With
a wide variety of publications at our fingertips, it is really hard sometimes
to identify current and not exaggerated sources for information. However, there
are some clues we can use to help us recognize sources which tolerate biases or
have agendas which are not purely informative. Some sites, such as right
leaning Infowars and left leaning Newslo, may appear like a typical news
websites at first glance because the formats of the home pages are very similar
to creditable news sources such as, the New
York Times and Washington
Post.
In
order to understand if a website may be more likely to contain fake news, one
clue is to look at the titles of the news articles. If they seem sensational,
it may be news site that is susceptible to publishing fake news. For example, on
February 24, 2017, Infowars published an article written by Jon Bowne titled “The
Democratic Party: Chock-Full of Scumbags.” Although, this article should
have been at minimum presented as an opinion article on the Democratic Party
candidates running for election to become the party’s chairman, it was
presented as fact-based news. In contrast, the New York Times published an
article by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns that included the same topic of
the election of the Democratic party’s chairman, on February 23, 2017 titled, “Weakened
Democrats Bow to Voters, Opting for Total War on Trump.” The New York Times
article reflected the turmoil and weaknesses within the Democratic party based
on numerous sources that could be verified and did not rely on name-calling to
tell the story. Although, this may seem obvious that this Infowars story was not real news, many of
the articles on Infowars do appear to be
real news stories which may make it easier to trick some readers into believing
such articles to represent unbiased journalism.
Conservative
readers are not unique in their vulnerability to misinformation. More liberal
readers can also be fooled by websites appearing to present real news. For
example, the website Newslo looks like a
typical news website. However, if you scroll to very bottom of the homepage and
click on the “about” link, a page
will come up that reads “JUST ENOUGH NEWS… Newslo
is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us
for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by
features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and
what is satire.” Unfortunately, as evidenced by an article written by Alex
Stevan and published July 17, 2016 titled, “Mike
Pence: ‘Allowing Rape Victims To Have Abortions Will Lead To Women Trying To
Get Raped’,” the distinction the site claim to try to draw between satire
and news, does not seem clear to all readers. In this particular example, there
are two buttons near the top of the page, one is marked, “show facts” and the
other is marked “hide facts.” When “show facts” is clicked it highlights the
first paragraph of the article in yellow. When “hide facts” is clicked the
highlight on the first paragraph disappears.
However, the title comes from the portion after the first paragraph so
unless readers click on the article and then understand most of the article
including the title is meant as satire, it is completely misleading
information. The 165 comments about the article make it clear that many readers
do not understand the misinformation is intended as entertainment and Newslo did not weigh-in to set the record
straight.
