From Scientific American:
Combating Misinformation Runs Deeper Than Swatting Away ‘Fake News’
“Fake news”-style misinformation is only a fraction of what deceives voters. Fighting misinformation will require holding political elites and mainstream media accountable
[W]hile news outlets have spilled a great deal of ink reporting on “fake news,” little has been done to reflect on their own role in promoting misbelief. Journalists must internalize the fact that their own reach is far greater than that of the hoax outlets they frequently criticize—and thus their responsibility is much larger. Unintentional missteps—like misleading reporting about a Gaza hospital explosion and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—from mainstream media have vastly more impact than a torrent of largely unseen falsehoods from “fake news” outlets. Even though the pressure to chase clicks and ratings is intense, journalists must maintain vigilance against misleading headlines and reporting of politicians’ lies without context.
Finally, social media companies such as Meta, YouTube and TikTok must do more. Their current
approaches to combating misinformation, based on professional fact-checking, largely turn a blind eye to misinforming content that doesn't fit the “fake news” mold—and thus miss most of the problem. Platforms often
exempt politicians from fact-checking and
deprioritize fact-checks o
n posts from mainstream sources. But this content is precisely what has huge reach and therefore the greatest potential for harm—and thus is more important to tackle than relatively low exposure “fake news.” Interventions must shift to reflect this reality. For example, common media literacy approaches that combat misinformation by
emphasizing source credibility may backfire when misleading content comes from trusted sources.
“Fake news”-style misinformation is only a fraction of what deceives voters. Fighting misinformation will require holding political elites and mainstream media accountable
www.scientificamerican.com
I can't sum up information like this in a sentence or two. You're going to have read the article.
The truth has always been buyer beware!
Social media companies like Meta get billions of posts a day, and god knows how many ads.
They can't even vet the ads, and half the one's I see are clearly frauds.
When it comes to politics the truth is a fickle bitch.
Even main stream news sources like NBC report what politicos say, endless fact checking isn't really needed. They are reporting what was said, they are not the ministry of truth and they should not try to be when reporting the news about what someone said, as long as they did say it and they are not cutting the context of what they said from view.
Endless talking heads are not news, they breakdown the nuance and try to inform their viewers when something is less than truthful, in a respectful way.
So don't expect things you see on Facebook to be true, it's mostly user content and meta would have to hire every human on earth to fact check it all.
Don't expect a 30 min. news brief to go into great detail about the nuance of what someone says.
Don't expect to get the truth from talking heads with an agenda, it's editorial opinion, not news.
Fox News has a time slot for the straight news, the rest of their crap they call shows.
CNN, same type of deal, most of their shit is not news, it's opinions.
People need to wise up.
