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The Truth, the Fake, and the Biased.pptx
- 1. The Truth, the Fake, and the Biased Anna Yang, Science Librarian Santa Clara University
- 2. Today’s Objective ● Define and recognize “fake news”, media bias, and editorial perspectives ● Engage with tools to be more self-reflective and critical media consumers ● Reflect on the role of diverse media and high-quality journalism in a healthy democracy and academic life
- 3. Padlet Activity - What social media platform do you use?
- 4. Definitions Fake News - refers to false information or propaganda published under the guise of being authentic news Media Bias - information that is unfair, unbalanced or incomplete in its discussion of an issue Editorial Perspective - every reporter, editor or publisher has a point of view
- 5. What Makes a News Story Fake? 1. It can’t be verified a. A fake news article may or may not have links in it tracing its sources; if it does, these links may not lead to articles outside of the site’s domain or may not contain information pertinent to the article topic 2. Fake news appeals to emotions a. Fake news plays on your feelings - it makes you angry or happy or scared. This is to ensure you won’t do anything as pesky as fact-checking. 3. Authors usually aren’t experts a. Most authors are not even journalists, put paid trolls. 4. It can’t be found anywhere else a. If you look up the main idea of a fake news article, you might not find any other news outlet (real or not) reporting on the issue. 5. Fake news comes from fake sites a. Did your article come from mercola.com? Realnewsrightnow.com? These and a host of other URLs are fake news sites.
- 6. How Does Fake News Spread? Online, especially with social media - sharing lies, half-truths, omissions, and out of context information. Example: ● Eric Tucker took photos of large groups of buses in Austin, TX ● Tweeted that buses were related to anti-Trump protesters, an unverified statement ● Shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook ● Maheshwari, S. (2016, Nov 12). How fake news goes viral. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how- fake-news-spreads.html?_r=0
- 7. Why Does Fake News Spread? Money ● “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.” ● Story was shared online by 6 million people, earned thousands of dollars in web advertising revenue ● Scott, S. (2017, Jan 1). From headline to photograph, a fake news masterpiece, NYT.com. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary- clinton-cameron-harris.html
- 8. Why Does Fake News Spread? Emotions ● GoFundMe scam ● Homeless military veterans’ random act of kindness and a New Jersey couple intent on helping him get back on his feet during the holidays ● Inspired people to donate more than $400,000 in an online fundraiser that went viral ● Campaign was found to be a lie ● The three were each charged with second-degree conspiracy and theft by deception ● Jimenez, J. (2023, Jan. 8). Woman in GoFundMe Scam Gets 3 years in New Jersey Prison. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/nyregion/katelyn- mcclure-gofundme-scam-sentenced.html
- 9. Images
- 10. Fabricated or reused images “This was not Hurricane Florence.” Anderson Cooper said. “This was taken 10 years ago during Hurricane Ike. On September 13, 2008.” Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/18/politics/anderson- cooper-vs-donald-trump-jr-cnntv/index.html
- 12. Activity: Create a “Fake News” Headline ● Go to: https://www.thefakenewsgenerator.com/ ● Create a “fake news” headline in 5 minutes ○ Public Health ○ Politics ○ Food ○ Friends and Family ○ Environmental ○ ANYTHING ● Share out with your partner.
- 13. Media Bias ● Information that is unfair, unbalanced or incomplete ● Often lacks context and diversity ● May rely on stereotypes, loaded imagery, easy explanations or highly partisan influence ● Can be intentional or as a result of poor journalistic practices ● Every reporter, editor or publisher has a point of view ● Transparent POV vs. Hidden POV ● Types of news sources (editorials, blogs, investigative journalism Editorial Perspective
- 14. Activity: Interactive Media Bias Chart ● Go to: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ ● Do a search for news source (e.g. New York Times, Esquire, Fox News) ● Based on the scale, look for two news coverages that are on different spectrum of the chart. Click on the grey dot and skim the coverage. If you cannot access the actual content, take a look at the headline. ● Questions to ask yourself: ○ Is this an example of media bias or editorial perspective? Or is it “fake news”? ○ Reflect on why you think this? ○ Can you trust what you read?
- 15. WHAT’S NEXT?
- 16. Red Flags to Remember ● Anonymous authors ● Quotes legitimate source but not substantiated ● Spelling errors ● The use of caps and exclamation marks ● The message argues that it is NOT false ● Vague statements: “Do the math!” ● Do the facts support the conclusion?
- 17. Think Carefully about Supposed Facts ● Read critically ● Everything in print is not necessarily true ● Effective readers question what they read ● Note whether each paragraph or statement is fact or opinion ● Evaluate the author and the source ● Understand if a natural bias exists ● Understand the difference between an informed opinion and an expert opinion ● Observe juxtaposition of headings/headlines, graphics and text; does each element conflict or confirm?
- 18. Resources ● https://www.snopes.com - founded by David Mikkleson, begun in 1994 based on interest in researching urban legends. Now oldest and largest fact-checking site on the internet, widely regards by journalists, folklorists, and laypersons as an essential resource. ● https://www.factcheck.org/ - a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center, does not seek or accepted, directly or indirectly, funds from corporations, unions, partisan organizations or advocacy groups. Funded by Annenberg grants and individuals, donors of $1,000 or more listed on website. ● https://www.politifact.com/ - a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others on its Truth-O-Meter. ● https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ - interactive media bias chart of the news
- 19. Questions? Anna Yang, Science Librarian ayang3@scu.edu Ask A Librarian https://askalibrarian.scu.edu/
Editor's Notes
- Padlet Activity - 2 min
- Before we jump off the deep end, let’s take a look at some definitions because as we move through this presentation, these phrases will be mentioned.
- So now that we have a basic understanding of what Fake News is, what actually makes a news story, fake????
- The million dollar question, how does fake news spread? Anyone want to take a guess? Fake news spread online like wildfire. I remember a time when you wanted to tell someone something, you had to either talk to them in-person or tell someone who would see them later. This is of course assuming that you don’t call them on their home-phone. Yes, that’s right folks. I remember still having a home phone where that was the only way people cold contact me, unless they physically came over to my house. I mean, i was also poor and couldn’t afford a cell phone until I was a senior in college - but it was also a hand-me down nokia. Ah. Memories. What I’m trying to get at is that if I literally wanted to spread fake news 15-20 years ago, I had to physically share it with someone who would then share it with someone via word of mouth. It doesn’t spread in 5 min like how it would now. Let’s take a look at this example: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?_r=0 A man named Eric Tucker, the co-founder of a marketing company in Texas took this photo of a bunch of buses outside of a hotel. He tweeted “And Trump protesters in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the buses they came in” with the #fakeprotests #trump2016 #Austin. It was shared all over social media thousands of times. Essentially, Mr. Tucker heard about protest in the city around former president trump’s campaign, saw these buses and connected the two without. Later, Mr. Tucker would say that he did goggle if there were any conferences in the area and couldn't’ find anything. Actually, if he did google it, he would’ve seen that in fact, the buses were hired for 13,000 people who were attending a company conference, Tableau Software. When later questioned, he would literally say that it wasn’t his fault. As a busy business man, it’s not his job to fact-check everything he posts on social media……I want you to think about that statement. He
- Now that we know how it spreads, let’s look at the ‘why’. I mean, money has to be right up there. Here’s an example. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161003181610/http:/christiantimesnewspaper.com/breaking-tens-of-thousands-of-fraudulent-clinton-votes-found-in-ohio-warehouse/ In early fall of 2016, former President Donald Trump stated at one of his campaigns in Ohio “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest. More and more”. And then he continued talking about evidence of rigging but not really actually giving any details. A few weeks later, Cameron Harris, a new college graduate who needed cash kind of concocted a new plan. His “masterpiece”. He created a story with the headlines “breaking: tens of thousands of fraudulent clinton votes found in ohio warehouse”. This story was shared online by 6 million people, and it also earned him thousands of dollars in web advertising. So, what really happened? Well, in an interview with NYT, Cameron said he created this out of pure interest in how easy it was to “lie” to people, especially people who were already fueled by their own bias. Cameron stated that it was almost like a sociological experiment. He created all of this by simply buying the domain name “christiantimes.com” and wrote roughly 8 stories on there. It was things like “NYPD looking to press charges against bill clinton for underage sex ring” and “Protestors beat homeless veteran to death in philadelphia”. He later then tried to sell the site. An appraiser said it could sell for over $100k, solely based on the traffic the site got but he ended up waiting. After a few days, his site essentially got labeled as a fake news website and all the advertisements took themselves off his site. So, what happened to him? Honestly, I am not 100% sure. All I know is that in an interview, he basically didn’t think he did anything wrong and profited off of this scheme of his.
- Another reason why fake news spread is based on emotions. Does anyone remember this gofundme movement back in 2017? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/nyregion/katelyn-mcclure-gofundme-scam-sentenced.html Apparently, Kate alleged that she was stranded in her car and this gentleman, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., a homeless veteran, offered her $20 to get gas. She was so touched by the act that her Mark D’ Amico started a gofundme to raise money for Johnny. It was a “paying it forward story” in which the new jersey couple wanted to raise $10,000 to help him get off the streets. This campaign went viral and ended up with more than $400,000 donations. The actual story came to light after a few months. Basically, Johnny ended up filing a lawsuit against the new jersey copy, saying they had not given him the money at all. There was a back and forth story and eventually, this was investigated by burlington county prosecutor Scott Coffina. The whole thing was a scam concocted by the three of them. Yes, Johnny was a homeless veteran but the whole story about him giving her money for gas was a total fake. The couple recruited Johnny to play a part in their elaborate scheme and because they didn’t give him part of his cut, Johnny tried to sue them. But what he did not know is that the couple had already spent over $300,000, all on expensive trips, gambling and other things. So, even though he is a homeless veteran, he willingly went into this scheme to prey on people’s emotions. All three were sentenced in 2019 - Kate got 3 years, Johnny was admitted into a drug treatment program, which could help him avoid some prison time, and Mark was sentenced to 5 years.
- Let’s briefly talk about images. What’s that saying “seeing is believing”, right? But did you know there is a second part to that saying. Anyone want to take a guess? Yes, the full saying is “Seeing is Believing, but Feeling is the Truth” by Thomas Fuller, a 17th century clergyman. What does that actually mean. It suggests that believing and the truth are two separate matters altogether. Take a look at this quote - “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet just because there’s a picture with a quote next to it.” - Abraham Lincoln. Can someone tell me, what’s wrong with this image?
- Let’s take a look at this example. Donald Trump Jr. used Tweeted that “It’s a shame that CNN’s ratings are down 41%. What’s worse is there’s a simple solution that they refuse to accept. Stop lying to try to make @realdonaldtrump look bad.” This was during the time Hurricane Florence came through the carolinas and virginia around September 13/14. This tweet was posted Sept 16, just a few days after. It was later retweeted by a former trump administrator, calling it “absolutely disgraceful. Apparently #HurricaneFlorence wasn’t devastating enough for @CNN’s @andersonscooper - so he had to exaggerate for his live shot. #FakeNews at its finest!” However, this photo was actually taken 10 years ago at Hurricane Ike. Essentially, Cooper went on to explain certain aspects of this post - him in deep waters, the crew on higher ground, and also the fact that his cameraman, the man pictured in green pants and a blue shirt, actually died more than a year ago.
- What about Headliens? It’s much like a picture, right? Imagine you’re looking for a book or a movie. Something to watch on youtube. You scroll, right? You look for the headlines, the super quick information that gives you a glimpse into the bigger content. If it’s intriguing, you click it. If it’s boring or doesn’t give you a the “what’s that” factor, you scroll over, right? Let’s take a look at this. Imagine you are scrolling through your facebook, or twitter and you come across this. What are your initial thoughts about this? Well, guess who wrote this? I did. It took me less than 5 minutes and I was able to generate this pretty clickbait-y image and headline to capture your attention. I’d like to explicitly note that this was created by me and is no way shape or form, true. Presiden Sullivan did not mandate a daily blood test but if you just looked at this quickly, would you not think this seemed plausible? Maybe even, real? Let me show you how I created this. Go to https://www.thefakenewsgenerator.com/.
- Here’s a very short activity. You have 5 minutes to go to this website and create a “fake news” headline on really, any topic you’d like. I’ll walk around and see what you’re working on. Tell me your initial feelings about this site. Do you think it was easy to use to generate something?
- We took a rather deep dive into fake news but let’s not forget other things like media bias and the editorial perspective. Not everything that gets published online or on social media is “fake news”. Media bias is when the information is basically, unfair or incomplete. It’s almost like when your friend shares a single text message with you about what someone said to them, but they didn’t share the other parts of it. You’re literally missing the whole context of the story. And if you’re missing the context, then how are you, as an information consumer, supposed to come to a sort of decision about how you feel about the situation? Media bias can be intentional but it can also just be the result of poor journalistic practices. Editorial perspective is different from media bias. It’s basically the POV of the reporter, editor or publisher. Think of this as like an opinion piece. This comes out in editorials blogs and perspective pieces. They are providing their perspective on what has happened or is happening. So, what do you need to remember? Fake news exist but so does media bias and editorial perspectives. And yes,they have been around since FOREVER. The thing you need to be most cognizant of is the intentionality behind the message that is being published.
- We’re going to move to an activity. Go to: https://adfontesmedia.com/ Ad Fontes Media is a platform that investigates media reliability and bias. This tool is used extensively by educators, publishers, researchers, etc. I’m not going to get into the methodology of the media bias chart but essentially, they rate the bias of each source based on whether or not it’s original fact reporting to basically, fabricated information. It also has a political bias chart that skews from left to right. What I’d like you to do is spend about 10 minutes looking at this chart. Look at the keys, the legends, filters. And then do a search for two news coverages that are on different spectrums of the chart. You can do this by either picking a source you are familiar with (e.g Fox news, NYT, CNN) and skim through it. If you cannot access the actual content, just take a quick peek at the headlines. Questions that you should ask yourself as you are exploring are, can you trust what you are reading? Is it an example of media bias? Editorial perspective? Or is it pretty clear it’s fake news? Be prepared to do a share out.
- I want to send you off with some red flags to remember.: If you come across something that is written or published and the author is anonymous, that could be a red flag. Typically, authors and journalists identify themselves because they have to have that story linked to them. It’s part of their job. Another thing is when quotes are used or sources are used but it’s not explained or the full context of it is thrown out. If you cannot trace something back to the original source, consider that a red flag. Other things that should be red flags that I’m sure you’re well aware of are spelling errors and the use of caps and exclamation marks. Have you seen those ads that say “magic pill will get you down 10 pounds in 3 days!” all in shiny big letters? And when it comes down to it, do the facts actually support their conclusions?