My View

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 each other, and it seems that they forgot the purpose of the news. To inform the general public on current events and issues as unbiased as possible. This will never happen though, especially with the current pandemic. I feel like if you turn on the news right all you will hear is fake news about virus statistics , or different networks bashing each other about how the other is wrong, rather than giving the people hope. Usually I'll get my news from Real Clear Politics who gives almost all viewpoints on the political spectrum. Then if I'm getting information from a speech I’ll try and listen to the original recording, since most of the time media outlets will probably put words in the speaker's mouth. I will give people who start the fake news credit on one thing and that is that they know how to make money. They know how to use the click bait strategy. There have definitely been times where I have clicked on headlines, but the headlines barely had anything to do with the article. On Snapchat's Discover tab, they have so many different media outlets with so many headlines, it's definitely hard to resist the click bait. The reason there is so much click bait is because that's how most of the small media outlets make their money. It's a sick strategy, but it works. It seems that fake news isn't leaving the media anytime soon and it honestly will probably keep getting worse. So with the rise of fake news all you can really do is think for yourself.