Fake News and You
To say that fake news is running rampant all around the internet would be quite an understatement. Depending on where you’re looking, fake news can be more prevalent than real news. Fake news is simply false news stories whose sole purpose is to be widely spread or shared for the intent of revenue or promoting a public figure.
The National Enquirer is a fixture at grocery stores and Walmarts across the country. While they can be found everywhere, they are the perfect example of a website, or in this case a tabloid, being well known but for the exact wrong reasons. National Enquirer is bait. Their sole purpose is to get your attention, regardless of how ridiculous their stories or pictures may be. What more can you expect from a website that has OJ Simpson as a header?
But Harry, why would they do this? What reason does National Enquirer have to do something like this? Well, I’m glad you asked. National Enquirer’s sole purpose and cause for existence is to get clicks and views. The best way they have decided to do this is by clickbaiting people. Their main place of attention is in the elderly. They do a good job reporting on all sorts of big, big-name celebrities. Whether it’s former presidents, the royal family, actors, athletes or anyone else worth reading up on, National Enquirer covers it all. The only problem is that they are rarely ever accurate.
If you think that National Enquirer is the only site guilty of this, you are sorely mistaken. Yellow journalism, as it had long been called, has been around for far too long. Just look at the next website we’re going to look at today: Life News.
Life News is a Conservative, pro-life website, which is a huge thing to keep an eye on when looking out for fake news. Political websites, whether Democratic or Republican, are the most fake, based organizations you can ask for, and will break and bend every rule of journalism for the sole purpose of fitting their narrative and keeping their blind supporters entertained and on board. While this is immoral in every way, shape and form, the current state of journalism almost encourages this.
Journalism, especially politically based journalism, is in such unethical and dire straights that it’s easy to feel as if it’s to the point of no return. All these big name news and information sites care for nothing more than fitting their narrative and getting views; and this comes at the expense of everyone else that reads this and bases opinions and beliefs based on what they read.
So what can be done to fix this? For viewers and readers, it’s simple: they need to keep eye on whose work they are reading and where it comes from. They can look up key points and facts that they article illustrates to do their own research on if what they read is accurate or not. They can’t completely get rid of fake news; but these steps prevent adding to the problem and instead being part of the solution.
