Thursday, April 20, 2017

The Sudden Rise of “Fake News”

 The term “fake news” is not a new concept. Technically, the term refers to the spread of misinformation in order to deceive the readers. However, in recent times, particularly since the election season, it has been a special term known by people throughout the world. Since the election of Donald Trump, mainstream media, specifically media that criticizes Trump, is called “fake news”. President Trump’s deputy assistant, Sebastian Gorka, said that he and the Trump administration will continue to use the term “fake news”, saying “there is a monumental desire of the majority of the media, just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term” (CNN 2017).

The fact that the president of the United States and his administration are able to label all who oppose them “fake news” is astonishing. In February, Donald Trump tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People” (The New York Times 2017). President Trump has been able to make his supporters trust him and his media endorsements rather than most of the mainstream media, who tend to be more liberal.

Growing up in a conservative household with Fox News being on often, I have known for a while that many conservatives have a strong dislike and distrust for the “biased liberal media” such as MSNBC and CNN. As I know some members of my nuclear and extended family are Trump supporters, I decided to personally ask them what they think of the news nowadays. One of my family members told me, “I no longer trust and believe The New York Times and CNN...they are fake news.” I had a feeling I wouldn’t receive a positive response, but hearing my family member use the term “fake news” really shocked me, because I have never heard any family member of mine use this term. How was Trump able to get people to think about and use this term more often than ever before? In terms of Google searches, “fake news” has been more popular than ever before, massively spiking right after Trump won the presidential election.


So, if Trump supporters can’t trust the mainstream media, whom can they trust? Fox News has always been and will continue to be a major conservative news outlet. Although the conservative bias is strong, Fox News is the most trusted network, according to a poll covered by Politico. However, other conservative outlets and even YouTube channels have received a lot of attention since the election: Breitbart, The Drudge Report, and InfoWars/Alex Jones are notable sites and figures. One Breitbart article, written by former editor Milo Yiannopoulos, is titled “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”, as well as also saying birth control should be thrown out of the window because, “we need the kids if we’re to breed enough to keep the Muslim invaders at bay” (Breitbart 2015). Many Americans read these articles because the President does not consider it “fake news”, which is a major problem for liberal issues such as women’s rights, minority rights, and climate change.

One might ask; why does it matter if people believe that The New York Times and CNN are “fake news”, and Breitbart and The Drudge Report are credible sources? All it is a different opinion, and we must embrace it right? The problem with this statement is that because the President of the United States has a lot of power to influence others, if he endorses a news site that is very clearly Islamophobic and misogynist, it will lead more people to believe this behavior is acceptable. It will also lead to more distrust towards the mainstream media, creating more and more concern into the American people on what they consider the truth. Unless more of public realizes what is going on, I don’t think that the anti-establishment movement will slow down anytime soon, and will instead continue for many more years.


References

CNN, Chris Massie. 2017. “WH Official: We’ll Say ‘Fake News’ until Media Realizes
Attitude of Attacking the President Is Wrong.” CNN. Accessed April 20. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/kfile-gorka-on-fake-news/index.html.
Gass, Nick. 2017. “Poll: Fox News Most Trusted Network.” POLITICO. Accessed April
20. http://politi.co/1HlTpUT.
“Google Trends: Fake News.” 2017. Google Trends. Accessed April 20.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=fake%20news.
Grynbaum, Michael M. 2017. “Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the
American People.’” The New York Times, February 17. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html.
“PressTV-Trump to CNN: You Are ‘fake News.’” 2017. Accessed April 20.
http://presstv.ir/Detail/2017/01/12/505893/US-Trump-Acosta-CNN-fake-news.
Yiannopoulos, Milo. 2015. “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive And Crazy.”

Breitbart. December 8. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes-women-unattractive-and-crazy/.

3 comments:

  1. I really appreciate the topic you chose for your blog. Fake news is something that I personally have noticed has been gaining popularity in the last few years especially. I was sitting at home over spring break flipping channels and I came across a segment on CNN about fake news. There are people who create these websites and post ridiculous and fake articles on them. They use a computer program that promotes their website on social media sources. They use fake accounts to retweet their article so people will see the article being promoted and visit their page and they have advertisements on the article so they make money for each person who visits the page. This was troubling to me because that means it is only getting harder to tell the real news from the fake news. In a time like this where there is so much controversy, I think being able to decipher fake news from real news is very important.

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  2. Another really big factor that influences where we get our news information from is how the internet now tailors what comes up on your feed based on your consumer profile/interests - whether it be on a social media site (Facebook suggested posts, Instagram explore page) or the websites that pop up when you type something into a search engine. In my History class earlier today we were talking about an article that recently came out comparing what websites came up on two different people's search engines when they searched for "Egypt". The more liberal consumer got all these news articles at the top of his feed about things happening in Egypt, while the more conservative consumer got travel and tourism websites about visiting Egypt. While I can't speak to the total validity of this "study" since I don't know exactly where my classmate had found the source, I think it reveals a very real issue about how we get our information today. We assume that we have access to all information on the internet objectively, but truly information is being filtered to us through our different political preferences and previous internet activity. For example, I Googled "Tevas" sandals once, and now every website I go to has a Tevas ad on the side, tempting me to purchase, purchase, purchase. Who's to say that news information is distributed differently? It speaks volumes to this previous election. Mainstream media news coverage (the same networks Trump criticizes for being "fake news") never could have predicted Trump's win because the internet has permitted conservative and liberal circles in this country to remain entirely separate. It's definitely a tricky predicament we're in.

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  3. the topic of Fake news and its rise in the past couple of years has fascinated me. It used to surprise me how little people actually check their source and how quick people are to believe everything they read. This brings me to a very important factor that I think contributes greatly to the rise in fake news and that is education. Most americans have not been taught how to properly question a source and look for its validity. You couple this with the rise of social media and it suddenly becomes really clear how fake news is such a problem. Then when you add algorithms that only really let you see coverage that they think you might be interested in it causes a widening gap and lack of diversity in information. Fake news and lack of education in the United States is a huge problem. Great post!

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