Fake News

CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

  • Fake news is deliberately false or misleading news stories that masquerade as truthful reporting. Fake news is harmful, destructive, and dangerous. For example, it has sewn distrust among people, pushed political conflict to the boiling point, exaggerated disagreements and social conflicts, and incited confrontation and violence. Worse still, fake news spreads much faster and farther through social media than true stories can. Fortunately, critical thinking offers a necessary corrective.

Taxonomy of Misinformation

  • Because it is a deliberate attempt to deceive, fake news is a form of lie. False statements arising from mistakes, errors, or misunderstandings, however, do not constitute fake news. Insofar as they do not contain deliberate deception, opinion writing and biased reporting do not constitute fake news either. Satirical writing is distinct from fake news as well, since satirical stories, while fake, are not intended to deceive. Political propaganda and fake news are also distinct, but the latter can be used in the former. Hoaxes propagated though the media are rightly considered fake news, but others are better known as financial or health scams, computer virus hoaxes, urban legends, email hoaxes, and art-world hoaxes. 

Telling Fake from Real

  • Combating fake news requires that we adopt an attitude of reasonable skepticism. We must give up the habit of automatically accepting claims found in the media or online, and instead refuse to believe a claim unless there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Legitimate reasons are those that increase the likelihood of a claim being true. Such reasons come from reliable evidence, trustworthy sources, and critical reasoning.
  • There are several strategies we can employ to discern what’s real, what’s fake, and what’s worth our time. One strategy is to read laterally. When professional fact-checkers try to determine whether a website is a reliable source of information, they see what other sources have to say about the person or organization behind the site. Consulting a variety of sources helps put information in proper perspective, uncover errors and bias, pinpoint consensus and disagreement among experts, and find out where the preponderance of evidence points.
  • A second strategy is to read critically. Reading critically requires that we scrutinize the truth of the claims put forward by websites, social media, and other sources of information. To do this, we must ask ourselves if the claims are plausible and well-supported. We may also check to see if the claims have been examined by reliable fact-checking organizations.
  • A third strategy is using Google and Wikipedia carefully. When searching with Google, for example, use Google Scholar and focus on domains ending in .edu, .gov, and .org to yield more reliable, trustworthy results. And while Wikipedia entries are not consistently reliable, they can be useful places to start. The lists of resources at the end of articles can point you to authoritative books, essays, reference materials, experts, and websites. Starting with these lists, you can follow where your research leads, checking out the reliability and suitability of the resources as you go.
  • A final strategy is to remember to check your own biases. Confirmation bias is a common human weakness that can lead us to accept claims that aren’t true, see relationships that aren’t there, and find confirmation that isn’t genuine. The best cure is to seek disconfirming evidence by looking beyond the people and policies we agree with, the books that support our views, and the magazines and newspapers that echo our political outlook.

Fake Images

  • Today’s technology can create sophisticated fake images and videos that seem indistinguishable from the real thing. There are, however, some ways to detect fakes. The first step is, once again, adopting an attitude of reasonable skepticism—unlearning the habit of automatically accepting a photo or video at face value. From there, we can try to determine the source of the image, which can provide important clues about its credibility. Checking for previous uses with a reverse image search can also help to reveal a fake. Finally, we should remain wary of incredible images and always look for incongruities—such as missing shadows, broken or distorted lines, and repeated or cloned regions—in the images we see.
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