When I was a child, I often was told, “Don’t believe everything you see on TV!” Now, I tell my children, “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet!”
Way back when, if we needed to know something, we would reference a set of encyclopedias, books in a library and periodicals that arrived in the mail. All these published sources underwent some sort of review process before becoming available to the public.
In junior high and high school, I had to write papers that included a bibliography, which is a list of all the sources I used in my research. The importance of using verified sources continued as I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree.
This ability to vet sources has served me well in a journalism career in a science field. Whenever I hear the dairy industry call for decisions to be backed by sound science, I know I am not alone in wanting information based on what we know to be true.
The invention of the internet has given us access to so much information. Search engines can help us find just about anything we’d like to know. Advertisements are now attuned to the things it thinks we need to know. And plenty of platforms are ready to feed us useless information that we don’t necessarily need or want to know.
The beauty, and struggle, with the internet is that it allows anyone to publish information. It doesn’t take much experience to start a website or blog, and social media platforms are meant for everyone to create and share information.
While there is a lot of good information online, there is also inaccurate or even flat-out false information out there. We’ve all seen posts and articles from activist groups claiming to expose the truth about agriculture, when in fact what is being shared couldn’t be any further from the truth. We know this because we’re on the inside when it comes to agriculture.
But what about when you’re on the outside trying to find information on a subject you’d like to know more about? How do you know if you can trust the source and what it is sharing with you? There are a lot of handy tools online to help us find information, but it is still up to each of us to vet our sources.
That’s why we are releasing a new interactive search engine specifically trained on our industry-leading content. Ask AgProud allows you to ask a question and receive an answer you can trust in seconds from our database of more than 35,000 articles. It will also provide you with a list of articles where the information was obtained should you want to learn more.
I invite you to try it out today at Ask AgProud. Save that link, tear out the QR code found on this page or find the feature at the top of our website.
While I would still say, “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet,” know that there is at least one place you can turn to, and that’s Ask AgProud.
