For almost a week in the middle of May, “Citi Bike Karen” was the face of American racism. A white pregnant physician’s assistant caught on video arguing with a group of Black men about who had the right to a rented bike, Sarah Comrie was crying and yelling for help. The video went viral, racking up national media coverage and over 40 million views.
Comrie was doxxed, put on leave by her employer and accused by civil rights attorney Ben Crump of “weaponiz(ing) her tears” in ways that “endangered” the men in the video.
There was just one problem with the story: It went viral not for its accuracy, but because it fit many people’s preconceived notions about race in America. It turns out that Comrie was the victim – and the person with the right to the bike – and her attorney has the receipts to prove it.
NBC News’ New York affiliate was one of several news outlets that confirmed that the receipt matched the rental code on the bike, causing NBC News to update its original story and Crump to delete his tweet.
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False narratives often spread quick and confirm our biases
Confirmation bias, or the human brain’s tendency to prefer evidence that reinforces existing beliefs, is not new. Nor is the difficulty in overcoming it. What is new is the constant stream of out-of-context or entirely false narratives that fly across the world in a moment − and across our often biased, narrow sources of news and commentary. Instead of thinking critically, we react, sometimes with harmful consequences, as Comrie discovered.
Fox News ran into this problem this month when it ran a story that turned out to be false. The story fit the conservative narrative – homeless veterans were being evicted from hotels in favor of migrants. Instead of holding their fire to fact-check, multiple Fox News programs spread a falsehood that they later had to correct on air after a local news outlet dug up the truth.
In 2019, numerous left-of-center political commentators deleted tweets that – sometimes violently – reacted to a white teenager with a MAGA hat who appeared to be smirking at an elderly Native American man. Nick Sandmann sued several news organizations for their coverage of a 12-second video that, like Comrie’s story, went viral for all the wrong reasons. A couple of days later, a longer version of the video showed Sandmann was a kid being harassed by a professional protester and other adult agitators.
Sandmann reached a settlement with CNN, The Washington Post and NBC News. Last year, a federal judge dismissed Sandmann’s lawsuit against Gannett (the owner of USA TODAY), The New York Times, ABC News and CBS News.
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3 steps to protect others and ourselves from spreading false information
All of us can take three steps to overcome confirmation bias and easy access to social media from endangering people and making ourselves look like fools. The first is to slow down and think critically when we read something that perfectly fits our worldview. Second, we must wait for all the facts to come out and look for original sources. Third – and hardest of all – let the evidence dictate our opinion, not the other way around.
It’s not easy to overcome confirmation bias. I’ve deleted my share of thoughtless, factually incorrect Facebook posts. But it is our obligation to try. Trust often doesn’t fly as far or fast as out-of-context viral stories, and any of us could be Comrie, who says she has received death threats, and Sandmann, who spent over a year pursuing legal action against multiple news outlets.
We’ve all been the fool who contributed to the problem of not waiting for the facts or going to the trouble of finding them. In an era of viral misinformation, we can be part of the solution or part of the problem. The silver lining of the Comrie incident is that it should confirm the one bias worth keeping: waiting (at least) 48 hours before having an opinion on viral stories.
Dustin Siggins is founder of Proven Media Solutions.
