‘Pope Francis Shocks The World, Endorses Trump For President, Releases Statement’
‘Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide’
‘Woman Arrested For Defecating On Boss’ Desk After Winning The Lottery’
These headlines have something in common. Hopefully you know what that ‘something’ is – and, no, it’s not that they all appeared on Facebook and were shared many thousands (in some cases, millions) of times last year, according to BuzzFeed.
But in case you don’t know what it is, let me help:
They’re all fake.
‘Fake news’ is a term you are probably familiar with because, safe to say, it’s pretty rife at the moment. It generally describes stories which are purposefully fabricated – not those that are, simply, incorrect (like, a reporter getting their facts wrong or quoting an unreliable source). Arguably though, it’s a thin line between the two. ‘Where does biased but legitimate commentary shade into propaganda and lies?’ asks the Commons Select Committee, tasked with conducting an inquiry into the phenomenon. It’s a good question, and there’s no definitive answer.
You’d think that they’d be fairly easy to spot, these ‘fake news’ stories, but they aren’t. Because so many of them could be true...
‘Cinnamon Roll Can Explodes Inside Man’s Butt During Shoplifting Incident’
It could happen...
But so what, you might ask. Who cares if there are a few fake stories doing the rounds? Conspiracy theories are nothing new, in fact, they have been circulating for centuries. That might be so. And in the days before social media – before things could go viral in hours – they might have been easy to turn a blind eye to. But now they just aren’t. Not only that, but ‘fake news’ is so convincing – both in content and the way it’s presented via ‘legitimate’ websites – it now has the power to influence people on all-manner of issues.
Like, for instance, politics. ‘Fake news’ has infiltrated the political sphere to such an extent, it is now seen to have had a part to play in affecting the outcome of the US Presidential elections. Is there anything that can be deemed more influential than that?
One particularly damaging ‘fake news’ story that broke in the run up to the election was dubbed #Pizzagate. Sounds harmless and hilarious, but in reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it nearly had fatal consequences.
In a nutshell...
When Wikileaks leaked the John Podesta emails, a conspiracy theory emerged claiming his correspondence contained secret codes alluding to a child sex ring with which Democratic Party members (including Hillary Clinton) were involved. (Note: this has never been linked to evidence, and established news services have identified it as fake.) Nonetheless, the theory gained traction in the final days of campaigning, as the sex ring came to be linked to a Washington pizzeria – Comet Ping Pong – owned by a Democratic Party supporter. It was claimed that there, child abuse took place.
After the election, a 28-year-old called Edgar Maddison Welch, who had read about this ‘story’, decided to take matters into his own hands. He travelled to the pizzeria on 4th December 2016, and fired three shots into the restaurant with an AR-15 rifle.
That was #Pizzagate.
Thankfully, no one was hurt. Does that mean it was harmless? You decide…
Between 6th and 7th December, a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling asked whether participants thought Hillary Clinton was ‘connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC’. 9% said they believed she was and 19% said they were unsure. Which means 28% thought there was (or might be some) truth in the story. 28%... Hillary Clinton lost the electoral vote by 14%. There is no saying whether this had any affect whatsoever in swaying wavering voters, but the fact that this ‘story’ broke in the week running up to the election was clearly no good thing for Clinton.
And that’s just one example of a fake headline emerging from the US elections. There were many others...
‘FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead’
‘Hillary Clinton 2013: ‘I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; They’re Honest And Can’t Be Bought’’
‘$375,000 Deposited To The Khan Law Account From The Clinton Foundation’
‘Donald Trump Said Republicans Are The Dumbest Group Of Voters’
And so it goes on... Terrifying. Truly terrifying.
Most terrifying of all though, is that those are just the online stories. As Vanity Fair pointed out in a fascinating piece last month, it’s about to get a whole lot worse... Professors at Stanford University, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Max Planck Institute for Informatics recently published a paper showing how it is now possible to alter someone’s facial expressions in a recorded video as they are talking. Audio is catching up too, as VF explains – with services like Adobe’s so-called ‘Photoshop for audio’ enabling you to input speech into an application and then create new sentences/phrases out of the same voice. Put the two together, visual and audio, and what do you get? ‘Advancements in audio and video technology are becoming so sophisticated,’ Nick Bolton writes, ‘that they will be able to replicate real news – real TV broadcasts, for instance, or radio interviews – in unprecedented, and truly indecipherable, ways.’
They say you’ve got to see it to believe it. But if you’re seeing it – a politician/celebrity ‘saying’ something damaging – and hearing it, how can you not believe it? The fact it is fake might eventually be proven, but how many people will get to know of ‘the truth’? And how many people would believe it anyway; fake news so often plays into what people want to believe.
So yes, ‘fake news’ exists and what’s more, it’s incredibly dangerous. But who are the people perpetuating it? And, just as importantly, why?
Sometimes ‘fake news’ authors are politically motivated, intent on bringing down politicians or parties who oppose their views. Others are troublemakers who want to reek havoc. Then there are those who do it to make money. There is substantial revenue to be made out of ‘fake news’ stories, because advertisers pay out if their ad appears alongside content which receives multiple page views. And if your headline is SO UTTERLY readable – like the announcement an A-list celebrity is dead – you can imagine a fair few people might feel compelled to read about it.
Such an organisation making money out of pushing fabricated content is yournewswire.com. ‘News. Truth. Unfiltered’ might be their tagline, but they’re renowned as one of America’s most powerful ‘fake news’ sites. Indeed, they were complicit in spreading the #Pizzagate story, and have been behind the circulation of a number of others – like the one about The Queen threatening to abdicate if Brexit happened…
Following probing by The Sunday Times, Google has now banned the site from advertising on the search engine, but more needs to be done to stop these websites spreading what they know to be lies.
But what exactly?
For a start, social media services like Facebook need to take a much harder stance on the promotion of ‘fake news’ through their platforms.
Granted, Facebook has started to address this. It is currently testing ‘fake news’ filtering tools in Germany ahead of the country’s federal election in September this year, because there are fears – namely those of Chancellor Angela Merkel – that the outcome will be affected by ‘fake sites, bots, trolls – things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms’.
That said, in a Facebook post released in November last year CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed ‘more than 99% of what people see [on Facebook] is authentic’. You could argue that ‘fact’ is open to interpretation.
I would.
What else can be done? Well, WE can start being more vigilant. As users of social media – people who share stories and ideas – we have to be mindful of where the stories we share come from, and what they claim to report. We must be wary of sharing stories from farcical ‘news’ sites like The Daily Mash and The Onion – because not everyone reading them will know it’s all just a big joke. Snopes.com is dedicated to debunking headline myths and should be used as a point of reference if ever you’re unsure. A good rule of thumb is, the more sensational the headline, the more sceptical we should be about it.
After all, it might seem harmless to share a story like ‘The Dalai Lama pursues career as a sitcom writer’, but seriously, imagine the ramifications if followers truly believed it. Sharing apparently ‘harmless’ stories can be just as damaging as sharing serious ones. Just ask Denzel Washington about the ‘rumour’ he changed his allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump…
One argument put forward by yournewswire.com to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, was that those damning ‘fake news’ are trying to quell alternative media; that they’re waging ‘war’ on independent media outlets.
I disagree entirely. If ‘news’ doesn’t reach the British broadsheets or major UK news channels – which, whilst I take their political leanings into consideration, I wholly trust for the facts – then I won’t count it as ‘news’.
I have written this piece with the full intention of encouraging you to take a similar stance.
With my motive now laid out on the table, it’s up to you decide if my fears about fake news are a work of fact and worth sharing – or just fiction.