Cindy Otis TRUE OR FALSE: A CIA ANALYST'S GUIDE TO SPOTTING FAKE NEWS

With the election coming up in November, it's more important than ever that we become discerning consumers of our news. It's why I was so excited to see Cindy L. Otis' new book, TRUE OR FALSE: A CIA ANALYST'S GUIDE TO SPOTTING FAKE NEWS. It's directed at young-adult readers, but I think we can all learn a lot from it! I asked Cindy to come talk about it. Take it away, Cindy! I spent most of my professional career in the CIA, thanks mostly to my dad’s love for James Bond films, sparking in me an interest in the world of intelligence early on. I was also one of those kids that was completely fascinated by the world—my room was covered in flags and pictures from around the world. I wanted to learn anything I could about other countries, cultures, languages, and histories, and see as much of this Earth as possible (still do!). And I got to do a lot of that at the CIA.

I worked in the directorate that does intelligence analysis, which means I spent most of my time reading intelligence of every kind about important issues in different parts of the world, analyzing them, and then writing that analysis up to help US policymakers understand what was happening. So, basically the opposite of James Bond.

Governments and intelligence agencies have long used things like disinformation, propaganda, deception, and covert influence to either hide what they’re doing themselves, or to try to influence events in other countries. Until the last few years when people learned that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, however, these things were rarely in the news. But working at the CIA, this is just par for the course. As an analyst, I was trained on how to spot things like disinformation and deception, but I knew that was not the case for the average teen, or even adult. I realized I could write something based on my experiences that just might help readers understand what they were seeing happen.

Even though my entire professional life was steeped in the world of disinformation, I faced a couple of challenges in writing TRUE OR FALSE. I knew from the beginning that I wanted the book to be two things: actionable and hopeful. Writing it, I also knew there was a huge risk that by showing just how pervasive disinformation and fake news are, readers might just throw up their hands and decide they cannot trust anything. I’d seen it happening myself in recent years—friends, family, and neighbors get so overwhelmed with all the conflicting information popping up online that they decided to just check out. They didn’t feel like they could trust the media, the government, or any other institution upon which they’d previously relied. That was exactly the opposite of what I wanted my book to do.

To make it actionable and hopeful, I wrote TRUE OR FALSE in two parts. The first part includes historical examples going all the way back to ancient Egypt to show how fake news and disinformation have been used throughout time. These examples are key because, even though historical figures like Marie Antoinette didn’t have social media like we do, they give us valuable lessons about how to confront the problem today. The second part of the book is all about ACTION. It’s essentially a step-by-step guide—with practices, even—on how to spot false information yourself. It covers everything from how to discover your own biases that affect how you see information to helping readers learn how to avoid spreading false information on social media during a crisis situation. I get asked pretty regularly why I wrote TRUE OR FALSE specifically for YA readers. As a huge YA reader myself, I know personally how transformative books could be when they were written specifically for teens. My book collection is massive, but it fits into two neat categories—history and YA. Young readers are also more online than any other generation, and they’re absolutely inundated with information all day long—at school, on their social media feeds, in texting and messaging apps, from the news. Their lives are noisy. (Confession: The internet became A Thing in households when I was growing up.) So they need, more than anyone else, the tools and tactics to not just spot false information themselves, but make sure they’re not spreading it, too. Adopting these good habits will pay off in the long-term by helping to reduce the amount of false information online because we’ve got a generation ready to fight it.

When it comes down to it, I see combatting fake news and disinformation as an all-of-us problem. But we can’t be part of the solution unless we know how to help—that’s where TRUE OR FALSE comes in.

Book link: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250239501


I am participating in the BookShop Affiliate Program. This program pays bloggers a small percentage of each purchased book from a post. But the best part is, purchases are fulfilled by bookstores near you, thereby, helping to keep your local bookstores afloat too! It's good for everyone! Click the book cover to purchase this title through Bookshop.