Jessica Deyo
My first year of college, I agreed to participate in a research-study that required me to sit in front of a computer and decide whether or not a variety of social media posts, resembling Facebook posts, were true or fake. In my opinion, a photo can be interpreted just as falsely and an article.
I signed up for the study because I felt that as a student writer, I had a pretty good idea of what types of headlines and photo combinations were ridiculous -- I was wrong. Needless to say, there was not a single headline that I could confidently place into a true or fake news category. However, there was one type of story that was definitely more challenging than others: politics.
I believe a politician will do anything to get ahead, and some of the true stories I come across still seem like they should be fake, but that doesn't mean they should actually be fake. Today, there are a number of reasons behind fake news being published alongside an image: an agenda, a bias, trolling and other personal motivations. Regardless of the reasoning, these posts are further decreasing trust in the media and the spread of this trend is rapid.
According to a Buzzfeed analysis, hyper-partisan Facebook pages are constantly sharing fake, absurd news with millions of followers who, in turn, share it to their own pages. When considering politics, 19% of the posts from hyper partisan left-wing pages were a mixture of true and false or mostly false, and as much as 38% of hyper partisan right-wing pages had the same mixture. Essentially, we are seeing what could be true or false news, paired with an image that may not have any correlation with that story. This leaves readers beyond confused about what to believe.
These numbers are huge, and with a platform as widely-used as Facebook, the false news travels fast until it is something we become used to seeing. After realizing this, I started to make connections about why I struggled to identify false news -- it is so riddled throughout every scroll I make, especially regarding the Trump administration (though I am well aware of false accusations of fake news, too) and other political figures. What was once fake news is now just becoming a normal cutline.
So, what do we do?
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Obviously, politics isn't the only realm of incredibly prominent fake news reports- especially when they are twisting the meanings of photos. There is much to be changed in every category of reporting. Just recently, Selena Gomez was reportedly getting married to Bill Murray, when he was only whispering in her ear, and she was only joking about it on her Instagram post. Even good, innocent fun can be twisted into a fake news report. While the biggest changes need to come from politics, I believe the news published about celebrities, amongst other subjects, is just as ridiculous and change needs to come fast.
The first solution comes from my own suggestions, and it is that as reporters, we start following the main rule in almost every code of ethics: be honest. Stop twisting images, like the photo of Selena Gomez and her coworker. While this was only one example of a photo taken the completely wrong way, we see photos twisted and turned into entirely new stories all the time. Especially with politics, a picture of the president speaking could mean anything when someone is imagining what was said without being there. It is also seen in almost every magazine image of a person, with sculpted abs or a perfect complexion. That is lying, too.
Stop writing blatantly false information to push an agenda that only hurts the public. To me, I take great pride in the social service that reporting serves as. Reporters are the only reason people are informed, and the people who are posting fake content are destroying trust and setting absurd expectations, while also damaging reputations.
Another solution, while less conventional, comes from this article from the IEEE Computer Society, where there is even a complicated mathematical equation to solving fake news that helps to determine if it is even financially worth it to be posting it in the first place. This rationale may at least help limit the posts that are used to generate money, especially if they realize they won't make the profit they assumed they would from posting a fake story.
In short, don't take advantage of society by posting false information on photos that leaves people, like myself, sitting in a chair, in front of a screen, wondering what the difference is between the truth and a pile of lies. We can do better, and it all starts with sharing truthful information.
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