Fake
news” preferred to real news in the US
“Perceptions”
by Gerry Warner
So
it has come to this. “Fake news” is now outperforming real news and has been
cited as a major factor in Donald Trump becoming president.
If you don’t believe it, you have my sympathy
because I didn’t believe it at first either. But there is proof. Hard
statistical evidence to show that fake news “stories” carried on social media,
especially Facebook, gathered more eyeballs and resulted in more clicks than
any other form of media engagement in arguably the most bizarre election race
in American history.
It also resulted in a crazed Trump
supporter armed with an assault rifle bursting into a family pizzeria in
Washington DC two weeks ago bent on ending a child sex ring allegedly operated
by Hillary Clinton according to a fake news story he read on-line. Edgar Maddison Welch, 28. of Salisbury,
North Carolina is now in custody charged with assault with a dangerous weapon
after firing two shots in the pizzeria but injuring no one as terrified patrons
fled into the street.
Welcome to
the new reality of social media and what it can do in a digital world.
But as unbelievable
as this story may seem, it becomes more understandable if we can believe an
analysis carried out by BuzzFeed News, a relatively new Internet giant, known
for compiling listicles (10 best/10 worst etc.) and doing exacting statistical
studies on the Web. In a post election study, BuzzFeed discovered that in the
early part of the campaign major, legitimate new outlets such as the New York
Times, Washington Post, NBC News and others were engaging more voter response to
their stories in terms of shares, reactions and comments than Facebook. But in
the final three months of the campaign this dramatically changed as Facebook responses
pulled ahead of the top 20 major media outlets by a margin of more than one
million. (8.7 million to 7.3 million). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg played down
BuzzFeed’s findings commenting: “I think the idea that fake news on Facebook —
of which it’s a very small amount of the content — influenced the election in
any way is a pretty crazy idea.” But the New York times took Zuckerberg to task
saying the Facebook CEO was in denial and accused Facebook of spreading
“misinformation” to its 1.8 billion users.
Just some
of the false “news” stories carrier by Facebook, Twitter and other social media
outlets during the election campaign included Pope Francis endorsing Trump.
President Obama signing an executive order banning the national anthem. from being played before sporting
events, Hillary selling arms to ISIS and many more. Paul Horner, one of the many purveyors of
fake news stories on Facebook, told CBS News that Trump supporters were
endlessly gullible. “My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump
is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything —
they’ll post everything,”
So there it
is. In the Age of Social Media if you post it or tweet it, they will read it
and repost or re-tweet it no matter how outrageously false and unbelievable it
is. Fact checking is not part of the equation. Neither is verification through
multiple sources. Illusion triumphs over truth, fantasy over reality, lies over
facts. People will believe what they want to believe and if their beliefs
happen to be racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic or plain ignorant, tough! It
doesn’t matter because they can always find a story or “news” on the Net that
will justify their beliefs no matter how abhorrent.
George Orwell, one of the greatest journalists
that ever lived, put it this way: “In a time of universal deceit -
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Now with the Pew Research Centre saying 44 per cent of Americans use
Facebook as their primary “news” source and 62 per cent of Americans use social
media for “news” overall, maybe it’s time for another revolution.
Gerry
Warner is a retired journalist who never knowingly wrote a “fake news” story,
though he wanted to a few times.
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