Week 10: Fake News, Confirmation Bias and Echo Chambers

Chris Bouzakis
Nov 1 · 3 min read

Part 1:

Fake news has been an on going issue in our media and around the globe. The term fake news really didn’t take off until the 2016 election when now President Donald Trump, used it as a campaign method against the so called “untruthful media”. Since then, it has greatly effected the job and title of a journalist. Not only has it just made it harder to get information out to the public but it has also made it harder to gather information as well. Even journalists sometimes don’t know what information is true and not true when finding a story. Social media hasn’t helped much either. People can post information anytime they want and it is very easy for fake information to spread like a wildfire.

My personal thoughts on fake news are simple. I think its a real issue that is effecting every single one of us each day. If I asked any of you to raise your hand if you haven’t used social media at all today, Instagram, Snap chat, Twitter or Facebook, non of you would. Just think of how much false information you read everyday…even if its from what you think is a reliable news source. Its an awful thing that we have to deal with in today's society. Yes there are a lot of good truthful journalists and social media accounts and that is why the verification symbol is such a great thing to have when it comes to finding a reliable source.

Many factors contribute to fake news. It can be unreliable sources, peoples beliefs or just simply misunderstandings. Like in the title of the New Yorkers article “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds”, if you have your mind set on something and its what you think it correct, it can be hard to change your opinion. When it comes to beliefs, you may have different outlooks on things and it could change your perception on how you gather information or share it.

I don’t think fake news will ever stop, especially in our world of social media and growing technology. We can however try and mitigate it by sharing reliable sources and telling the facts how they are. If you don’t know something, don’t say it, don’t assume an answer. Our role as journalists is too inform the public and keep them up to speed on local, national and International issues and events. Our job is to share as much knowledge of a story with our viewers or readers but not give any false or misleading information.

Part 2:

From the website BreitBart, I chose the story, “State Dept. Agrees to Provide Ukraine Records to Watchdog Founded by Obama Officials”, where the link is attached below. For the legitimate news site I found a similar articles by CNN titled, “State Department agrees to produce some Ukraine records by November 22”. For the story, BreitBart just hits the main points and briefly summarized the issues and story going on with the Ukrainian President while CNN doesn’t do much differently but goes into a bit more detail and seems to have a more left sided approach. I feel every news source will always have some bias opinion and you have to leave it to yourself to choose what facts you want to believe and which you want to claim “fake”.

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