Keeping One's Head Afloat Amidst a Sea of Fake News

 Zoe Touris

zt700218@ohio.edu

Photo courtesy of The Economist

In a world so oversaturated by "Breaking News" and the relentless drive to get as many views, clicks, and reads as possible, it is more crucial now than ever to decipher between what is fact and what is fiction within the media. Although one should turn to their favorite news site and trust the reporting being fed to them; unfortunately, it is not the reality.

While the term "fake news" has only recently become a popular term, fabricated and wrongfully-colored stories have been in circulation within the field of journalism for centuries. In The Atlantic article The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News, author Robinson Meyer includes a quote from 17th-century essayist Jonathan Swift who wrote "Falsehood Flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." Although this statement was made three centuries ago and was a hyperbole, it still holds great truth and captures the atmosphere of fake news in current times.

In Columbia Journalism Review's article, The victims of fake news, Nina Berman discusses Orson Welles' 1938 broadcasting of The War of the Worlds and how he tricked the public into believing there had been an armed Martian invasion in New Jersey. While the purpose of this absurdly false story was to demonstrate that readers should not blindly digest every piece of information they come across, the effects of this world-ending story caused great havoc and panic throughout the country.

Considering that this alien invasion story was solely broadcasted over the radio, one can only imagine the power that the rise of social media and the internet has over fake news. However, with new, the opportunity for billions of users to access anything posted to the internet comes great responsibility for those posting to provide reputable content for their readers and the readers not to believe everything they may come across.

In the largest-ever study of fake news conducted by scientists and legal scholars, the research found that time and time again, false information has a much more significant impact on the masses than accurate information. As a result, this study called for redesigning the information ecosystem to reduce the spread of fake news and highlight the psychology behind the plight of this phenomenon. 

While fake media may always be prevalent in the world of the media, we must be able to decipher between what we can trust and what we can deem as fake news. Moving forward, if we as a society wish to repair our trust with the media, we must strive for the truth and improve our values throughout the field of journalism, aiming to improve our society constantly.