Fake news: Check it out

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Newsflash: “Fake news” is not a new phenomenon.

In late August 1835, the New York Sun newspaper ran a six-part story on life on the Moon, as seen through a powerful telescope of eminent astronomer Sir John Herschel, who was cataloging stars during a trip to the Cape of Good Hope. Reprinted in the Museum of Hoaxes’ internet archive (hoaxes.org), the Sun’s story runs 17,000 words and reported the Moon was alive with, among other things, lush vegetation, unicorns, a bi-pedal beaver and furry, winged humanoids.

It was written without Herschel’s knowledge and credited to a bogus scientific journal. The next year, journalist Richard Adams Locke claimed to have written it; five years later, he claimed he wrote it as a work of satire, aimed at the influence religion had on science.

Some articles about this hoax claim it boosted the Sun’s circulation significantly, but that’s not well documented – the Sun boasted regularly about large increases in their circulation numbers; two weeks prior, according to screen shots of the Sun’s August 13, 1835 edition that appear on hoax.org, they’d boasted their numbers were 6,000 higher than the numbers they reported on the fourth day of the Moon story.

And proving there is little new under the Sun (or Moon), after running the story as a serial, the Sun reprinted the content in pamphlet form, and promptly sold another 60,000 copies for a shilling apiece.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

During the last three months of the election season, the fake news was flying, including social media stories claiming Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS. Buzzfeed reported that the top 20 fake news stories generated over 8 million shares and clicks – 15 percent more engagement than the top 20 real news stories. As a result, according to the New York Times, Google banned “websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service,” and Facebook “will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content.”

Changes in the algorithms and policies at Facebook and Google will unleash another round of tech savvy entrepreneurs determined to exploit the changes for profit. The Washington Post reported on a group of Macedonian teenagers writing “click bait” stories about health topics and U.S. politics. While completely false, the sites they created received more than 1 million clicks and shares a month, earning the teens roughly $5,000 in ad revenue.

Statista, a statistics portal, reports that U.S. adults spend just over 12 hours a day consuming media on their televisions, phones, tablets and computers, often on several devices simultaneously. The sheer amount of content, satirical, comical, fake or real, we see on a daily basis is staggering. It’s difficult to process it, much less think about it deeply. It comes as no surprise that a recent study out of Stanford University categorized the ability of students to think critically about information they find on the Internet as “bleak.” More than 80 percent of middle school students, for example, were unable to tell the difference between a real news story and native advertising that is formatted to look like news but promotes a product or service, even when it carries the tagline “sponsored content.” More than half of the college students studied failed to click through a link to check the source of a tweet they were asked to evaluate for accuracy. In the executive summary for the Stanford study the researchers state, “We worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish”

Is there a solution?

It’s good to see teachers and librarians focusing on media literacy, helping students to locate and evaluate sources. This week’s Herald includes a story about the librarians’ efforts at Chester Barrows Elementary, Park View Middle School and Cranston High School East to help students make the distinction between valid and invalid sources of information. For a generation bombarded with images and video – news, ads and entertainment – from birth, in a world where analytical data that measures what we do and how long we do it online helps content creators shape and tailor it to be more appealing, learning to discern a good source from a questionable one is important.

These are lessons most of us could probably use a refresher course in, whether we’re reading about politics or asking “Dr. Google” to diagnosis a symptom that keeps us up nights. It never hurts to ask, “Is the research peer reviewed?” “Does the author have credentials?” “Is the site run by an organization with a bias toward one side or the other?” “Can I trace this back to a primary source?” Being mindful of our disposition to gravitate to sources that reinforce our own opinion and actively seeking out sources that question our assumptions helps, too.

Finally, as journalists, we can’t shy away from our responsibilities to the public. Community journalism at its best is an extra set of eyes and ears for the people, particularly at government meetings that are sparsely attended. We, too, must vet sources and think critically, for as Robert Love wrote in a 2007 Columbia Journalism Review article about satirists John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and “truthiness,” “the new digital toolbox has given third-party players – government, industry, politicians, you name ’em – sleeker weapons and greater power to turn the authority of the press to their own ends: to disseminate propaganda, disinformation, advertising, politically strategic misinformation.” Journalists need a healthy streak of skepticism and a willingness to ask the uncomfortable questions.

Love’s approach is a good one as we enter a year that’s bound to include a growing barrage of information from many sources: “beware of profiteers and hyper-patriots, and check out a little history – lest it repeat itself.”

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  • Justanidiot

    I don't believe this article.

    Thursday, January 5, 2017 Report this

  • RISchadenfreude

    There's no better example of Fake News than the MSM's coverage of the White House and the results of its policies, domestically and abroad, over the last eight years; telling the public that everything is peachy and simply OMITTING proper coverage is unforgivable, and they've paid the price- no one believes them anymore.

    Monday, January 16, 2017 Report this