One of the main news stories right now is the proliferation of fake news websites on social media and their potential effect on US elections. One purveyor of fake news drew heavy fire for boasting, “I think Trump is in the White House because of me.”
Meanwhile Google and Facebook announced they would be banning fake news websites from their advertising networks, citing the immense popularity of fake news with partisans on social media this election cycle.
So it’s important now for the independent, critically-minded reader and sharer of news to note and reflect on the amount of fake news stories propagated by mainstream media sources, sometimes unknowingly through unacceptable carelessness and lack of proper journalistic rigor, other times knowingly and deliberately to influence elections or support a policy agenda.
Remember that after this election, even the New York Times, America’s “newspaper of record,” has had to apologize and “rededicate” itself to honesty, fairness, and scrutiny.
This kind of fake news is arguably more egregious than the kind we’ve been hearing about this week because it abuses the trust people have in an ostensibly reputable media source. The following list of 25 fake news stories from the mainstream media shows just how difficult it is to tackle the problem of fake news.
Banning click-bait upstarts will only scratch the surface of a much deeper problem, the systemic duplicity of a corporate mass media that serves entrenched interests and is every bit as interested in monetizing page views as the lone wolf peddler of bogus news.
We have always had fake news reports. It's just that now with hi tech that they (all media ) gets caught.Should be some form of punisment for such lies.
ReplyDeleteSo much of what is recounted here as fake news is still circulated as truth.
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