There are all kinds of fake news that exist around us and knowing what is reliable and true is important. Radio in the past has had many problems with fake news such as the Orson Welles famous broadcast. Newspapers have higher prints in the United States that include USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Each of these newspapers has a website that has certain levels of access (paywalls), and many of these newspapers rely on The Associate Press. Television has the largest broadcasters today than radio, which include NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX.
Today there are different types of news for certain audiences, for example, Univision is just one of the large Spanish news programs that influence the Spanish community. The internet has made widespread use possible and has grown rapidly, which has become the go-to source for all news. Word of mouth, news that you hear from others by mouth is also another news source. Today many news sites have radio, newspapers, and TV networks, but some news organizations focus on certain political news such as Politico and The Huffington Post. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram share the news with mobile users and develop apps for these devices, which we can download and subscribe to, to get our daily news. Newspapers have faced a political and social media shock and journalists are becoming less reliable and are now seen as the enemy.
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Fake news can take many forms, such as deliberate misinformation, fake headlines, social media sharing, and satire. Deliberate misinformation is news that is written for profit and shared on social media, which targets certain groups of people who believe in its true content. In other words, this tactic of fake news is to get the news to spread fast so that the reader doesn’t have time to properly verify its true content. False headlines are one way into luring people to read their news, for example, a false headline should state something factional, but the body of the news article is completely different from the headline. This is basically called “click bait” which lures in the readers and catches his/her attention to make them click on the false news headline. Social media sharing makes it easier to get false news in a matter of seconds, which makes it harder for users to verify each one. These sites rely on shares, likes, and followers which turn them into a popularity contest (viral). Just because it gets a lot of attention it doesn’t mean it is true. Satire news (comedy) often begins as true but later twists its comments on society (The Onion). October 30th, 1938, listeners tuned into Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network and hear a news flash interrupt the regular program. The broadcast goes back to the dance music and the orchestra is interrupted to inform the listeners that a strange object is heading to New Jersey but in the end, it is false news to get the people interested. In the 19th century, Phineas Taylor Barnum used fraudulent stories and staged events to secure newspaper coverage for his circus. Barnum’s skill in using the media for the promotion of fake news made it possible for performers to become the earliest celebrities. Barnum understood that his audiences loved to be tricked and cheated.
Press agents were the first to use a wide variety of media channels to generate publicity. For example, promotional newspaper stories, magazines, articles, ads, dime novels, and theater marquees. Burke (press agent) and Buffalo Bill shaped many of the myths about American individualism and frontier expansion. All of this was utilized to sway the public and generate business, and in the 19th century, America's largest industrial companies employed press agents to win the favor of public opinion. In the 20th century, reporters and muckraker journalists were investigating many companies, which later brought the attention to the citizenry paid. This made the middle class rise and increase the spread of information through print media and democratic ideals, which began to hurt the established firms and politics. The elite groups who managed them were Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, they were the ones that started the popularization of shaping the facts and the “engineering consent.” However, journalists like Walter Lippmann, wrote the famous book “Public Opinion” in 1922, which spread worries about PR professional and their hidden agendas. World War II was a huge time for propaganda and the U.S. government, for example, the most iconic posters at the time were about a woman asking women to join the workforce. A Press release organizes a story for the news media, and the news media transforms it into a news report, which the PR firms manage the flow of information and control which media gets which order. For example, Twitter has become a popular format for releasing information to media (140 characters or less). Astroturf lobbying is phony grassroots that are engineered by PR firms. Fake news shows like Saturday Night Live (SNL), use news satires to tell their audiences something that seemed truthful but uses media to manipulate public opinion. By 2016, all news satires were aimed at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. For example, fake anchors like Stewart display a range of emotions that match our own, then our detached hard news anchors. Also, Stewart covered the 2012 presidential election and often show irony and humor.
Finally, fake news programs are often mock formulas that real TV news programs have long used. Today we use media and watch news satires to be not only entertained but also to stay current with what is happening in the world. False news information is being spread online every day and online communities growing, the range of solutions is being implemented every day. Twitter and Facebook and many others now require users to confirm their identity through email or by phone number just like Google. False news has led journalism to increase along with its quality by creating subscriptions to its readers, which makes it safer and more reliable to its users. Although it is hard to avoid false news stories in journalism, it is now known to the public that false news exists. The landscape of journalism has changed, and with the fake and sloppy reported news stories that have gone viral, journalists are now rethinking their craft. False news has been known since the strip-up (anti-British) of Benjamin Franklin in 1782. When he made a false news story claiming that Native Americans had sent the scalps of Americans to the king of England as a sign of loyalty. Franklin was smart to pull this hoax by printing an authentic-looking newspaper on his own printing press. Today, social media is available to anyone and the internet has made it easier to spread false news fast, but for some reason, it has become a part of our everyday life or a norm. Since we own the media (cell phones and computers) we trust it more than (traditional) expert journalists.
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