In certain areas of our lives, size matters, but in journalism, scale is not a determinant of quality, accuracy, or truth.
Craig Silverman's Buzzfeed story on "fake" news outstripping the real news on the Internet has set off a wave of reaction both at social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and in the media itself. According to Silverman, 8.7m shares, reactions and comments were generated by fake news, 7.4m by "real" news.
Mr. Silverman then does what good journalists are supposed to do, or does he? He sources his "data." He posts a simple Google Spreadsheet with a few numbers entered into it that demonstrates absolutely no proof of his data, how it was gathered, etc.. You or I could create numbers just as easily. It does, however, say "Buzzfeed" on it, so we must assume, therefore, that it is accurate, because they said so, and, with 770 employees and $167M in revenues, it must be legit, right?
If "real" news is separated by being well vetted and easily provable, the Buzzfeed story, with a baseline of a loose spreadsheet, is equally unfounded.
If you want to know if something is legit or not, you follow the sources, provided right there in the article for you.
Real news is well documented. Facts are backed up by links that you can click on to the real data with its own sourcing. When an author quotes someone, or a publication they should be referenced with hyperlinks to the source material.
In recent days "fake" news has become the buzz in the traditional, web news, and social media outlets. For good reason: There are acres of bogus news stories, op-eds and memes published around the Internet.
There is the now infamous story of the North Carolina man who went to Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C. armed with an assault rifle to put an end to the alleged child sex ring being run from the restaurant's back rooms. The story, dubbed "pizzagate" was false. Yet it was flying around social media, seen and repeated by many users on Facebook and Twitter.
One of taller tales that arose was that Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta and Hillary Clinton were drinking blood in occult rituals to influence the election. Thousands of people, especially those in alt-right circles, spread the story. It arose from a misinterpretation of a story about an artist who uses bodily fluids in performance art. Ultimately, the Washington Post debunked the story, as did others.
There has been a call, usually by the same mainstream media that has been hemorrhaging readers and television viewers to the Internet, to stick to the "reliable," tried and true news sources. Yet their accuracy and credibility is anything but perfect.
Fox News is an alleged "mainstream" source of news, yet 59% of their information is false. Politifact rates statements made on air by Fox, Fox News and Fox Business on-air personalities and their paid pundits as mostly false (21%) , false (29%), or "Pants on Fire" (9%). If you add in their half true statements, (19%) only 22% of what is heard on Fox is truthful and accurate.
MSNBC has been beating the drum about how media outlet size and history are legitimacy. They and their parent, NBC News, don't have much to crow about either though, in the accuracy department. Politifact finds that 41% of their statements made on air are mostly false to pants on fire, with only 34% as mostly true to true.
Even when a story is accurate in the mainstream media, it may be handled in a way that benefits the company putting it out. Most media outlets did not call Florida until later on election night 2016, even though Clinton campaign staffers knew by 8:15p that their candidate had lost the state, according to South Florida staffers who received the news hours before the major networks called the state. Keeping the notorious swing-state alive in the narrative kept people tuned in, and advertisers generating revenue.
There are many many legit media outlets on the web. Buzzfeed.com, VOX.com, Slate, and Vice are the larger rising star players who put out generally well-vetted and legitimate news.
There are many worthwhile smaller independent news and op-ed pubications like truthout, AllSides, propublica.org or my truth-2-Power.com (t2P), all of which maintain the same standards of good journalistic practice for news and opinion pieces.
They offer what most of the larger news outlets, including rising stars like Vice and Vox do not: Independendence. When billions are spent on elections, the money finds its way into the media. Many media outlets are owned by an increasingly small circle of holding companies and owners, which means that the parent's agenda, or simply profit motives, can bias the flow of news and information on their networks.
So size, or decades in their sector of news, are not the standards by which readers should rely. Sticking with good sourcing of facts and quotes, with easy links to document the point, is a bedrock standard for all web-based publications.
In social media, many groups have suggested using sites like Snopes.com to verify the accuracy of information. There are sites like Factcheck.org and the well-known Politifact.com, but there are also partisan sources like the conservative watchdog group Accuracy In Media, and the liberal Fair.org which tend to affirm the point-of-view of their politics rather than remain neutral.
The web is where the majority of Americans now get their news and opinion. According to Pew Research, 62% of Americans get news on social media, with 18% doing so often.
Thousands of pages and social groups of all political stripes share news articles, opinion pieces and memes that most often affirm their point-of-view on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others. With little or no filtration, and, in the case of Facebook, virtually no accountability for those posting information or disinformation, it makes these spaces rife for rumors and fake news to pick up steam.
Often information spreads, or opinion is formed, not on facts, or deliberating information put in front of readers, but on quick glances at headlines and photos. People don't read; They react.
According to Inc. 81% of people just skim what they read when they are online. "(Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has written that the average user reads at most 20 to 28 percent of words during an average visit.)" and they note that "People form a first impression in a mere 50 milliseconds."
So the fix to the so-called "fake news" epidemic is reasonably easy: Read, don't react. Question what you read. Follow the links to the sources of articles by writers or publications that are new to you. Do they go to legitimate news, or to a quality primary or secondary news source, or do they just regurgitate what another site aggregating information reported, based on a story even further back? They should also be quoting their sources up-front, and in the article.
From HuffPo to the humblest of blogs, follow the information in a few articles to test the outlet's credibility. If they aren't sourcing well, don't read, and, more importantly, never share an article unless you vet that article and make sure that it connects up to bottom line facts.
Even opinion pieces need to be based in fact, and good op-ed writers will make sure that they reference articles, studies, and data that affirm why they are voicing that opinion.
If you find someone who is sharing bogus material, unfriend them, and tell your friends to do the same. Report purveyors of fake news in your social groups at Facebook and elsewhere to their admins. If the admin doesn't act, leave the group.
Read discriminatingly. Think for yourself, and share what is provable. Being owned by Comcast or Disney or AOL or Time Warner is not validation or verification. The ultimate arbiter of what is read, ultimately, is you, the reader.