The topic of Fake News ( or should we say Fake World ) continues to trend in the news and on social media. But actually fake news is nothing new, its just the first time anyone has found a name for it.
Here are a few simple tips to learn how to avoid being duped by Fake News.
1 – Do I know this website?
One obvious question you should always ask yourself. If its not a news site you’ve ever heard of before, then take extra care. Stick to posts from well known news sites BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian The Telegraph etc.
2- Which country does the news originate from?
This can be more tricky to spot but if your news post takes you, or has links to a a website outside of the social media site then its worth checking out the url. A story about an attack on a teenager of ethnic minority in the UK, found on a website based in Russia is less likely to be trustworthy. So avoid “www.Dailynews.Ru” or “www.dailynews.ch”. Instead us your primary source of information such as websites ending in “.co.uk”. A little bit of digging around can reveal a lot about the origins of any website.
3 – Check Mate!
Before reposting any story always double check it against other sources. Do a quick search on Google, Bing or Yahoo. You will soon see if your news item is trust worthy. Any true story is very unlikely to only appear on one random post. Across the whole the internet, someone else will have got his hands on it and published it.
4- All news is fake to some degree
The most important thing you have to remember is that news is a commodity which is sold to consumers. Any news you read almost always has a hidden agenda. Its what we call “The Angle” in reality the hidden agenda is always the commodity itself. Its always trying to sell more news papers or get more followers or more airtime. So much of the news you read has been very cleverly written to emphasise a certain angle aimed at selling to you, the consumer. In the end news papers are written by people, and all of us have opinions about what we read including journalists and editors. Much of the news we read is actually not “news” but just “someone’s opinion about the news”
Further more Newspapers often align themselves with a particular political bias. Maybe its a hard right media corporation like Fox News or something more to the left of the political spectrum like the Morning Star. We often forget these underlying bias positions when we read the news. We should always keep a critical eye out even if we might agree with the political position.
5- Ask the right questions
A good question to ask yourself when making an assessment on a news story is: “How is this story making money?” and “Who is being negatively portrayed and why?” Always try to find an opposing article on the same subject which has a different slant.
It might sound a bit non-conformist and sceptical but these are good principles to bear in mind. Don’t trust anything you read and know your own mind. Whatever opinion you have about someone else based purely on what you’ve read is VERY unlikely to be a true reflection on who they actually are.
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