The Fake News Phenomenon

By: Julia Leonard
jl123515@ohio.edu

Photo: The Belfast Telegraph.

The "Fake News" phenomenon is taking news rooms by storm. In the past years, this term is thrown around like M&M's in a candy store. Everyone has heard it, everyone has seen it, but who has owned up to it? Many people believe journalists make news. They find a story and write it all down. But what if there is nothing going on around us. The week was dry and nothing "news worthy" was happening? At what point does a journalist turn to anyone on the street and believe what they are saying. If a source tells a journalist a story that isn't fully factual, but the journalist publishes the story, who is to blame for providing false information? Here are some points to think about when you come across fake news

Fact Checking
There have been countless stories that come out that are later revealed as fake or provided false information to readers. When is far too far? Okay you spelled a name wrong because you added an extra S. That's a hard slap on the wrist but I myself wouldn't discredit the paper as a whole but rather just the article. But if you say 15 people died and it was really 28, you obviously didn't fact check as well as you should have. So when is it crossing the line?

The Spread of Fake News
Think about the last news article you read. Did it seem like it was correct? Did you fully believe everything that writer was saying? Case studies have been conducted to show how fake news can go viral. In a New York Times article, Sapna Maheshwari discussed how a man with 40 Twitter followers sent out a tweet that caused a nationwide conspiracy theory that then President-elect Donald J. Trump himself chimed in on. One tweet, one post, or one photo can lead to journalists grabbing an idea and running with it.

Fake news spreads like wildfire. Noah Tavlin of Ted-Ed, created a lesson on the spread of false news. This lesson shows how one statement can be spread across the globe in a matter of moments. Circular reporting is also one of the biggest causes of fake news. If one journalist said they fact checked with the source and the story keeps getting repeated time and time again, the next journalist will say they have checked it with multiple sources.

Why Your Code of Ethics Matter
This is where each journalists code of ethics comes in. At what point can you trust a source? How do you know they are saying the whole truth? The hard answer is that you can fact check every detail twice, but when it comes down to ones story over another, you have to trust that that individual is telling the truth. I believe this is also where the people come into play. As a person telling a journalist any information, I uphold the responsibility to telling the story to them as truthfully as possible. If I lie to a reporter and they write about it, does it come down to me or the reporter? In today's world, the reporter takes the blame, but they technically only reported on 'facts' that the source gave them. This circles back to my question – who do we blame?