Fake news and freedom of speech
Fake news is a real problem. An analysis by Buzzfeed showed that in the final three months of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the top performing election stories on social media were fake. At the time the story getting the most shares was about the pope endorsing Donald Trump. But the complexity of the problem goes way beyond the nonsensical news manifestations people are sharing.
So what is fake news? According to Wikipedia:
Fake news is a neologism, used to refer to fabricated news. This type of news, found in traditional news, social media or fake news websites, has no basis in fact, but is presented as being factually accurate.
Don’t worry, I also had to look up the word neologism. It’s just a fancy way of saying that it is a new expression. So basically, fake news is any news story that is presented as factual, but has no basis in reality.
In many cases identifying fake news is fairly easy. There are sites that produce content just to get as many clicks as possible, by just making stuff up to create catchy headlines. Many times they even take names similar to more credible outlets. Some examples that many come across are: abcnews.com.co, buzzfeedfeed.com, or bloomberg.ma.
Then there are the satire sites, like the Onion, who don’t really pretend to report real news, so by the definition they are not really fake news. However, it has not deterred some readers (unaware of The Onion’s repertoire) from thinking their news articles were in fact real news.
When we have taken away the obvious fake news sites and the satire sites, such as The Onion, things start to get more hairy. Where do we draw the line between fake news and bad journalism?
About a year ago, Washington Post published an article titled: “Russian hackers penetrated U.S electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say”. This was their top read and shared news story on that day. This turned out to be an employee who got malware on his laptop. It was not connected to the grid, and the only connection to Russia was that Russians are suspected to have used the same malware in the past. The malware could have been purchased by anyone online.
By definition, this is fake news and should have been easily identified, vetted, and dismissed by the Washington Post.
At the same time, the Washington Post has been attacking independent media outlets for spreading fake news and russian propaganda. In an article titled “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say”, they published a list of 200 suspected news outlets. The story was based on a study by an anonymous organization called PropOrNot. It turned out that their definition of Russian propaganda was so broad that virtually any news outlet was covered by it. All it took to make it to their list was to not be in the mainstream media. The Washington Post, at a later time, finally added a correction to their article.
Determining what is a fact is not always a clean cut. As an example, Politifact fact checked two very similar statements on the unemployment rate of African-Americans in the US, made one year apart.
This is the first one, by Bernie Sanders:
“If they are African-American, the real unemployment rate for young people is 51 percent”
It was labeled as “mostly true”.
The second one, by Donald Trump:
“African-American youth is an example: 59 percent unemployment rate; 59 percent”
This was labeled as “mostly false” with the motivation that the unemployment rate for black Americans ages 16 to 24 was 18.7 percent, or less than one-third of the claim.
The following is a graph from the study that both Sanders and Trump quoted. It proves both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s statements as correct, depending on which time period you are looking at.
How did Politifact come to such different conclusions in the two cases? This question becomes even more important as fact checking organizations gain more power and influence.
Facebook and Google, two of the largest online sharing platforms, have recently started taking steps to crack down on fake news through labelling questionable stories and also removing ads from sites and Youtube channels that are considered to produce fake news.
Less fake news sounds like a great idea, but there is also a risk. In its current form, on Facebook, mainstream media outlets are always considered trusted sources and their stories cannot be flagged as fake. Also, several of the third party fact checking organizations employed by Facebook are funded by the mainstream media.
In many authoritarian countries, like China or countries in the Middle East, publication of what they call “fake news” is criminalized. Journalists are put in jail and news outlets are shut down. Obviously, we are not there yet,nbut when major tech companies start to suppress or censor independent news outlets based on criteria that may not be entirely transparent or open to the public, the path forward can become a slippery slope.
History has shown us that censorship is never a good solution. What we need is an open space for open discussion. We need to be able to scrutinize news stories, regardless of if they are coming from the mainstream media, independent media, or even fake news sites. The internet has given us an incredible possibility to work together across the world. What we need, is to build the tools to do this effectively, and have the manpower to do so. Studies on Wikipedia have shown that the more people edit a story, the more accurate and objective it becomes. This showcases the inevitable benefits of having a strong community interested in the sharing of properly vetted information.
At Newsvoice we have already come a long way in building the tools. But we need more manpower. This is where we need your help. Join in as a volunteer by downloading the app from newsvoice.com/app and going to About then tap Volunteer to sign up. We need all the help we can get, so please share this article. Let’s fix the news. Together.
