Remember as a child, you'd play an innocent game of telephone with friends and by the time the message reached the last person, something was missed, misconstrued or blatently changed. In our digital age, where news, sound bites, and images are shared at lightning speed, how are we to know what to believe as fact or to know what hasn't been edited or mis-communicated?
The dissemination of news is corrupt.
I started university as an English major. During my freshman year, I took an GenEd class called Intro to Journalism - we studied the history of journalism and its effect on the general public and popular culture as well as overall societal views and acceptance. One particular discussion about the impact of news reports covering the Vietnam war always stuck with me. Some reports pushed the "U.S. is winning" message in order to boost national morale and proactively support a war overseas that the majority of the country would never see firsthand. On the flipside, was it not objective reporting to disregard the tens of thousands of innocent children being massacred at the hands of U.S. soldiers? What message is the media obligated, and expected, to report?
This got me thinking, how can anything communicated through any media outlet be considered unbiased? Later that semester, I quickly changed my major to Print Journalism. I truly believed there HAS to be objective reporting in the world, and I was destined to make sure of it!
(side bar: after a semester in Print, I changed my major again to Public Relations because at the suggestion of my mom, print journalists rarely find jobs and don't make a lot of money. Thanks for that insightful guidance, mother.)
In the 80s with the onset of USA Today, newspapers became water-downed; this newly formatted daily provided quick snapshots of top stories; possibly a preclude of our need for instant gratification in the busyness of our lives. The paper itself was more enticing with its 4-colour spreads and pictures littered across its pages, our news was becoming more visual. And although more appealing and easier to read, we were only getting a quick blurb of news that probably deserved, if not warranted, more detail.
Around the same time, the dawn of a 24/7 news cycle hit our TVs with CNN, an entire channel devoted to news and world reporting. Along with presenting the day's top stories, they needed filler to draw in viewers with interesting content, so they then would bring in commentators to talk and share their opinions about said news story. Objective news reporting was officially dead.
I stopped watching national broadcast news a few years ago - I became vexed by the lack of objectiveness - reporter's inflection, the use of insinuating questions and tone of voice, putting words into interviewee's mouths...then sound bites and comments taken out of context to create some sort of narrative or attention grabbing headline. How many times have you read an article where someone is quoted yet it's only a portion of what was actually said in entirety? Or have seen/heard an edited sound bite accompanied by a caption or commentary that falsely describes the scene. Media manipulation is a fascinating thing as they know most people will focus mainly on the headline or photo and not always bother to read the entire content.
Sensationalized news is nothing new. But now, our online attention is monetized for the almighty dollar and it's become a financial race to keep our attention. News outlets are intentionally throwing out click bait for us to feed upon. How many times has a headline lured you in or inferred an untruth, only to be refuted by actual facts, buried somewhere in the body of the article.
I'm going to leave this right here:
TL;DR? It's a number of recent articles that went viral and were completely false or manipulated. That should speak for itself. And for the record, fake news travels 6 times faster than real news.
Today we have an abundance of networks, channels, social media pages, to obtain our news. But who is credible, who is going to report facts without opinions or bias, or hidden agendas? With so many options, we can literally pick and choose our news source, and usually we'll select the one that supports whatever narrative we want to follow. Any person can turn on MSNBC and switch to FOX and get two totally different reports on the same story. We can actually determine for ourselves, what we want to be "factual" news.
But it gets worse. With the velocity of Posts, Shares, Likes, reTweets, which often spread without fact checking, information with the slightest amount of truth or lack of accuracy, could go viral to millions of others within minutes. The idea of conspiracy spreading is frightening, especially if it's untrue. And just because something is repeated more than once, doesn't give it validity, something I believe some people fail to understand.
At what point is everything fake news?
So let's talk about social media specifically. It has become its own corrupted monster on news dissemination. I watched the Social Dilemma this week (which I HIGHLY recommend) and although what they discussed was nothing really novel, it did explain the flaws of the algorithms they've built and how it has unsympathetically, and quite subconsciously, changed how we think, purchase, live, and conclusively vote.
Now, I love my social media - it allows me to keep in touch with distant friends and family, watch endless animal videos and I'll admit, sometimes I do want it to recommend other types of facial moisturizers and non-plastic household cleaners. But where's the line on suggestive interests? The documentary describes how the AI/ML (artificial intelligence/ machine learning) technology will gradually learn your activity and continue to push related ads, stories, news articles related to past views and searches.
I'd like to think that I wasn't naive to this - Google has been watching me for years, I am completely cognizant of this yet continue to use it as my main search engine out of convenience. But what is the disadvantage of this saturation of "customized" information?
Perfect example - I had not heard of this conspiracy called "pizzagate" (even as I type that word, my skin cringes at what might appear in my social feed when I log in again) until a few months ago. Once I started going down the rabbit hole trying to educate myself on it, additional stories started popping up on my social feeds, new links connecting me to other articles. Without even trying, I learned about QAnon and all the conspiracies (or truths, as they see it) they promote. What the Social Dilemma contends is that the embedded algorithm is taught to continue to direct you to similar information, to the point where even I was pondering, "well, there's tons of information out there, how do I know it's not true?"
The same can be applied to political affiliation - if I start reading about the Republican party or "Like" a meme or share something that might lean slightly to the right, more and more content will eventually start flooding my social media feeds with similar ideologies, therefore reinforcing those beliefs and affirm any right-winged supported philosophy. So, is it informative or propaganda?
Our views become distorted, and ultimately one-sided, as we are continually being fed what the AI thinks we want to see.
I can write an entire other commentary on the effects of social media but I think the documentary successfully illustrates all that is wrong with our addiction to social media. Go watch it.
(P.S. I have no desire to delete my FB or IG accounts - I can't live without dog videos)
Along with the sensationalism of news, negative stories will get more attention because it causes more How about The Onion? I've always enjoyed this channel of humor, but how many people (living under a rock) know it's satire? And I know there are a handful of similar satirical sites where I'm sure people have read something and taken it for truth...and then spread it along to others. I have seen too many FB shares of satirical articles wherein the person posting legitimately thinks it's true. It contributes to the 'Well, it's on the internet! It must be true!' mindset. Are there restrictions are in place to limit this channel, and those alike, to offset the proliferation of their satirical "truths" which originate as comedic in intent, but possibly turn into heresy and can undoubtedly become unverified viral, unsubstantiated "facts"? Would that be considered censorship, especially if it's not true?
These past seven months, we've been inundated with statistics, numbers, facts backed by science, opinions, viewpoints, more information that's been adjusted because of new research, recommendations, etc about COVID-19. It's a clusterf*ck of information from doctors, scientists, homeopaths, and a little orange man. Like the game of telephone, facts get miscommunicated or misinterpreted; 2% or .02% are vastly different numbers as it relates to infection rates. And among all these numbers, data is being continually manipulated to fit whatever narrative they want to impart.
But at the rate that information is transmitted, how are we to know what to believe as truth anymore? Who do we trust? Who can we trust?
The other day I saw a meme with a picture of an Amish man and it read, "Why aren't you worried about COVID?" with a reply "We don't have a TV."
It's so hard to stay online these days or watch the evening news - it's become is too depressing and disheartening. I asked my friend today, "is it better to be stuck in my little naive bubble or become completely disillusioned by what is really going in in the world?"
I leave you with this: think before you post, fact check before you share, and stop spreading hate, negativity and false propaganda. Journalists, go into a story with an open mind and don't decide what the story is before you write it. Social Media, you have a responsibility to monitor the disease of false news spreading across your channel.
