One of the worst parts about being an admin on this group is how often we have to delete obvious fake news articles from the moderation queue. It's really disappointing, to be frank. So, I think it's time for another post about fake news.
FAKE NEWS IS NOT:
- Something you disagree with
- Something Donald Trump disagrees with
- Something whose source has a political alignment you disagree with
HOW TO IDENTIFY ACTUAL FAKE NEWS:
- No author, or an author who is obviously not a real person. If you Google the name and nothing comes up except for the site you're on, that's a huge red flag. Real journalists, even those who write pseudonymously, have much larger internet footprints than a single site. Remington Democratslayer is not a journalist. He is a fake person invented to string along gullible ideologues.
- Published by a non-transparent organization without an editorial review board. Real news does not hide from scrutiny. The fact that the only "news" organizations claiming that the government is guarding the skeletons of the Nephilim in a secret compound underneath the Smithsonian Institute have absolutely no transparency, no editorial review, and make claims that cannot possibly be verified is a pretty good sign that you're being lied to.
- No date. This tactic serves two purposes. First, it prevents people from dismissing it as "old news" so that it can be circulated again in the future. Second, it prevents people from checking it against other sources publishing on the same topic at around the same time.
- No sources cited (or circular citations to other articles from the same or similar sources). This shouldn't even need to be said, but apparently it does. If your article about the UN admitting that it is hiding Osama Bin Laden from the US military doesn't even have a link to where a UN spokesperson supposedly makes that admission, it isn't real. It didn't happen. It is a lie. It. Is. Fake. News. SERIOUSLY WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SHARING THIS STUFF. |
- Poor writing. Yeah I know the standards for writing in journalism have gone downhill lately, but if the site you're reading clearly doesn't even have a copy editor capable of catching. Sentence fragments, misppelings, and ovbious typos. And frequent misuse's, of apostrophe's, and comma's, you know something is horribly wrong with that site. Or at least, you should.
- Finally, if the article says something that you really, really want to be true—be skeptical. In fact, the more you want it to be true, the more skeptical you should be.
And now back to your regularly scheduled sharing of articles that are OBVIOUSLY true, and the only reason there is absolutely no evidence that they are true is because of a huge conspiracy to hide all the evidence, of which conspiracy there is also no evidence because that is also being suppressed, but if only we'd do the work of reading dozens of long, rambling rants from websites like realtrueconservativefacts.com and watching hours of videos by obscure YouTubers with names like IlluminatiKilledJFK, we'd TOTALLY be on your side.
While the examples he gave certainly don't apply to every political ideology, this seems like a pretty good list.
