Non-Political False News Sometimes I can’t help but feel people are interested in sensationalism and trivia in the media when there are far more important things being discussed. A case in point is the headlines talking about the Royal family and their problems versus the headlines about Iran and the impeachment. I thought about this for a while and I can’t help but come to the conclusion there is a good chance the reason people are so interested in the Royal family news is they are sick of the political news. I know I’m sick of it, and from what I read it looks like many others are too. I tend to be interested in many other things, but I have to admit I am also interested in politics. You probably wouldn’t know it since I really try and avoid it in the articles I write. I do have to admit however over the years there have been a lot of stories in the news which have turned out to be untrue. I’m going to recite one, which was one of my favorites. The story appeared in a New York newspaper. It stated a baby gorilla had disappeared from its troop and the rest of the guerrillas became so worried they began looking for the missing gorilla. When they came upon a village they went in and started knocking on doors. When I read this, I almost split my sides laughing because it was presented as a legitimate story. I remembered remarking to the people I worked with this story had to be baloney. Some had said to me guerrillas were very smart and this could have happened or the paper wouldn’t have printed it if it wasn’t true. The very next day there it was, a retraction saying the story had been obtained from one of the news services and it turned out to be false. When I talk about false news stories, I am not necessarily talking about politics here, there are plenty of other stories which appear which are not true. One story which appeared on Facebook probably scared the wits out of many people before it was determined it was false. The story had to do it medical procedures, and there is not much worse than scaring people about medicine and shots. This story stated an expert had confirmed that an epidemic of deadly proportions had been started because there was something wrong with flu shots and thousands had died. The story was totally false, but you can imagine how many people wanted to avoid flu shots after that. When we talk about fake news many of us think this is something new, but fake news has existed as long as there was news. Before the printed word it was spread by word-of-mouth and for all we know it might’ve existed by scratching on rocks. In 1798 John Adams replied to a French philosopher who had predicted there would be a Free Press with advanced knowledge and this would create an informed public. Here is what Adams said, there has been more new errors propagated by the press in the last ten years than in in the hundred years before 1798. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to think I am saying that all news is fake news because that is certainly not the case and real news outnumbers fake news in the press, but the same may not be true on social media. Sometimes it is not clear whether news is fake news or not. People can argue over this for days and even weeks. And there can even be times when people misunderstand what they are hearing or seeing and think it is news when it is fiction. An example of this was the famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, when some people actually believed they were hearing a newscast of an invasion from Mars. There are a lot of people who see a news article and immediately believe it and even quoted on the Internet or by word-of-mouth. A study which was taken a few years ago reported 62% of people were getting their news off of social media. This meant whenever somebody put up something, they called news or look like news it was taken as gospel. The truth of the matter is I don’t take anything as gospel anymore whether it is on social media or from the press, because there are too many mistakes being made and some look like they are being made on purpose. One of the biggest examples of fake news appeared on the 911 attack news on BBC. A reporter from BBC was reporting on the damage caused when the planes crashed into the twin towers. The report claimed building five had collapsed, but you could see building five was still standing and it didn’t seem to be hit yet later in the day, building five collapsed. It has long been debated how such a coincidence could have happened. It was as if the BBC was reading from a script and got ahead of itself. This led to many more conspiracy theories, and no wonder because looking at building five it seemed unscathed at the time of the report. Many claimed it was being demolished on purpose and the news report got ahead of itself. The report was certainly false news at the time it was made, but then turned out to be true much later. Sometimes false news is in the form of a false photograph. Sometimes the photographs are harmless as the ones which depicted a cat which look like it had a white mustache and bushy white eyebrows. It was circulated on the Internet. The mustache look was real and of course not a mustache just white fur around its upper lip, but the bushy white eyebrows were added to the photo. One can’t get angry at this sort of thing since it is so harmless. One photo which was not so harmless was of Chris Hadfield, an American astronaut on the space station. It showed him holding a large transparent bag of marijuana and making a don’t tell sound by putting his finger over his mouth. The real photo was the same except in the bag were Easter eggs. I’m sure the altered photo angered a lot of people including Chris. Some people think they can control false news but I think it is too late. There are just too many ways to get your false news story out to the public, and too much of the public is just too susceptible to these false stories. The best we can do is to try and educate people to be more cautious about the truth of what they read, hear, and see.
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