Yoel Feinberg
Period 1
Fake News
In the past, before the internet, becoming source of news required a strong economic platform and the permission to be a political foundation. Now, we have the internet, where people can claim their credibility as a news source without any trials. The problem of fake news is only growing. In the 2016 election, fake news was used as a claim to denounce certain opinions and information that was unproven true about both candidates. Fake news was also used to spread lies about both candidates during the election. These news outlets warp people's opinions into positions that are not factually created. Fake news also heavily contributed to the disconnect that we feel in our country today. The news tends to encourage extreme thinking, which has effectively slowly gotten rid of the moderate position in the United States. With two extreme factions of people, the tension is increased and the discontent as well. I think it should be a priority in schools to try and teach kids how to recognize news that is not reputable. It is becoming a very important skill to have, because if you read news that is not credible and you don’t recognize it, your right to opinion is taken from you as you adopt lies. Fake news is immoral as well. With the priority of making money off of clickbait titles and fake situations, fake news organizations effectively scam their readers. If you yourself want to learn how to recognize a fake news article, I will leave a link at the bottom where you can learn. Also, a separate but similar issue is news bias. A common misconception is that some major news sources are fair and unbiased, in reality this is false. Sources like Fox news and CNN both have their own political agendas and are therefore trying to sell ideas to their audience. In summary, don’t give your trust to any one news source, disperse yourself to many news sources, preferably different ones (like 1 republican and 1 democratic source), so that you can try to get the full picture.
Sources:
Learn here:
https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174
You make the point that people should expose themselves to one Republican and one Democratic source. Is there a possibility that that kind of thinking - making oneself look at the two sides of the coin in one specific country whose politics are different from that of many nations across the world - is still insufficient? It might broaden one's perspective on in-country issues somewhat, but it might not giver that much overall perspective - and considering the way in which the different media panders to their demographics differently, it's not entirely clear that you'll even hear about the same issues from different sides of the media.
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