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 more likely to accept information that goes with their beliefs and disagree with information that doesn't, according to Pew Research (Nagler 2020). Since more of our news is popping up on our social media feeds we really need to be careful about where we get our information from, because when you receive news from social media the headlines sometimes can twist the story. So if you are ever curious about the reliability of a news source, there's always a way to check it.
https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story
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/
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