suspended, will carry very different meanings. Words do not carry only their surface meaning. Their context is just as important, if you are to interpret their underlying meaning.
Remember, words may have more than one context. If I quote someone else, it may be worth asking this question of both the originator of the words and me.
Why Are They Saying it?
This questions both the speaker and the listener. The listener needs to understand the speaker’s motivation. The context may help you decide about their motivation. Remember too, the motivation may be layered. A story about personal hardship may be intended to be inspirational but at the same time may be a way to build trust as part of a sales talk.
Words spoken by a wealthy business person may be intended to be helpful but they should meet a degree of suspicion. The speaker is trying to build credibility and will meet suspicion of their motives. This is a real challenge for people in business. On balance the more suspicious your audience is, the better. There’s not a lot you can do about the fact of suspicion. You simply need to take up the challenge of building trust.
Who Benefits?
If a billionaire business person, standing for election, promises to cut taxes for the wealthy, you have the answer to this question. It cuts to the core of any message, however the speaker dresses it up, other wealthy people will benefit.
No amount of speaking the language of the people, promising them real change, etc will make one iota of difference. Of course, the answer to this question can just as easily be good news for the most disadvantaged. The challenge is to spot what is genuine and take the rest as window dressing.
Who Loses Out?
This can sometimes be the hardest of the four questions. We all want to believe the promises we hear from politicians and preachers. A message that speaks my language and offers easy solutions to my problems can be very seductive. The challenge is to listen carefully and work out who will indeed lose out.
I don’t mean the obvious. A speech, like so many we hear these days, may blame immigrants for our social ills. This question is not so much about the truth of this claim but pushes us to ask, who actually will lose out. History is littered with populations who, carried away on a tidal wave of rhetoric, vote against their own interests.
By all means leap on the next passing bandwagon but it is always worth checking you know exactly where it is taking you.
Do you have any questions that help you test whether what you hear or read is valid?