Fake News Media in the U.S.

I hope y'all (I'm from Texas, so I'm aloud to say y'all) have enjoyed this blog is far and are spotting the fake news, but this post will be cover other issues in media and society from my classmates blogs.     https://mediaeffects724151893.wordpress.com/2020/05/09/other-issues-in-media-and-society/ This blog is worth giving a read because Jeremy really gives good points on how the media is affecting children and makes you question if we are moving in the right path with technology as a society. https://keepingmoviesalive.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/franchises-over-creativity-an-issue/comment-page-1/?unapproved=1&moderation-hash=d91b11ce7905dd70adfd2610443b87cc#comment-1 If you have ever said "they don't make movies like they used to" then definitely check out this blog. Axel really dives into how franchises are starting to take over Hollywood and whats really happening to creativity in the studios. https://dangersofaugmentedreality.blogspot.com...

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Bibliography  30, seconds. “Why Is Fake News Invented?” 30sec To Check It Out , 2019, 30secondes.org/en/module/why-is-fake-news-invented/. Brown, Eileen. “9 Out of 10 Americans Don't Fact-Check Information They Read on Social Media.” ZDNet , ZDNet, 10 May 2017, www.zdnet.com/article/nine-out-of-ten-americans-dont-fact-check-information-they-read-on-social-media/ . Higgins, Tucker. “Michael Flynn, Trump's Ex-National Security Adviser, Pleads Guilty to Lying to the FBI; Now Cooperating with Russia Probe.” CNBC , CNBC, 18 Jan. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2017/12/01/court-schedules-plea-hearing-for-flynn-at-1030-am-et.html. McCarthy, Andrew. “Andrew McCarthy: FBI Set up Michael Flynn to Pursue Trump-Russia Investigation.” Fox News , FOX News Network, 3 May 2020, www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-fbi-set-up-michael-flynn-to-pursue-trump-russia-investigation. Nagler, Christina. “4 Tips for Spotting a Fake News Story.” Harvard Summer School , 1 Nov. 2018, www.summer.harvard....

Growing up, the news channel was always on in my house. My father, who is pretty conservative, usually only had it on Fox News. Every now again though my father would switch it to CNN. One day I just asked him “ if you don't like CNN then why do you watch it?” Then he said something to me I wont forget, “son you always have to try and know your enemy, but you also have to think for yourself.” Now I know this sounds like two different quotes in one, but what he meant by that was that even though he's not a fan of CNN he wants to know what they're thinking, because we have to be able to forum our own opinions. If we don't think for ourselves, anything we hear that’s news related, even if its fake news, will consume our thoughts. Then the biased news media outlets who are spreading the fake news will control us. In my opinion though, almost all news nowadays is fake news. The top two news media outlets, CNN who leans left, and Fox News who leans right, are always attacking...

Now if you want to find out more about fake news there are plenty of resources out there! If you wanted to keep up to date on the latest fake news, top stories and analysis you could go to https://www.politico.com/tag/fake-news . If you really wanted to dive deep into the fake news you could check out an article by the Atlantic called “The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News.” In this article they analyze all the major new stories in english on twitter. What they find out is that the false stories and rumors spread way faster than accurate stories and they really dissect how fake news overcame the true news stories.  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/ . This next article is very interesting because of how fake news affects us during the coronavirus pandemic. It also really explains how misleading information flourishes during a pandemic. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/3...

So why is there even fake news and who invented it? You could say fake news started with President Donald Trump in 2016, but people have been lying about the news probably since the first newspaper. In an article called “Why is Fake News Invented?” from 30seconds.org, fake news can come from anyone and with the internet they can post anything anonymously. People can also spread fake news for multiple reasons, whether it is to promote an ideology, or even a product, but most of the time it’s for money, especially with major news outlets (30secounds 2019). The major news outlets mostly care about rating because their ratings are linked to their advertising slots, which is how they get paid. If they got low ratings all the time other companies wouldn't want to advertise on their broadcast or website. It's all about the clicks! https://30secondes.org/en/module/why-is-fake-news-invented/

One problem people sometimes have when it comes to getting reliable news information is that they can't seem to always tell if their news source is reliable or not. Well, thanks to Christina Nagler, from Harvard Summer school, we are given really good tips for spotting fake news! A couple of ways you can check your information is by checking the credibility of the news source, or even checking the sources' citations (Nagler 2020). If you're still having a hard time with your sources information you can always visit fact checking websites like FactCheck.org (Nagler 2020). Even though there are so many ways for us to check our sources, fake news sometimes still becomes viral, but how? One reason Nagler mentions is that some headlines really grab our attention and with social media we are easily able to share the headlines with our friends and family, but it's not as easy to evaluate or even read the actual article (Nagler 2020). Nagler also points out that people are mor...

Do you know the saying “don't listen to everything you hear.” Well, there's some truth to that. In 2017 Michae Flynn, who was President Trump's national security advisor at the time, pleaded guilty for making false statements to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations). These allegations relate to the Special Counsel investigation, which was an investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election. Apparently, Flynn was discussing US sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak before Trump was officially in office (Higgins 2017). The white house wanted to make it clear that President Trump had no prior knowledge of Flynn's conversations with the Russians, but one reporter didn't get the message (Kessler 2017). One of ABC’s investigative reporters, Brian Ross, had said on ABC’s World News Tonight that President-elect Trump asked Flynn to contact Russia to talk about how they can work together to fight ISIS (Schwartz 2017). Hours later ...

(only watch first couple of minutes) CNN (Cable News Network) is the number one American news channel that definitely has the reputation of leaning left on most topics. One topic that seems to never leave the headlines is President Donald Trump. If you have ever watched CNN they usually never have anything good to say about President Trump. Lately CNN has been covering President Trump's daily whitehouse briefings about the coronavirus pandemic. At one of these briefings President Trump was commenting on how they learned disinfectants can kill the virus and his exact words were "and then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning ... it would be interesting to check that” (Valinsky 2020). After this comment was made media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC (claims to be left wing) were scrambling to spread fake news and make their headlines say something along the lines of ...

The definition of news: “information about current events.” Any news media outlet that is giving out information to the public has the responsibility to give the information as unbiased as possible. It's as simple as that. In this day in age though it seems that people who are responsible for updating the general public about what's going on in the world are telling us what we need to hear but aren't doing it so truthfully, while pushing their own agenda, especially with politics. Dare I say they are giving us “fake news,” and we see the fake news spread through different platforms such as broadcast and print media, the internet, and even social media. So the question is, who can we trust to give us our news? We the people need to stop being sheep to the news media. We need to start thinking for ourselves, because as long as we let the news media outlets spread fake news and be the wolves, the more we are subjected to their ideology. Funny how we need to start fact checking...