Fact-based, or fact-free worldview?
On missing Hans Rosling
In 2018, Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness was published. Many of us had already become fans of the author’s TED talks and YouTube videos, but the book he wrote with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund went into much more detail about many of the ways that we are wrong about things, and how we can be less wrong, less often. Bill Gates called it “One of the most important books I’ve ever read — an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.”
The book inspired me enough to purchase copies in English and the original Swedish to loan or give to friends or associates who showed an interest. I also completed a program of study and earned a certificate from Rosling’s organization Gapminder, an independent educational non-profit fighting global misconceptions, as evidence of my awareness of source criticism and the importance of basing analysis and conclusions on verifiable current evidence.
Tragically, Rosling passed away from pancreatic cancer in early 2017, but the subject he spent so much of the last part of his life devoted to remains more important than ever. We are inundated with news and information demanding our attention, much of which is of questionable quality, and many of us are not up to the task of filtering or adequately judging the quality of said information.
This has become particularly obvious in the polarized realm of U.S. political discourse.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an American politician, diplomat, and social scientist, once said, ”Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Developing a common perspective would be much easier if we could agree on verifiable facts. However, that can only happen if both sides make good faith efforts to determine what is fact, and what is instead fantasy, designed to appeal to emotions but having little (if any) basis in actual truth.
Some lessons from my many years of Christian education have stuck with me over the decades. One is the parable of The Mote and the Beam given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
— Matthew 7:1–5 KJV
I certainly don’t want to fall victim to disinformation. To avoid this, I strive to get my news and information from politically neutral sources dedicated to providing fact reporting and analysis rather than just subjective opinion. To determine the relative trustworthiness of sources, I use Ad Fontes Media. On the chart below, I show their ratings for four news sources I have come to trust: AP News and Reuters for general news, and The Wall Street Journal and The Economist for a more economic focus. As you can see on the chart, they all tend to rank close to neutral regarding Political bias while ranking highly on the News Value and Reliability scale.
I have included a link to Ad Fontes Media below, and I encourage you to find out where your preferred news sources rank on their scale. If you have trouble doing so, please let me know, as I have a subscription to their service.
Another reference source I have grown to depend on is FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. They monitor the factual accuracy of what major U.S. political players say in TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases, and their goal is to apply the best practices of journalism and scholarship to increase public knowledge and understanding.
A recent article of theirs fact-checked Trump’s address to Congress on March 4, 2025. I encourage all to read it to get a sample of the important service they provide:
https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/factchecking-trumps-address-to-congress-2/
There are many other reliable sources of news and information worldwide. Rather than trying to provide a comprehensive, rank-ordered list of such sources, I think it is first important to establish whether or not one agrees with the basic concepts involved with honestly, humbly searching for the truth, regardless of where that search might lead. If a person cannot imagine any type or amount of evidence that would sway them from their current opinion, it isn't easy to have a meaningful exchange of ideas.
https://www.ted.com/talks?q=Hans%20Rosling&sort=relevance
https://www.youtube.com/@gapminder/videos
https://adfontesmedia.com/
https://www.factcheck.org
https://apnews.com
https://www.reuters.com
https://www.wsj.com/
https://www.economist.com