People can be misunderstood in face to face situations, but when it comes to fake news online, headlines, statements, and tones are hard to interpret what they are typing to put out. Sometimes it’s hard to understand whether your news source is sincere or not.
When people think of fake news, or at least when I think about it, I think of social media and fake stories such as “the onion,” but really fake news has been on since forever. As Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” This quote around 100 years ago and this just proves that people have been misdirected since forever.
Fake news could mean as much a lie. The definition of news is “newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent events,” and that could pretty much be about something as little as thinking someone talked behind your back when, in reality, that is entirely untrue.
Although fake news can be put on a much larger scale like worldwide accessible stories, that could do much more damage than hurting your feelings. But there are many different kinds of fake news, “there’s a difference between simply posting propaganda and actually turning it into something that the target audience consumes.” — Trend micro. Some of the recent news that has received a lot of attention would be the Rampage at the US capital, which was “provoked” by Donald trump’s tweet: “Our country has had enough,” Trump said. “We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal.” of course, this tweet did not physically make the protesters break-in, but there is a lot of controversy whether he was incentivizing it or not.
There are many problems with fake news, but there are some pros, like the lessons we can learn from fake news. There was a quiz we played during class where you had to spot the fake news, and I must say, I fell for quite a few of them. Fake news can help you learn lessons that you can apply in real-life situations, like identifying whether something sounds off or not. There are some solutions to identifying fake news, such as:
- Checking whether sources are credible (Snopes)
- Ask someone what they think; maybe they have more common sense than you do)
- Cross-check with more reliable sources such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC
This would be good for searching weather facts are real, but frequently even if newspapers are well known, a lot of the time, they have a bias that could shift your opinion one way or the other
References
Fake news and cyber propaganda: The use and abuse of social media. (n.d.). Trend Micro | Enterprise Cybersecurity Solutions. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/pl/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/fake-news-cyber-propaganda-the-abuse-of-social-media
News definition – Google search. (n.d.). Google. https://www.google.com/search?q=news+definition&rlz=1C5CHFA_enSG932SG932&oq=news+defni&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i10i457j0i10l7.5057j1j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on
Yes- the political bias is also something to be aware of too. Is there any such thing as a neutral newspaper?
Well, I would have to say that newspapers generally don’t just state pure facts, otherwise, it would be just retelling a story. For example: when we listened to Lee Mcdermott’s story and you wanted us to write a reflection about what we learned or what stuck with us, it was solely based on my opinion and what I took from his life journey rather than retelling every detail of his life.
There are always going to be different analysis’s and conceptual understanding of certain issues, I think people read newspapers to not just understand the facts of a certain issue but also to build on top of your thinking by listening to other people options; this is where I think bias comes in.
So that was a good question, I’m sure some sites list the pros and cons of controversial topics. But who knows how popular they are…