Fake news is something that I believe has been very popular in the last few years. This is not to say that we haven’t had fake news before, but that it’s become more popular lately. This is very unfortunate because it causes discrepancies between people. Personal experience, on Facebook I come across a lot of absurd articles shared by people. These articles seem to offer no substance and lack information that I wouldn’t consider credible or let alone use it in a professional setting. But, I always do have this idea that what if what I consider credible news is really fake news, and the absurd news is telling the truth. It can really go either way, and I believe as time goes on it might be harder to distinguish credible news.
Real news, Fake news, they both exist but they aren’t just appearing from thin air. People are actually writing this stuff and its journalist. Can we really fault the Journalists who sometimes are looking and reaching for stories just for clicks? I believe Journalists have a responsibility to have integrity when it comes to their writing. They are the ones who should report the facts and not what favors them. But it’s also understandable when you have to consider that their industry might be dying because people are getting news online and aren’t paying for subscriptions like “back in the day”.
John Oliver explains the situation very well on his show. The video can also be found on youtube named “Journalism: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. On the show he explains the situation that is happening in the news industry. Unfortunately it is a dying one and it has caused the newspaper companies to cut employees and just make cuts all around, some have even had to merge or downsize to try to maintain being profitable. This kind of stuff has caused journalists to have to resort to finding news that would attract customers and even have to make up news for clicks. In some way, if you think about it, journalists have had to sell out for the sake of keeping their industry a float. We are in an age where paper isn’t cutting it and a lot of things are online which makes me wonder, if there is genuinely anything that can happen to save the industry? I don’t believe finding a solution will be the right way to approach this but I do wonder where we would go from here. I think most of the solutions could lie in just the people being aware of what to look for when determining whether something is fake or not but I think even then, we’ve probably seen examples where this proves that people will believe anything. This upcoming election has definitely proven that people will stick by what they believe even if it seems absurd. As long as there is a reporter willing to write what people wanna hear, there will be real and fake news out for the public.
Do you believe you can spot fake news? What ever you choose to believe, do you ever wonder if you’ve been believing the wrong thing?
SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 
Click bait has become really big in recent years especially with people getting away with paper ads and everything shifted to pretty much online. To be able to make money you have to have people click on your article even if they don’t read it. So to get this done journalist have started to make titles that are outrageous and sometimes not true and then you click on the article and it really has nothing to with what the title was even talking about. This becomes a problem when people read the title and then think they know what’s going on then share the article and more people do the same. It comes down to having to actually read the article or at least a bit of it to get the real idea and have an understanding about what is being talked about.
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Hello Steve, your perspectives on fake news and real news were fantastic! Some journalists today do publish information that is misleading or flat out wrong. I believe they do this to receive a reaction or response from its audience. You also mentioned how important it is for these news outlets to be honest and truthful. I hope we can return to a place where news is displayed in a truthful manner from a reliable individual. I would consider myself fairly good a debunking certain news. However, at times it can become overwhelming with loads of information.
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Great post! I also think that fake news had definitely become more of a major problem the past few years because of how divided the people are in this country and like you said al the companies want to do is make money. The ways you mentioned they were doing that is absolutely discusting, and I also think that josh Oliver did a great job of showing us all really how bad it has gotten over the past couple of years.
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To answer your question, I don’t know for sure if I can spot if the news is fake or not. I chose not to interact with the news just because I don’t think they are given out the valuable information that we all truly need in this day and age for our health, the society and important world changes. There’s so much fake news that I personally would rather not get my information from the news channels. However, I am always thinking what if’s for the information that I gather daily because there’s just so much opinions and facts spilled all over the internet that it can be a little overwhelming. But if I do some digging and researching on the specific topic, sometimes even Google scholar searches, it will help with my belief on if it is fake or real news.
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