The Difference Between “Fake News” and Media Bias.

There is a lot of confusion about the term “Fake News” these days. As one reporter for U.S. News cleverly put it, “It seems that those on the right believe ‘fake news’ to be a partisan jibe aimed at them, and therefore feel the desire to turn it back on the ‘liberal media’”. But what is “Fake News” exactly, and how does it differ from Media Bias?

According to Wikipedia, “Fake News is a type of yellow journalism that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.[1] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention”.

On the other hand, the Encyclopedia of Political Communication refers to Media Bias as, “the media exhibiting an unjustifiable favoritism as they cover the news. When the media transmit biased news reports, those reports present viewers with an inaccurate, unbalanced, and/or unfair view of the world around them”.

Furthermore, an article from the Student News Daily defines 6 different types of media bias: Bias by omission, Bias by selection of sources, Bias by story selection, Bias by placement, Bias by labeling, and Bias by spin. In other words, Media Bias misrepresents real news and facts in order to push a partisan narrative.

In contrast, Fake News consists of manufactured clickbait, fabricated stories, and deliberate hoaxes in order to generate revenue for a website. There are several types of fake news sites. Some spoof legitimate news sites by creating a URL designed to appear like the original. For example, one can buy a domain name such as cnn.co.com or abcnews.com.co for about $6000 USD here. The buyer could then build a wordpress site that looked like the real CNN or ABC News website and start publishing fake stories.

These stories would then be spread through Facebook and other social media platforms. The owners of these sites can make thousands of dollars a day using advertising services such as Google Adsense. For those who are curious, there are plenty of tutorial videos out there to help get you started. In fact there is one I found on Udemy for $10 USD called “Social Media Marketing & Viral Marketing Strategies To Get 100,000 Views Monthly”. Just for fun, I signed up and took this class. Within 3 days, I had my own site up and running called Media Breakfast.

Look, we all know that mainstream media has been guilty of media bias in the past. But unfortunately, we also know that sometimes the mainstream media has outright lied or spread false information fed by our own government (i.e., our CIA admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq [2]).

So with all this talk about Fake News, it’s not surprising why people are so skeptical of our mainstream media. Our mainstream media is supposed to be unbiased. It’s supposed to be factual. It’s supposed to uphold journalistic integrity. But sadly, this is not always the case. This article from Business Newsweek highlights the fact that 90% of our mainstream media is owned by 6 major corporations: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.

As noted here, “When President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law, it eased restrictions on media cross-ownership so that one company — or person — could own multiple media businesses (like broadcast stations, cable stations, newspapers, and websites). Though the law was intended to increase competition by reducing regulation, it instead ‘allowed large corporations to strengthen their dominance through mergers and buyouts’”.

In other words, the deregulation of media killed off diversity and opposing view points of the smaller outlets, and now 232 media executives control the media diet of 277 million Americans. Just like McDonalds killed the cheeseburger, or how Wal-Mart killed local mom and pop stores, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 killed off our First Amendment rights of Freedom of the Press and Free Speech. Predatory Capitalism has struct once again.

So with all of our media being controlled by 6 corporate giants, where do the people go for diversity and alternate opinions? Enter the Internet.

The Daily Telegraph noted in a 2017 article that publishing fake news was very difficult to do before the advent of the Internet. This was primarily due to time, cost, and regulation. In the old days, publishing fake news was costly, took time to build a following, and was regulated by media law. If a story was false, the publisher would most likely be sued.

However, much of that changed by 2007 with the advent of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now, for a couple bucks a month, anyone can setup their own fake news site, and spread viral clickbait for very little money. Are you familiar with those Facebook quizzes like “Which Harry Potter Character Are You? or “Which Spirit Animal Are You?”. Where do you suppose these quizzes come from? They come from people like you and me, who happen to be entrepreneurs looking to make some extra money. So entrepreneurs create quizzes on websites, like PlayBuzz, and distribute them virally through social media in order to draw traffic to their website. Just for fun, I made my own PlayBuzz quiz right here.

Perhaps the biggest culprit of the viral quiz is BuzzFeed. These marketing geniuses learned how to spread viral quizzes early on, and now the website generates nearly 2 million dollars a day! Several other websites such as Upworthy and ViralNova have followed suit. Naturally, everyone else wanting to make some extra cash is now jumping on the viral news bandwagon because they see the potential to make a lot of money. Even mainstream media has caught on. Popular websites such as CNN and FOX News now place thumbnail links to viral news right in their “Paid Content” section. This certainly does not add to their credibility.

Another popular clickbait tactic is the use of Listicles. Listicles are types of lists such as, “15 celebrities who went from twig to big” or “You won’t guess which celebrities are working day-jobs now” or “10 signs that you were born in the 80's”. When you click on Listicles, it will usually run you through several pages of entertaining content, often filled with ads that relate to your demographic. The owner of the website generates money every time you click on one of those ads.

So in summary: Money makes the world go ‘round. Mainstream media has been hijacked by 6 major corporations. Many people who grew to distrust mainstream media turned to the Internet to find alternate sources of information. But because the Internet is very hard to regulate, people became victims of Fake News created by entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck and a steady source of passive income. As long as these websites post a disclaimer somewhere stating that the news is fake or satirical, they can usually keep the site up and running legally. Since most people are too lazy to check their sources, they tend to believe information that confirms their own biases. What we are left with is more division and less unity. This is a direct consequence of living in a Capitalist society, for better or worse.

For those who are interested in learning how to spot fake news, I have written an article here. Best of luck out there when navigating through the sea of disinformation.