USA TODAY International Edition
How we can crush fake news
It’s up to journalists and consumers to serve as watchdogs in ‘ post- truth era’
Journalists and news consumers, along with tech companies such as Facebook, can take steps to temper the fake news phenomenon.
But how much progress can be made should the country’s head newsmaker himself continue to be among those fueling the fake news fire?
At his first public press conference in nearly six months, President- elect Donald Trump called CNN a purveyor of “fake news” because the TV network had produced a story reporting that the U. S. intelligence officials had presented Trump and President Obama with allegations that Russian operatives claimed to have unverified, but potentially compromising personal and financial information on the president- elect.
Media observers, as well as journalists at competing outlets — including Fox News’ Shep Smith — agreed that CNN’s manner of covering the story met with journalistic standards.
CNN and other news organizations noted that the allegations were unverified, but the situation itself amounts to a news story, says Ed Wasserman, dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California- Berkeley, because “what matters is that our intelligence community believes Russia is sufficiently adversarial toward us that they would make an effort ( to) ... compile this.”
The situation cranks up the pressure on an- already volatile atmosphere caused by months of hyper- politicized activity online — and in the physical world — during the election cycle and subsequent post- campaign environment. Mainstream journalists feel as if they are under fire, while their readers and viewers get defensive. At the same time, Trump supporters feel not only vilified, but validated.
And Trump is not wrong when he points out that the U. S. intelligence community is not infallible. “The problem with our informational en- vironment, the news ecosystem right now is it is so polluted and so contaminated with falsity that Trump supporters can with justice point to the unreliability of this ecosystem to deliver straight and verifiable news,” Wasserman said.
But some wonder whether Trump may be seeking to gain an advantage from the situation — turning fake news on its head — to sow confusion among the citizenry. By attacking the mainstream media as incapable of truth-saying, the president- elect advances the notion of a post- truth era.
The CNN declaration is only Trump’s latest attack on the media. After the recent Golden Globes Awards speech by Meryl Streep, in which the threetime Oscar winner encouraged the support of media, Trump on Twitter called her “over- rated” and cited the “dishonest media.” During the waning days of the election campaign, Trump called the media “dishonest” for burying stories about the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton.
Trump supporters and altright news outlets have helped go viral false stories including those that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump and that Clinton & Co. were running a child sex ring from a Washington, D. C., pizzeria.
The Pope Francis story was the most read and shared story on Facebook during the final three months of the campaign, according to a BuzzFeed analysis. Fake news is rampant on social media with about one- third ( 32%) of Americans saying they often see made- up political news stories there, according to the Pew Research Center.
Even more, 63%, say that fake news creates “great confusion” among the public about current events, the survey found. An additional 24% said fake news causes some confusion. Why could this be so important? Because about half ( 47%) of all Americans get some news from Facebook, Pew found in an earlier study.
“Now that anyone — including our president- elect — is a publisher via social media, newsrooms are competing with non- newsrooms,” said Jessica Pucci, professor of ethics and excellence in journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University. “Trump certainly uses this to his advantage — he can reach audiences directly rather than using the media as a conduit.”
The advantage is that “our nation’s leadership has never been more raw and accessible,” she said, but added “it’s troubling that the president- elect calls ‘ fake news’ in one breath, and in the next breath shares unverified or unverifiable information in the next, such as saying the Affordable Care Act will ‘ soon be history.’ To my knowledge, it’s impossible to verify the future.”
Even more concerning is the propaganda potential for Trump and supporters to lead to action. In the case of “pizzagate,” an armed man showed up to investigate and fired his gun inside.
Facebook says it is taking steps to tackle fake news and will build better working relationships with established media to improve the user experience.
Media consumers can do their part, too. “Going forward people have to think for themselves,” said Nsenga Burton, digital editor for Grady Newsource and an instructor at the University of Georgia.