Dangers of Fake News
Fake news is a term that gets thrown around very frequently. Where did the term come from? It isn’t certain where it originated but it is certain where it became very popular. During the 2016 Presidential Elections, Donald Trump used the term and made it very popular. Fake news is untrue information presented as news. It often is damaging information for the reputation of the person it is attacking.
Journalists all over the world today are under the microscope when it comes to doing their jobs with credibility. Since the rise of social media and social media news coverage, it has become much easier to spread false information, even unknowingly. This is why the burden is on the journalists to verify all information that is found on the internet. According to a news verification story, “The core concepts journalists need to understand in proving the veracity in any piece of newsworthy material are it’s source, date, and location.” The goal after finding the source is to conduct a digital footprint analysis to find out more vital information. This analysis will look through the history of the account and will use Google’s reverse image search to see if it has been used elsewhere.
Fake news not only can harm the person or organization it is targeting, but it can also bring consequences to the person that spreads the information. Credibility is everything to a journalist and when that is taken away they lose everything. In extreme circumstances a journalist can be sued for spreading false information that they are aware is false and share it anyway.
Fake news has become so prevalent in our society today because the internet is such a vast horizon for all types of information to roam the plains. Some of the information is true and some of the information is patently false. Finding out if the content uploaded is original content is also another key step in the verification process. Journalists should cross-check the time and date with other reports as another safety measure. If they can speak with the original uploader it is good practice to have them send a copy of the original file because EXIF data can give a lot of essential information also.
EXIF viewer is a great online tool to check meta data. Timestamps are another key metric to check for with found content. For example, if viewing a tweet when not logged in, the timestamp will show when the tweet was posted in San Francisco time, whereas it will show your local time when logged in, not the user’s.
The verification process can be a tedious process but it is extremely necessary in today’s social media era. It does not take much to stumble upon some information that seems credible but has been fabricated. One honest mistake could cost someone’s reputation or a journalist’s career in some cases. During this 2020 Presidential Election the fact checkers are everywhere working tirelessly to disprove fake news. Perhaps the facts can sway the election to one side or the other.