Fake News The Fakest of them All

Nathan Rubin
Nov 1 · 4 min read

Part I

As I read and learn more and more each day at how insane social media is I just start getting more pissed off. It is insane the amount of work and effort these companies put into harvesting our data and spewing out misleading stories. Imagine if we actually took that energy and put it towards something good. Before the internet really started blowing up into this massive thing, people would just get their news source from TV, newspaper, or magazines. And in some way you kind of knew that was pretty reliable. After all people were being payed to edit and verify each news story and it wasn’t as difficult. Well, now a days it is much harder because there are thousands and thousands of “news” websites that really anyone could start and just write something up and you don’t necessarily need to verify the info. Who would be fact checking besides you?

This is a very dangerous thing and it’s also very sad how easily manipulated people are on the internet. Not so much the younger generation who are more aware of misleading stories and plain out fake news but, the older generation who just sit there and retweet or share any headline they agree on. To be honest, I don’t know how we can claw our way out of this because we are so deep into it now. Especially since now, any news story someone doesn’t agree with is deemed “fake news”. Like really people? So how do we get ourselves out of this mentality that just because we don’t agree with something its automatically “fake news”. Well for starters, I say really pay attention to wording especially on political news stories. Watch for keywords that people use to undermine a group such as “liberals” or conservatives favorite word “snowflakes”.

Here is a great example of literal fake news and watch for those words that undermine someone. “Pencil Neck” are you serious? but it’s sad because people DO fall for this stuff and take this as legitimate news. Also notice how the headline is in all caps. That’s also a huge indicator that there is a bunch of bullshit in this article. A way us journalists can help the public better understand this is by being open and vigilant. Explain to them those key factors that make up a fake news story such as all cap headlines or articles using demeaning terms.

Part II

So for this part I will be looking at the Breitbart article titled “65% Agree with GOP that Democrats Should’ve Held Public Impeachment Hearings” and comparing it to Washington Post’s “Americans sharply divided over whether to impeach and remove Trump from office, Post-ABC poll finds”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-sharply-divided-over-whether-to-impeach-and-remove-trump-from-office-post-abc-poll-finds/2019/10/31/b0562312-fc04-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html

For starters let me just start by asking. Who did Breitbart poll because they claim its from the Washington Post-ABC News poll released but literally looking at the poll it does not say that anywhere. Also, let me note that these were not behind closed doors impeachment hearings. This was the committee getting together organizing all the evidence they have before they can move forward with a formal impeachment hearing. Which Republicans were also a part of. And not to mention that this behind closed door policy was voted for and established by Republicans back in 2015. They are literally getting angry over a rule they made up themselves.

They also state multiple times in this article that this is a partisan impeachment inquiry when there were both Democrats and Republicans. Reading through the Washington Post article I’m not seeing those keywords that lead to an attack to a party it is very fact based and they show the actual polls on there.

“There are signs, however, that the Democrats are engaged in a fishing expedition that will go far beyond Ukraine.” Here is a perfect example at how this is 100% false. No where in this inquiry has anyone ever said that they were going to investigate anything other than Ukraine. Another thing that makes this completely fake is they are spewing out all these numbers such as “A slim majority of Americans, 51 percent, are also not buying the claim that Democrats are conducting the inquiry to uphold their Constitutional duties” but reading the Washington Post poll and article I do not se that as one of the questions they asked.

The big takeaway here is that the Polls cited on the Breitbart article supposedly from the Washington Post-ABC News poll don’t correlate to the actual poll that the Washington Post revealed. So I’m curious as to where they actually got this information.

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