‘FAKE NEWS’ GUIDE WINS AWARD
A timely guide to distinguishing fact from fiction in the era of “fake news” was announced Monday as the winner of the $30,000 National Business Book Award. Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin said he was prompted to write A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Allen Lane Canada) as a response to the “balkanization of the news” over the last 15 years. “It’s been divided up into a lot of little tiny countries,” Levitin said. “We used to get all of our news from a few places. Now, there are thousands of them, and they’re not all equally stable countries; they’re not all equally good. The term “fake news” has quickly become a part of the modern lexicon, whether it’s used by U.S. President Donald Trump to denounce unfavourable media coverage, or by content aggregators like Facebook that are attempting to stop the spread of misinformation.