Let’s Retire the Term “Fake News” in 2018
It’s prediction season: that special time of the year when we’re treated to a seemingly endless series of “top 10 best / worst / most important [insert something — practically anything — that you’d read about here] of 2017” lists. We’re going to refrain from employing that tired media meme in this space — though we do reserve the right to publish our “10 favorite stories from Civil newsrooms” at this time next year! Instead, and in the spirit of the season, we want to share our New Year’s resolution for 2018:
Kill the term “fake news.”
Why?
“Fake news” initially served a noble intent — shining a critical light on stories that presented misinformation as reliable, fact-based news — but it has since been appropriated and warped into something far different. It’s no longer about promoting media literacy; “fake news” as a term has been weaponized to quickly and baselessly discredit a story with which an individual or group disagrees, objective facts be damned.
It’s a catchy, seemingly relatable phrase that is increasingly doubling as a 21st Century scarlet letter. There are serious issues with simply rallying against all things “fake news.” What are the mechanisms to spot and flag fake news? Does the challenging party have any ulterior motives — beyond simply “calling out untruths” — that may be incentivizing them to label something as “fake news?” It’s often not easy to tell, which is why the “fake news” game has become a slippery slope of “he said, she said” that’s distracting us from tackling much larger, systemic problems.
Civil, democratic societies are grounded by a healthy spirit of debate and constant questioning. It’s how opinions are formed and evolved, and how policies are shaped. For this model to work, arguments need to be based on fact, and journalists must be the trusted, neutral arbiters of fact.
As we look toward 2018, this model has arguably never been more broken. Public trust in the media is at an all-time low. Governments are openly using “fake news” (spreading it, stoking fears about it) as a means to manipulate public opinion in their own countries and abroad. More than 60 percent of Americans admit to being confused about what actually constitutes objective facts (and more than 20 percent admit to sharing “fake news” stories themselves, knowingly or not).
Instead of simply decrying “FAKE NEWS!”, let’s start focusing on media literacy, and promoting more effective credibility indicators. Rather than subscribing to an opaque, often unquestioned ideology, consider asking the following questions when assessing the trustworthiness of a given story:
Does this story contain any original information, based on the reporter directly interviewing a subject or analyzing a primary source document (e.g., a police report, a piece of legislation, etc.)?
Is the author of this article based in the location(s) in question? Did they spend any time in this location during the reporting of this story?
Does this article explicitly cite its sources when relying on pre-existing information? Do I know / trust those sources?
Put another way: does this article contain reliable, fact-based information? Or is it misinformation being passed off as fact? While “misinformation” may make for decidedly less buzz-worthy marketing copy, it’s a term that much more directly addresses the key issue at hand: promoting greater media literacy and better rewarding fact-based journalism.
“Fake news” will surely continue to permeate into 2018, but we’re committed to doing our part to shifting attention back to the larger issue here. You won’t see this term associated with Civil, a deliberate choice that’s reflective of our commitment to objective, fact-based reporting — not subjective editorializing in 200 characters or less.
Tl;dr: Happy New Year! Now let’s put “fake news” to bed, once and for all.
