Theconcourse.deadspin. Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.”
The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts. You might remember Sinclair from its having been featured on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight last year, or from its requiring in 2004 of affiliates to air anti-John Kerry propaganda, or perhaps because it’s your own local affiliate running inflammatory “Terrorism Alerts” or required editorials from former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, he of the famed Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jewish people.
How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Down - The New York Times. Evaluating Sources in a ‘Post-Truth’ World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News - The New York Times. Fighting Fake News | American Libraries Magazine. Librarians—whether public, school, academic, or special—all seek to ensure that patrons who ask for help get accurate information. Given the care that librarians bring to this task, the recent explosion in unverified, unsourced, and sometimes completely untrue news has been discouraging, to say the least.
According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of US adults are getting their news in real time from their social media feeds. These are often uncurated spaces in which falsehoods thrive, as revealed during the 2016 election. To take just one example, Pope Francis did not endorse Donald Trump, but thousands of people shared the “news” that he had done so. Completely fake news is at the extreme end of a continuum. Less blatant falsehoods involve only sharing the data that puts a proposal in its best light, a practice of which most politicians and interest group spokespeople are guilty. Librarians and journalists: natural allies Librarians can help change this trend. Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us From Fake News. Fake news. We’ve used this phrase so many times in the past two months that it’s almost lost meaning — partly because it can mean so many different things.
Depending on who you talk to, “fake news” may refer to satirical news, hoaxes, news that’s clumsily framed or outright wrong, propaganda, lies destined for viral clicks and advertising dollars, politically motivated half-truths, and more. Whatever definition you pick, fake news is worrying media folks. Stories meant to intentionally mislead are an affront to journalism, which is supposed to rely on facts, reality and trust. As such, news about fake news has boomed. Fact-checking is key to journalism — it’s a skill and a service that’s instrumental in providing the information to the public. Don’t get me wrong — fact-checking is a start, and some of it may even help. Fake news purveyors have even co-opted the term “fake news.”
The stakes are high: Fake news has consequences. Despite the consequences, some readers don’t seem to care. Can You Tell Fake News From Real? Study Finds Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability. Stanford researchers assessed students from middle school to college and found they struggled to distinguish ads from articles, neutral sources from biased ones and fake accounts from real ones.
Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images Stanford researchers assessed students from middle school to college and found they struggled to distinguish ads from articles, neutral sources from biased ones and fake accounts from real ones. If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed. That's one implication of a new study from Stanford researchers that evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy. " As content creators and social media platforms grapple with the fake news crisis, the study highlights the other side of the equation: What it looks like when readers are duped.
"The photograph had no attribution. How To Tell Fake News From Real News In 'Post-Truth' Era. Behind the fake news crisis lies what's perhaps a larger problem: Many Americans doubt what governments or authorities tell them, and also dismiss real news from traditional sources. But we've got tips to sharpen our skepticism. Turnbull/Getty Images/Ikon Images hide caption toggle caption Turnbull/Getty Images/Ikon Images Behind the fake news crisis lies what's perhaps a larger problem: Many Americans doubt what governments or authorities tell them, and also dismiss real news from traditional sources. Are we really in a post-truth era? The presidential campaign was filled with falsehoods. But let's properly define the problem.
Business, government, churches and the media have fallen in public esteem. Hazardous as the post-trust era may be, it shouldn't cause despair. What we all need, as citizens, is to develop more skill in applying our skepticism. Propagandists obviously have fun (and profit from) trying to con us, the public.
So here's a finder's guide for facts: The Fact Checker’s guide for detecting fake news. Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. Anyone active on social media has probably done this at least once: shared something based on the headline without actually reading the link. Let’s face it, you’ve probably done this many times.
So the first thing you can do to combat the rise of “fake news” is to actually read articles before sharing them. Determine whether the article is from a legitimate website There’s ABC News, the television network, with the Web address of abcnews.go.com. The use of “.co” at the end of the URL is a strong clue you are looking at a fake news website. Check the ‘contact us’ page Some fake news sites don’t have any contact information, which easily demonstrates it’s phony. Examine the byline of the reporter and see whether it makes sense All of the details are signs that “Dr.
Read the article closely true. How Academia, Google Scholar And Predatory Publishers Help Feed Academic Fake News. How Data And Information Literacy Could End Fake News. Six questions that will tell you what media to trust - American Press Institute. Published Updated 10/23/13 11:37 am Tom Rosenstiel The executive director of the American Press Institute is an author, journalist, and media researcher. @tbr1 You may encounter media today from any number of sources, from traditional news sources to social media to email.
How do you know what to trust? Ask these six questions and they will unlock whether something is trustworthy. It’s easier than you think. 1. Recognize first what kind of content you’re looking at. Is it a news story? “Knowing what you are looking at is the first step to figuring out what you can believe.” Part of knowing what you’re looking at involves knowing who produced the content. Another thing to know is where the organization gets its money. Does the content have an obvious political slant? Knowing what you are looking at is the first step to figuring out what you can believe. 2. News content usually cites sources for the information provided.
As you read, listen or watch a piece of content, note who is being cited. 3. How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail. Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data. Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith.
In these examples, proponents' deepest held worldviews were perceived to be threatened by skeptics, making facts the enemy to be slayed. Two social psychologists, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (a former student of Festinger), in their 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) document thousands of experiments demonstrating how people spin-doctor facts to fit preconceived beliefs to reduce dissonance. What does post-truth mean for a philosopher? Image copyright NCH "Post-truth" has come to describe a type of campaigning that has turned the political world upside down. Fuelled by emotive arguments rather than fact-checks, it was a phrase that tried to capture the gut-instinct, anti-establishment politics that swept Donald Trump and Brexit supporters to victory.
Oxford Dictionaries made it the word of the year, defining it as where "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". But what does this new world mean for academics and scientists whose whole purpose is trying to establish objective facts? AC Grayling, public thinker, master of the New College of the Humanities, and Remain campaigner, views the post-truth world with undisguised horror. The philosopher, awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours, warns of the "corruption of intellectual integrity" and damage to "the whole fabric of democracy". Image copyright iStock "It's terribly narcissistic. Image copyright Reuters. How To Tell Fake News From Real News In 'Post-Truth' Era.