Fake news stories multiplied like rabbits during the presidential campaign.
We are inundated with big doses of false information and fake news on the Internet and Facebook. And I do not mean opinion pieces; I mean fabricated news stories – the kinds of “news” based not on facts but on the wild vagaries of the writers’ mischievous or malicious imaginations.
Fake news is nothing new. Supermarket tabloids have long been the granddaddies of fake news. We can all recall seeing their loud lunatic headlines while waiting in check-out lines: Aliens Land on White House Lawn, Enjoy Pancake Breakfast with President!
Just the other day, while writing a news story about Trump’s victory, I Googled this question: “How many electoral votes did Trump win?” The first “news” story that popped up was one claiming Trump had won the electoral votes and the popular votes. It didn’t seem on the level, so I checked news sources online and several newspapers. That “news” story, as I suspected, was fake, even though it “looked” real.
Here are just some recent headlines of fake “news” stories:
- President Obama signs executive order banning the sale of assault weapons.
- Coca-Cola recalls Dasani waters after clear parasite worm was found in bottles across U.S.
- Trump wins the presidency and Ford shifts truck production from Mexico to Ohio!
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just announced he and others are developing ways to keep fake stories off of Facebook. Good luck. The sheer extent of junk and hoaxes on the Internet these days will make the task virtually impossible.
Why do people put such hoaxes online? Some, I suppose, like to play tricks on the gullible. Many make money by pumping out fake stories with ads to cyber surfers. Others invent bogus news to smear their opponents, and still others create false stories just because they can.
Years ago, we all had three or four TV stations, a hometown newspaper and maybe access to a metro paper. We tuned in every evening to watch our trusty news anchors, like Walter Cronkite, tell us what happened in the world that day. We were more or less on the same page.
When cable TV, news and information options proliferated, with ‘round the clock access to a variety of “takes” on a news event and multiple reactions, it was, mostly, a good broadening of news sources and informational access.
Along came the Internet, which was supposed to open up a Brand New World of information and news at our fingertips. And that it did, in aces and spades. But along with the good came the bad: a barrage of junk, dumb trivia, misinformation, hoaxes, fake news stories and just plain crap.
Facebook arrived. It personalized everything, to the point that like-minded people share not just minutiae from their lives but also information and news copied-and-pasted from other sites. Some do not care if the “news” is true or not, as long as it agrees with their political-emotional mindsets or as long as it’s “entertaining,” such as “Hillary is an android disguised as a human in pants suits” or “Trump has brain damage due to early fall from crib.”
Facebook feeds information to its customers based on user patterns – what each person likes to see and read. That can create a cocoon-like insularity in some users, especially those who do not read books or newspapers, or who do not view other sources of information on a regular basis.
And it’s no wonder, considering the attacks against “establishment” media by – for example – power brokers like Donald Trump who claimed like an angry child in a tantrum that the media were “rigging” the election against him, the election he later won, thanks to months of free media coverage. Go figure.
Media-bashing has led to a deep distrust of news organizations, to the point where many will believe anything, just as long as it’s not in the “elite” media. So they seek out or stumble upon alternative information sources, and in some cases, the more outlandish the “news” claims, the more they believe them, to the point where, “If it’s on my iPad but not in the lamestream media, then it must be true.” It’s all too much like Narcissus in love with his own image reflected in a pond – a fatal insularity.
You will often hear some people say, “I never believe anything I read in a newspaper,” but those same people will believe just about anything and everything they see or read online. Tweets are the new gospel truths. Don’t try to change the tweeters’ minds.
What’s long overdue is a renewed dedication to social-media literacy, not to mention social-media courtesy. For starters, people might want to check out “How to Spot Fake News” on www.factcheck.org.
