If it sounds too good, or too bad to be true, corroborate, corroborate, corroborate.
Newspapers were the bastions of information keeping the general public updated on the events of the day right up until mass access to the internet. The internet has shifted the power once held by these institutions and provided a voice to opinion-driven writing.
Journalism, really good journalism
- strives for accuracy and provides corroborated facts
- stands apart from political pressure and corporate influence as an independent and objective voice
- looks at a story from every side, providing fairness and impartiality
- is represented in the professionalism of journalists who acknowledge and correct errors when they occur.
The integrity of the media has been on a downward trajectory for some time. Gallup cites that only 32% of those polled “say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media. (See full report: Gallup)
When News is Not News
Fake news is not new, you might know it by a different name however, propaganda.
Propaganda is defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” It is also a committee of cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church responsible for foreign missions founded in 1622, if you capitalize the P…but that is off topic.
Let’s be honest now, fake news is easy to spot when you have your objective thinking cap on. You know it when you read it, but the amplification of these “articles” makes us all take a second look. Maybe? Could it be true?
Pizzagate was so outlandish my first response was “What is this crap doing in my news feed?” I clicked thru because I could not believe something so outrageous was trending and people were citing it as fact.
Truth from a Thespian
At the Washington D.C. premier of his new movie Fences, actor Denzel Washington had a brief but powerful exchange with a reporter, as quoted in Mashable:
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed," Washington said in response to a question regarding a fake news story about the actor's political leanings before the election.
Washington then asked the reporter what the long-term effects of too much information would be before explaining that one of the problems is the "need to be first, not even to be true anymore."
"So what a responsibility you all have to tell the truth—not just to be first, but to tell the truth," Washington told the reporter and other members of the press surrounding him. (Here is the full article from Mashable)
His last comment regarding responsibility is the heart of the media’s problem. Fake news…neigh propaganda has a voice because society does not trust the media to be responsible to provide accurate, corroborated facts that tell the story fairly and impartially.