Misleading Media & Fake News - Kai Russell
Misleading Media & Fake News
Misleading news and fake news are something we come across a lot more often than we think. With how much of our lives today are dependent on social media, there are many things out there that aren't always true. This topic interests me because I'm someone who gets most of their information from online and wants to see how much of what we see can be misinformation or fake news. After learning more about what it is to be a journalist, I learned that these people who make articles that are spreading fake news are not journalists, but instead are propagandists. It is important that we are aware of the fact that we must not always believe everything we see and double-check. Two different situations I will be writing about in my blog are Trump vs the BBC and a Houston Physician talking about how AI is causing confusion for health care.
Before we get to real-life situations of how misinformation and fake news are spread in our world, we will talk about some interesting facts from the article below. An interesting fact from the article is, " 70% of Americans feel that fake news has impacted their confidence in the government." This is very sad to hear because in an already corrupt world, we are when it comes to politics and our government, we add more people who feel like they don't know what to believe or even vote for. I feel like my generation has very little interest already in voting and politics, but adding misinformation to those to make them less confident is hurting our government and what people truly want. Another interesting fact is, "2/3's of people aged 65 or older, say they come across misleading information daily." Since the news is now all over social media, the people who are 65 and older aren't used to using the new technology because they didn't grow up using it. They aren't sure what to check for or what's a reliable source. 65-year-olds already start to get more confused and out of touch, most likely with news information. A third interesting fact from the article is," 61% of adults in the United States trust national news, while 71% trust local news." This is interesting because you would think that this is a high number because it's over 50%. But why shouldn't it be 100%? These local and national news sources are supposed to give us our information about what's going on in the world, and people can't even trust them. With how much misinformation is spread on the news these days, it has led to people not believing their own news sources. This causes people to either go to other sources that may also be misinformation, or causes people to not even care about the news because they feel like they can't trust any sources.
Source: https://www.demandsage.com/fake-news-statistics/
Trump vs the BBC is a great example of how the media can be misleading. For context, the BBC posted a Panorama documentary of Trump giving a speech back in 2021, on January 6th. This was the same time when Trump supporters were invading the U.S. Capital in anger because Trump had not won the election. The documentary was of Trump giving a speech, but what people didn't know was that the BBC had cut clips and put different clips together. This caused a lot of awareness and certainly gained the attention of Trump.
From Trump's point of view, he was furious with the BBC. Trump has said out loud before that he does not like BBC news and that they spread a lot of misinformation to the world. This situation with the documentary certainly did not help with this. When Trump found out, he threatened to sue for 1 billion and wanted an apology from the BBC. Trump was not happy with how they cut clips and said that he felt like the BBC in the documentary tried to portray him as promoting violence. Trump would go on and say that he believes this hurt his reputation as a president and would never promote those kinds of things to the world.
From the BBC's point of view, they admitted to being in the wrong. They would give the apology to Trump but would not pay the 1 billion. Although they apologized for the cutting clips, the BBC was firm that they did not do this to make Trump look bad or make it seem like he was promoting violence. The BBC felt like they were just doing their job, but realized how it was misleading and apologized for that. This wouldn't be all because with this getting spread to the news, people started to question the BBC. The BBC would start to get a lot of backlash for this and start having trust issues with people. With all this pressure on BBC News, it would cause both the Director General and the CEO to resign from BBC News. It's important to see that even if you don't intend to have misleading information in your news, it can cause a lot of harm to your company and yourself.
With AI taking over our world, theirs both benefits and cons to it. I think AI is great to have as it's a great resource to get ideas and other things to help you. But AI is yet to be all true in what it tells us. AI can feed us misinformation and spread lies to us, but people tend to believe it because of how popular AI is being used right now. People tend to turn to AI for answers, and that is not always the best solution. Houston Physicians are worried for our world in healthcare because AI is now shifting towards giving information to people about healthcare. AI is something that we shouldn't go for when it comes to healthcare because of the misinformation it will give us. You need to go to a professional help that specializes in what you need. They have found studies that have shown that these AI healthcare sites are giving misinformation, but also give additional information that is also not true. This shows that AI is not only giving misinformation but trying to add additional info to try to show they "know" what they are talking about when studies show that they are giving out misinformation. The physician said in the article, "It's not just technology, but our scarce commodity with limited help and online misinformation." In this statement, it talks about how people also can't afford to go to see professional help and have to instead go to the next best option they have. With how expensive healthcare is in today's world and everything else people have to have money for, some people can't afford to see a doctor for their medical help. This leads to people going to AI since it is free for those in need. The physician said that they advise to not go to AI but try to gain a relationship with someone in the medical field who can help you or give you information instead of using AI because it is not a reliable source.
Source:https://www.chron.com/news/article/houston-ai-influencers-health-21186124.php
My final thoughts after doing my research on misinformation and fake news are that it is important that we try to find reliable sources by background checking and double-checking everything we see. In a world where there are lots of lies being spread across the internet, and where news is all over the internet, now. It's important we don't believe everything we see, no matter who it's from. As you can see from my examples, BBC News, which is a highly watched and read news site, spread misleading information that was very subtle but still made a difference. The slightest misinformation can cause someone to think differently or even get a different understanding. I believe it is important to realize that we don't call these people who make fake news journalists, but instead call these people propagandists because they don't live by the standards of journalists' principles.
Cited Sources:
Comments
Post a Comment