Fake News Bias

Shrestha 2
Shrestha 5 Adit Shrestha Professor Sherry Sharifian GOVT 2305-73012 05 May 2018 Fake News Fake news relates to the maliciously fabricated information posted on websites or printed in articles with the aim of dissuading people’s opinions or scaring them by the spread of certain crucial information (www.factcheck.org 1). Playing into the populations ‘appetite’ for rapidly changing information, the fake news propagators release ‘juicy’ information through pseudo-cites of valid news websites all dressed as true information. Additionally, fake news feeds into the human’s cognitive biases. Defined as the logical nonconformities to the rational reasoning expected from an independent person, these biases often contribute to our acceptance

This is because, whereas most people delve directly into such information before verifying its credibility, the devil often lies in the details at the source as most will use unheard of reporters, quote partial information or unknown resources and often site unknown websites. Therefore, by first verifying the source of the information critically, I would be able to form a reasonable judgment as to whether the news is valid or is a hoax, and thereafter advise the person accordingly (Hunt 4). Finally, I would ask the person to check the dates when the information in question was posted. Due to their unstructured systems which lack editors, numerous fake news articles often post their news with minor errors such as numerous wrong spellings, diction and the wrong dates, all pointing towards their lack of credibility. Therefore, a thorough look at this would enable me to know to verify the credibility of the

In their ideal sense, any false information is primarily meant to damage the reputation of an individual, agency or institution or alternatively meant to gather undue advantage against their competitors. To achieve this feat, most institutions employ underhand methods such as smear campaign, negative news among others to raise their relevance within the website. Partisanship, minimal literacy levels among the masses in addition to the increasing numbers of the social media are to contribute to the increasing number of the spread of fake news within the society. This greatly indents the society in that, it affects the democratic space of the society. Recently surfacing aspects such as intrusion of privacy by such media sites as Facebook, among other online digital platforms violates the constitutionally entitled right to privacy. In the same vein, Williams 15 states that excessive influence on news media by politics which has resulted in a polarized country further hampers democracy as it impedes the citizens’ freedom of speech together with the press freedom enjoyed by media outlets, thereby causing enormous suspicion by the