This is not a credible news source. I do not generally start
off my posts with statements like this, but after all of the fake news sources
and stories being spread throughout Facebook during the past election and
continuing still, I’m not sure what people believe anymore.
Throughout the election I kept seeing posts from people
which obviously came from right or left minded groups but were easy to spread
because they were written to agree with what the person sharing them wanted to
believe, even if they weren’t true. I, like many Americans, made the false
assumption that this was a minority of people, that the majority of our country
had had to do a book report or two in their educational career and knew the
importance of citing legitimate sources. I believed that after being told that
these stories were not in fact 100% true, and in some cases not true at all,
that people would look into it a little more and then feel silly, but would be
more careful with what they posted and shared moving forward. But to be honest,
I felt that they were so obviously false that I didn’t even need to say
anything…as it turns out, I was wrong.
Here is a clip from the John Oliver show which you really
should watch. It’s about a 30 minute segment so make sure you have some time to
watch it all (you can maybe skip the last 5 minutes where they just run a montage
of people saying “fuck 2016”) but the rest is really good, and depending on
your hope for America, kind of sad:
If you don’t want to watch, here is some of the quality
information taken from the show:
62% of America says they get their news from Social Media
44% of Americans get their news from Facebook specifically
Of the sites most shared on Facebook which sway towards the
Right or Left, 38% of the Republican sites and 19% of the Democrat sites were
found to contain some falsities or be a completely false reporting of facts and
events. (A key here would be that any % is bad, Democrats aren’t better just
because they have a smaller percentage, 19% is still way too much!)
The problem with these sites (Here’s a link to check out
some of the ones people have identified) is that a lot of people are taking
them as facts; I’m not the only one who made the mistake that people truly
would be able to decipher the difference.
In Oliver’s show he talks about how President-Elect Trump
even cited false data from stories during his campaign and when called out he
responded, “What do I know about it, all I know is what’s on the internet.”
But he also fueled these fake news organizations with the
things he was saying on stage at his rally’s and during the Presidential
debates, one stat that was grossly falsified was when Trump claimed that 81% of
whites were killed by blacks in gun deaths, when the accurate number was
actually 15%. A claim that Bill O’Reilly called Trump out on.
The sad thing about all of this is not that it led to the
election of Trump (It may have been one of the factors, but there were
definitely more), but that we are willing to defend these sites as cold hard
facts even after they are proven to be false. It has caused us to have a
mistrust for the media (which isn’t entirely unwarranted) but most of the false
claims aren’t coming from trusted sources such as The New York Times,
Washington Post, or some of the other big papers out there. They’re coming from
sources as listed on the link above and because of that we no longer trust
papers that actually give a damn about the truth. Can they choose who to back
and report more on positive stuff that they agree with? Absolutely. But they
hold themselves to a higher standard whereas, even if that is the case, you can
rest assured that the story will be truthful.
One of the underlying problems here is Facebook and social
media in general. It has obviously evolved into a news source rather than just
a gathering spot for individuals to share craft ideas, recipes, and give each
other crap about fantasy football or deer hunting. My friend Chris had posted
an article on Facebook, about Facebook (where I get my news)…my head may blow
up…where they talk about it being time for Facebook to start to try and do
something about this large stream of false news being propagated throughout
their medium (HERE’s the link). When I first read the article another RLF
native had commented that it would be a slippery slope, which I completely
agreed with…but then I opened my eyes more to what was happening on the web
site.
Each day I would log on and see so many of these false
stories being shared and re-shared and commented on as fact and I was worried
for where our country might lead if this is how we get our “news.” I thought
maybe I should start to attempt to do something about it, so I started to
comment on a few about how the story was false and then I would link to an
actual news source for back up, or if someone just presented data, I asked for
their source so that I could check it out.
The first one where I provided an actual news source didn’t
have any follow up responses as of when I last checked here, but the second one
where I asked for their source was what really got me.
The post claimed that Trump had won the popular as well as
the electoral vote (which isn’t true – Clinton was up over 700,000 in the
popular vote as of this posting) and was very detailed, going through the
numbers in each state to show that Trump was the overall winner. The post also
said, now we can stop the debate, here are the facts!
So I commented on the post, “Not that it makes any
difference because Trump won the Electoral College and is in fact our
President-Elect, but I was just wondering where you found this information as
there has been a lot of false news reports out there and I am just looking for
Trust Worthy sources.”
Obviously I was being a bit condescending as I knew the
information to be false, but I just wanted people to start to think about
checking their sources a little more.
The response: The person deleted my comment.
I would have been fine with them deleting the post, I would
have been fine with them deleting my comment and then saying in their post, “according
to …..” to show where they found the information, but by deleting the very
question as to the source of the material the person was willfully spreading
lies, in which case they were no better than the fake “news” outlet in which
they were spreading falsities. So is the power of Facebook. People who read his
post who do not question it will share it as fact and will debate it with fury,
but the truth is we’re no better than the people who are trying to profit off
of advertising revenue generated by these false sites, the only difference is
they’re running a business and we’re running from the truth.
Next time you have to help your child with a book report and
have to find at least three credible sources to support your claims, please do
me a favor and cite some of the sites you are posting about on Facebook. Let’s
see how it turns out when the site doesn’t hold out in academia but is spouted
as truth to your friends and family on social media.
Think it doesn’t matter? Kids come on my bus telling me that
Hillary wanted to take everyone’s guns away…show me a credible article where
she states that. Now remember that the next Presidential election will be held
in 2020, so the kids I see on my bus, 14 and up, they’ll be part of the voting
process…let us just hope they have the gull to actually know that they are
voting based on facts rather than what “100% Fed Up” or “Occupy Democrats” is
reporting as facts. Let them learn from our mistakes, and let us start to
question our sources once again.
We get to choose the media we read and believe, the results
of the this past election may have been swayed by false news sites, but in
reality we have no one but ourselves to blame. We demand better from our youth,
it’s time that we start to demand better from ourselves. I know the slogan for
terrorism is; “If you see something, say something.” So if you really want to
protest, let’s protest these false sites by calling them out. But don’t just
yell at your friends and tell them they’re wrong; point them in the right
direction. Check their source and then find out if it’s accurate or if you find
it not to be, point them in the direction of where they can find accurate
information. It will be hard as people are pretty sensitive to being told they’re
wrong (especially after finding a “news source” that specifically tells them
they’re right) but be persistent…the fate of our democracy lies in our hands.
