The epidemic of Fake News A comprehensive report This paper is an examination of how false news stories have influenced our political process and how we can prevent these stories from controlling the press. In this section, I review the multiple instances of Fake News influencing our political system, and how the American people have been blindsided by its extensive effects.
I will also go over proven methods to filter out unreliable news sources from good ones. The recent presidential election was undeniably one of the most controversial and perplexing elections to date. The term “fake news”, popularised by US President Donald Trump, became mainstream when hundreds of websites published fraudulent or massively biased articles.
All mass media publications – no matter which side of the political spectrum – were affected by these false stories. While one fake news article may not do much to influence the American public, thousands will definitely achieve a political shift. I will be reviewing some prominent fake stories published by both the right and the left in the recent 2016 election. In a case study published by the New York Times titled “How Fake News Goes Viral”, a photo posted by a Twitter user with a mere 40 followers exploded into a national tale of fabricated outcry.
The post claimed that protesters were being shuttled in to protest Donald Trump. This was not true, and the days that followed the propaganda was spread throughout the Trump posse, inciting violence against innocent protesters that were expressing their freedom of speech. Another example from the opposite side of the political spectrum is a disastrous misquote by the BBC. Instead of quoting President Trump saying “more will follow”, the BBC stated that Trump declared “war will follow”.
The President of the free world suggesting war is a very serious statement, and many still believe he said this despite the BBC removing the tweet and putting out a statement with the hashtag, “#ourbad”. These examples of failing to inspect sources have led to the American public being mislead multiple times. But, fake stories and falsified “facts” have also led the U.S into serious conflict. On August 7, 1964, Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized then-president Lyndon Johnson to use military force in Vietnam. The resolution was adopted after it was reported North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two US destroyers, the Turner Joy and the Maddox.
The House of Representatives endorsed the resolution unanimously. The vote in the Senate was 88-2. It was later discovered that the attacks never occurred as depicted and that the account was based on false evidence and factual fallacies. Congress was misled into adopting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the fact that the attacks were never investigated shows how deep of a problem deceitful stories can be.
In this section, I will go over the methods that an individual can prevent themselves from believing false stories. I will also go over how our government and press can take action in preventing false stories from being perpetuated. There are multiple options that you can utilize to prevent viewing fake news. One example is the International Fact Checking Network, a branch of the journalism school, Polynter.
This network allows Facebook users in the US and Germany to flag articles they think are deliberately false, these will then go to third-party fact checkers signed up with the IFCN. The IFCN claims to “Promote basic standards through the fact-checkers’ code of principles and projects to track the impact of fact-checking” (Funke).
While this website is a pioneer for fact-checkers around the world, the general population is looking for an easier way to incorporate fact-checking into their everyday lives. Thats where Decodex comes in. Decodex is a more intuitive solution to. ‘You just put it on your browser and then when you come to a fake news site you get a pop up appearing saying ‘warning this is a fake news site’,’ says Samuel Laurent, editor of Les Decodeurs.
