Introduction
When I was in my first year at university, one of my professors defined objective journalism as unbiased reporting, a complete and unrefracted capture of the world. In my naive mind, I questioned why someone would even want to force their opinion into a news story. Why would it be necessary to have a bias, when you're required to solely deliver the facts?
Three years later, the world is witnessing some of the most biased (or completely false) reporting in my generation's lifetime, a divided United States and a battle to interpret the first amendment.
Politics aside, there is a much larger, more imminent problem: educating the public on media literacy. Why must companies, news mediums, and technology set their own regulations for consumers? Yes, they are a part of the problem. However, when we don't inform younger generations on how to even interpret the news, how to recognize the validity of news, and how to fact check... Will the "fake news" problem become any better?
The Problem with Fake News| Mile Grncarov
Mile Grncarov, now a junior at the American University in Bulgaria, wrote misleading, clickbait articles for a profit at age 13 in Macedonia. After "fake news" became a global issue in multiple prominent elections, Grncarov questioned his previous role in the epidemic. In this video, he shares his experience, thoughts on freedom of speech, and advice to online readers.
Grncarov says when you ask these content creators why they do what they do, there is only one goal: to create clickbait articles.
"Before the U.S. election, 10,000 websites were reported as being fake websites. And a majority of those websites were actually aimed at conservative supporters or supporters of Donald Trump," he says.
And what Grncarov was even more surprised to discover was 143 of those websites were from a city in central Macedonia, created by teenagers to turn a profit. The articles would sometimes not even include any factual information, and the teenagers sold merchandise through the websites due to the amount of attention they received.
Between the ages of 13 and 18, Grncarov set up over 40 websites that would now be considered "fake news" websites. He would spend hours creating content, whether it was copy-pasted or made up from thin air, to generate revenue.
Grnacarov explains the TEDx audience if a person could receive 5,000 visits from boosting a Facebook post for $3, imagine the impact they could make with a hateful message.
In a 2016 Stanford University study, 82% of U.S. middle schoolers couldn't tell the difference between sponsored content and a real news story on a website. They couldn't detect "fake news."
Is it possible to stop this phenomenon? And is it considered freedom of speech?
Until the government or an organization decides how to handle it, we must take matters into our own hands and become more media literate.
Readers must check an article's source and its URL and even google the author, title or image. Google allows you to reverse image search and see if the photo was fabricated, or real.
Based on scholarly articles, multimedia content, and my own research, the following project will address the credibility of journalists and major news outlets. I will analyze the origins of "fake news," the public's media literacy, social media's fight against misformation and opposite opinions on the political spectrum. I'll conclude by offering recommendations on how to best inform yourself, whether that's reading all news, none at all, or somewhere in between.