Fake News: Is This Just the Beginning?

Mikaela McGee
mm027214@ohio.edu

Source: Twitter, @realDonaldTrump

Considering this tweet was posted by Donald Trump just one day ago I'd say the end of fake news is nowhere in sight. Why? Well, when the president makes a daily accusation against the media and citizens claiming fake news that's clearly not a good sign. And he is not alone. Every day, there are thousands of people crying fake news. And are they wrong? No. SAD.

As bummed as many people might be, we cannot blame fake news solely on Donald Trump. While yes he did coin the term in a 2016 tweet, this has been a problem for quite the time. The recent election was the first event that really put the amount of fake news there is on the radar. In a BuzzFeed article published they show a graph demonstrating how during the election the 20 top performing fake Facebook stories generated more reactions and shares than the 20 top performing stories from 19 major news publications. 

Many people are probably asking the obvious question: where on earth does this fake news come from?! Well, many of the fake news articles are distributed by hyperpartisan Facebook pages and websites that put out false or misleading information according to BuzzFeed. So how do we combat this display of horrendous journalism? Journalists need to show society that they are trustworthy.

In a new survey taken by Gallup we see that America's trust in the media is at an all time low of 32%. That being, only 32% have a fair amount of trust in today's media. To fight this amount of distrust journalists need to start fact checking their content before they put it out there and the media needs to be more up front when they do make an error. 

We need to fight bad journalism with good journalism. We can no longer be lazy and do the bare minimum of what is required of us in the field. We need to be proactive in being transparent and honest with our readers and while we need to be timely, sometimes you need to take the risk of being last to make sure you are the most accurate. 

We are living in a time where the vast majority of people are interested in scandal and breaking news more than anything. They read articles that closely relate to what they believe and want to hear. That is why so many anti-Hillary people would be thrilled to read an article accusing Clinton of working with Isis and so on. But the media was not created to tell people what they want to hear, we are here to tell people the facts.

With so many people including our own president attacking us on a daily basis journalists truly can only rely on themselves and their commitment to doing the right thing. Whether that be fact checking more than you need to or going above and beyond to make sure your sources are credible. 

This is not the first time fake news has arisen in our country and it is surely not going to be the last. In order for journalists to move forward and gain trust we are going to need to stand up for what we believe in and not let people walk all over us. We need to know in our hearts that we are doing the right and ethical thing. Lastly, we need to make sure that in every story we run the content is reliable, well researched and worthy of being shared on its own merit.