F(ricking)ake News

By Alyssa Tompkins

It is no secret that the news in this day and age is chock full of fake news. Dictionary.com defines fake news as “false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared or distributed for the purpose of generating revenue, or promoting or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc.” There are many disseminators of fake news, and it is not limited to any political party. Depending on people’s political views, they are more blind to fake news on their end of the political spectrum. According to Allsides.com, their views come from their bias, and their biases affects what they choose to read. Not realizing that something is fake news is a dangerous position to be in because more false news is spread through Americans than by anyone else. A study done by AP News found that 67% of the world’s fake news is spread through American citizens who believe that the news they are reading and sharing is objective and true. This means that your neighbor, and even you, could be spreading fake news without knowing it.

But where does this news come from? This news comes from a multitude of sources, including celebrities and groups such as Rush Limbaugh, Occupy Democrats, and Alex Jones, and it is spread exponentially through social media sites. It is important to remember that fake news is sensationalized news that is partially or wholistically false.

Fake news stories may have some nuggets of truth embedded in them, but are not all truth and should not be taken as such. For instance, Rush Limbaugh recently released an article in which he calls the 400 page Muller report “a coup” and claims that “that the lengthy report exist[s] primarily to fuel biased media attacks against Mr. Trump.” There may be some truth in these statements, but this is a mostly sensationalized story due to the fact that the Mueller Report deals with Trump’s possible connections with Russia, not social media. According to a Snopes.com (an online fact checking resource), the Mueller Report was, indeed, an objective report and not used to target President Trump on the social media interface.

Alex Jones, whose name many are familiar with for good or bad reasons, is another sensationalist who releases fake articles. In an older story, Jones claimed that the government created homosexuality using chemicals in juice boxes. The thing about this story is that there are only very trace amounts of truth-- if any-- in the article. This is fake news because human sexuality is not a created in any way; it is a part of human life and cannot be induced by chemicals at all. According to a study conducted by Vice News, “Due to their [fish and frogs] natural sex-swapping characteristics, it's likely some fish and frogs are very susceptible to the actions of these pollutants, but there's still no evidence they can influence the development of sexuality.” This proves that while some animals’ physical sex can be altered by waterborne chemicals, human sexuality can not. Fake news stories like this lead part of the population to believe something that is false, which is not a good thing to do, for those who believe the lies are often very staunch that their beliefs built on lies are fully correct.

But conservatives aren’t the only ones to spread fake news. OccupyDemocrats, a self proclaimed movement dedicated to adding more democrats to the U.S. Government, also is guilty of spreading fake news. For example, in 2016 an article entitled “Virginia Republican Wants Schools To Check Student’s Genitals Before Using The Bathroom” regarding Virginia’s Bathroom Bill (HB 677) was published on Occupy Democrats’ website. The article claims that because the bill enforces the use of bathrooms only by the autonomic sex, the only way to check if a student can enter one bathroom is to check the genitals of the student. Like all fake news, there is a nugget of truth in the article, and in this story it is true that according to the Virginia Bathroom Bill (HB 677) the bathroom one can use is limited to their sex assigned at birth. The falsehood in the news is the claim that the bill would force students to reveal their genitalia to administrators before they could use the bathroom. According to Snopes.com, the school children will not be “exposed to genital-checks before being allowed to use the restroom.”

Fake news is everywhere, and it is important to know what you can do to NOT be a part of the 62% of people who accidently spread falsehoods. Factcheck.org states that there are a few ways to spot fake news, and they range from simple to difficult. The easiest ways to check whether the story is falsified or not is through checking the date the story was published. If it claims to be published on a date that does not exist or make logical sense, it is guaranteed that the story is not what it claims to be. The next easiest way is to actually read a bit beyond the headline. Headlines are basically clickbait and must be treated as such. Never just read a headline and assume you know what the story will say.

If it is not a story, but rather an image-- from facebook or any other social media platform-- you can easily perform a reverse image search to find where the photo originated. All you have to do is drag the image into the search bar and search for it. This is helpful to see whether the image should be taken seriously or not. With images, one must still be wary about when the image was made, where it was made, and where it went. An image could be captioned with a slur towards another country, but upon conducting the reverse search you might be able to find that the image was created in the exact country it was degrading in attempts to create a rift in politics.

Now, things get a bit more complex, and it is up to the reader to take the reins and control their biases. One must be aware of their own internal biases in order to be able to spot a sensationalized story. Factcheck.org understands that this is a hard thing to overcome, but it is the best way to be more objective to a story and its content.

Another difficult thing to do when looking at news is to consider the source. This takes a bit of time to do digging into where you see your news, and it also requires you to check your biases both for and against the source of the news.

Fake news is not often easy to spot, and it takes some practice to do it correctly. The world is fast-moving, and so is its news. It is crucial for people, including teens, to know whether they are believing in something sensationalized or not, and the best way to do that is to think critically about the news you consume.