Fake News is More Desirable Than the Truth

Jessie Milligan - jm238117@ohio.edu

The topic of fake news has been spoken about by nearly every paper in the country, the Democratic party says that the Republican party falls for fake news more often than themselves and vice versa. Do our political leanings actually reflect a bias in the news we consume and believe? The science seems to say so, “Analytic thinking made Clinton supporters believe fake news less, but made Trump supporters believe real news more,” says Laura Hazard Owen from NiemanLab.

In another study, it shows how fake news was read and accepted more than real news during the 2016 election cycle on Facebook. After looking into who was publishing these stories, BuzzFeed News determined that while there was one viral article from a hyperpartisan left-wing fake news site, the majority of fake news articles came from multiple right-wing hyperpartisan fake news sites masquerading as real sources of information. 

So why do we accept fake news as fact, even though we are easily able to discern what is fake from what is real news? The answer in my opinion is quite simple, fake news is easier for people on either side of the political spectrum to digest than the real truth of hard news. If someone believes something with their whole being, and then they read an article or a journal about that belief being fake news, they are more than likely going to dismiss that article as fake. Reading fake news that validates the opinion we already hold is easier than reading real news that questions that opinion or states the faults in it.

While fake news may validate some people’s opinions and make them feel as though they are in the right, there are some obvious dire consequences to allowing fake news to cycle through media. So who are some of the victims of fake news media, and how have they been impacted by the stories people keep to make themselves feel good? David Wheeler, a parent of a child who died in the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook, who has since been accused of being a fraud who made up his own children’s deaths to try and help pass gun control regulations, claims the Columbia Journalism Review.

As a parent, he had to live through the death of his child, and instead of support he was bombarded with fake news media sites claiming that he was a fraud who had made up his own child's death. These claims were based solely on the fact that he used to be an actor, which somehow made it easier for him to be seen as a fraud. The impact of having lost a child is hard enough, yet people made it harder by refusing to believe a fellow human and instead believed the fake news sites that were telling them that he was a fraud. Simply because it was easier for them to believe he was a fraud, than to believe that gun control might have possibly prevented this devastating attack.

There is no simple solution on how to solve the problem of fake news but there is a simple explanation for it, ignorance.