According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the definition of fake news is “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke”. There are many examples of fake news in our government currently, and there are ways for people to determine whether or not something is fake news. With fake news becoming more and more popular in society today, truth matters.

      NPR wrote an article on how to self-check news, and how to make sure the news is real. Two examples of fake news were given and one of them was that a man claimed that he was “self-investigating” a conspiracy that had to do with Hillary Clinton and her involvement in a child-abuse scandal. Because of the fake news he was reading, he decided to go to a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. and fire a rifle. Another example given from NPR is “headlines claiming Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump” (Davis).  Some ways to decide if news is fake or not is to look at the “About Us” tab. This information will state information about the news outlet, company that runs the website, leaders, and the ethics that the website upholds (Davis). Look at the domain of the URL, if there is “.com/co” this is a clear giveaway that this is not a reliable news source. If the URL has “.com” then that means that the source is most likely real news. There is a website called Snopes that provides background information of an article and will tell you if it is fake news or not fake news. Look at the source closely to see if it is reliable, some examples of unreliable sources are The Onion and Infowars.com. The Onion is famous for its satirical way of writing and Infowars.com has a history of touting conspiracy theories. When in doubt, put the facts of an article into fact checker; this will determine if facts are fake or true.

     In an era when fake news in prevalent and misinformation can be quickly conveyed via social and mainstream media, truth matters to the public. Why should the media and the government not be required to tell the truth to us, yet when anyone is in court they have to swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? There have been many instances where the government has not been telling the truth; according to The Washington Post “President Trump has made 2,140 false or misleading claims in his first year”. If that was only his first year, how many more misleading things can he say in the next three (assuming that he will not be elected for a second term in office)? A example of a lie that Trump has said in the past was that the amount of people watching his inauguration was higher than Obamas audience was; this has been proven false multiple times.

     In this case, the opposition’s argument would be that telling the truth to the public does not matter. According to the New York Times, a professor from the University of Connecticut he ignores the facts from the media and uses his own evidence to see what is true and what is not. Lynch says to the New York Times “We’ll ignore the facts because nobody knows what’s really true anyway”.  The inappropriate appeals being made here, is that anyone can look up something to see if it is true or not. Listed above in the second paragraph shows multiple ways to fact check and see if a source is reliable or unreliable. Checking to see if an article is fake news or real news is not tedious at all, it is actually pretty simple and can take the maximum of five minutes.

     Psychology Today has an amazing article on why truth matters, they state that truth matters for personal relationships, for science, and for public policy (Hyman). Without truth in the media, things like conspiracy theories are made up and can cause horrible things to happen. Just like what happened in the pizzeria in Washington D.C., other incidents like that can keep happening. “According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, only 39% of American adults felt "very confident" that they can recognize news that is made up.” (Wallace). CNN also writes that 23% of adults have shared a fake news story, and 14% knew that it was fake news when they shared it. If people knew how much harm fake news could do, they would most likely not share it.

     With fake news being such a popular topic in today’s media, many people share it and do not know the harm that it is causing. This is why truth matters, it is so that people do not form conspiracy theories and create up lies in their heads and spread it. There are countless ways to check sources on the Internet these days and they only take a couple seconds – at the most a couple minutes. Without reliable sources in the media and online, it would be extremely interesting to see how the public would react.

 

Works Cited

Davis, Wynne. “Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts”. NPR, 5 Dec 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/12/05/503581220/fake-or-real-how-to-self-check-the-news-and-get-the-facts. Accessed 25 Feb 2018.

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Hyman, Ira. “Does the Truth Matter?”. Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 29 Dec 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201612/does-the-truth-matter. Accessed 4 March 2018.

 

Kelly, Meg and Kessler, Glenn. “President Trump Made 2,140 False or Misleading Claims in His First Year”. The Washington Post, 20 Jan 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/20/president-trump-made-2140-false-or-misleading-claims-in-his-first-year/?utm_term=.e5808a81a93e. Accessed 25 Feb 2018.

 

Tavernise, Sabrina. “As Fake News Spreads Lies, More Readers Shrug At the Truth”. The New York Times, 6 Dec 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/fake-news-partisan-republican-democrat.html. Accessed 25 Feb 2018.

 

Wallace, Kelly. “Is ‘Fake News’ Fooling Kids? New Report Says Yes.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/10/health/fake-news-kids-common-sense-media/index.html. 3 April 2017. Accessed 4 March 2018.