Fake news: you won’t believe what I think!

If you’ve read my comment pieces in this paper around the time of the American election, then you know two facts: first, I’m American, and second, I’m pretty opinionated about our political landscape and how polarized it’s seemingly become.

Now, during recent weeks, more articles have been written about the rise of one of the main areas that may have drastically helped Trump win the presidency: fake news. While there is a political connection, I’m here to argue that, while it has become more inflated during the past year, this phenomenon has been a problem in the past.

For instance, Alex Jones, the host of his own radio show and a founder of the website Infowars, spends a lot of time presenting ‘fake news’ to the general public. Jones has more than a million likes on his Facebook page and over 490,000 Twitter followers, so it seems he has a decent following. Of all the craziness that this man comes out with, nothing may be worse than his belief that the Sandy Hook shooting – where 20 schoolchildren and six staff members were shot at a Connecticut elementary school – was a hoax, staged with actors. It’s disturbing and insensitive to those impacted by the shooting. And it’s downright scary that people believe what Jones is saying.

To explain to you how dangerous this mindset is, I’ve had an extensive reporting background, writing more than 200 articles for my school paper back home, along with interning for Philadelphia’s two major papers for nearly seven months. As a journalist, I will confirm that mistakes are made – and when they happen, I’ve felt pretty crappy. But it’s one thing to make a mistake. It’s another to intentionally mislead the public by reporting without any conclusive facts or evidence.

We’re not rocket scientists. But reporters have the great privilege of being granted access to interviews with prominent public figures, along with the excuse to knock on random doors on the street to try to uncover a story. ‘Fake news’ is not only a disservice to the public, it also damages the credibility that honest reporters strive for on a daily basis. On the other end of this issue, we as consumers must be mindful of what we are seeing on social media, and whether it is credible or not. As a reporter, this admittedly comes as second nature, but even I have been duped from time to time because of how credible an article may appear. And unfortunately, kids my age do have a tough time deciphering what is credible and what isn’t.

A couple of weeks ago, NPR reported on a study completed by researchers at Stanford University investigating whether middle school, high school and college students could identify different factors differentiating fake news reports from real ones. The researchers were “shocked” at the results, one of which showed that more than 30% of high schoolers thought a fake Fox News Twitter account was more credible than the real one carrying the blue verified tick next to its name.

It should be noted that this was only one study at one university. But if those results are reflected in even a minor way across the United States and other first world countries, that’s scary. What’s perhaps most troubling about this rise of ‘fake news’ is why audiences are seemingly demanding it. Is it because they like what they are reading? Does it reaffirm their beliefs? If so, when did basic journalistic principles like checking sources, reporting facts, and trying to be as objective and balanced as possible stop mattering to the general public?

As cynical as I am, I do believe there are enough intelligent people out there to realise when they are reading an illegitimate source. The problem is that some of these fake articles are really deceptive. For example, native advertising appears like a general article at first, until the end when you realise what you’ve been reading is focused around a specific TV show, product, or service.

Perhaps more importantly, I do not think ‘fake news’ swayed our election, as some people say. Trump got a considerable amount of free airtime, and as I said before, some voters just hated Clinton so much they decided Trump – as irrational as it seems – was the lesser of two evils. ‘Fake news’ does deceive, though, and news sites like Breitbart and Infowars are extremely dangerous when it comes to the freedom of the press of my country. Our first amendment is a great privilege in my society, and serious journalists don’t take that responsibility lightly. And yes, while the sites I listed are both right-wing, I will admit the media does lean left. That being said, we don’t have the nerve to suggest that the shooting of 20 schoolchildren was staged. That part of this issue is something I will maybe never comprehend.