FAKE NEWS MAKES TRUTH A CASUALTY
All I needed to do now was visit Tracy’s hair salon in Honley and get my hair cut to the appropriate length. ROMAN emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius said: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” STORY from the Denver Guardian headlined: “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide” was shared on Facebook more than half a million times in the run-up to the US election.
It inferred that Hillary Clinton had had a federal agent and his wife murdered to keep them quiet.
The story, and the newspaper, were both fake. It was a scam of which Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels would have been proud.
Truth becomes a casualty in any election or highstake debate.
It seems it’s particularly vulnerable on social media as has been seen in both the Brexit and US election campaigns.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has come in for criticism for allowing it to happen.
When I saw the Denver Guardian story on Facebook, I checked it out and discovered it was a fake. But then I’m a journalist and I’m used to checking facts, quotes and sources. It’s telling that the hoaxers invented a newspaper to give their conspiracy story credence: it’s in the paper so it must be true.
The vast majority of Facebook users are honest and journalists don’t always get it right, but they usually try to.
In other parts of the world, that are less free than ours, many suffer for it.
Critics in the UK might point to the sensationalism of some tabloids and the interpretation of facts to suit the politics of a newspaper.
But the National Union of Journalists code of conduct is unequivocal.
It instructs its members should strive to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair; and that they differentiate between fact and opinion.
Principles that Mark Zuckerberg might well promote considering Facebook has the personal data of 1.8 billion people and is said to be the most influential commercial enterprise ever created.
Joseph Goebbels would have loved the potential.