This document summarizes a lecture and seminar discussion about fake news, Brexit, and Donald Trump. The lecture highlighted that fake news has existed for some time and is amplified on social media. Journalistic ethics like fact checking multiple sources and verifying photos can help curb fake news. During the seminar, students agreed fake news is frightening as many people believe claims without fact checking. Participants discussed how a lack of critical thinking in education and a non-participative democracy can allow fake news to spread more easily in society.

1. JOURNALISM AND SOCIETY:
TERM 3, WEEK 3
15-05-2017
BREXIT, TRUMP AND FAKE NEWS

2. THE LECTURE
This week the main focus was fake news, where we also discussed Brexit and Donald
Trump.
KEY POINTS FROM THE LECTURE
 Fake news is not something new, it has been around for some time now
 Fake news is all around us and is amplified on social media
 A way to prevent fake news is to, perhaps go back to basics as journalists in terms of
journalistic ethics
There are ways to check fake news:
 Look to see if other sources are saying the same thing to the original source you have got
information from
 When it comes to pictures, it is important to look at fonts, and the colouring of the
picture and to find out more information about a picture by asking the person who took
it, to make sure it is real.

3. THE SEMINAR AND MY THOUGHTS
During the first part of the seminar we spoke about what our opinion of fake news is. We all agreed
that it is terrible and actually quite frightening, especially since many people do not fact check what
they are reading and just believe what is being shown to them.
A lot of people do not do anything about fake news because they feel hopeless, like we have no
power to put a stop to something like it.
It was said in the seminar that the crisis in society reflects the kind of democracy we have, and I agree
with this because society is not growing and it may be because we do not have much of a
participative democracy.
A reason we discussed as to why people easily take in the lies around them is education. Education is
low at the moment, and people don’t learn things for themselves which is ignorant.
Society cannot work if everyone believes they have their own truth.
We also said that people in this society need to be sceptic, we need to verify our sources otherwise
we will easily believe the lies out there without questioning them.