Fake News and Media Bias From Cornell University Library: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/evaluate_news/search_engine_bias What is Fake News? Fake news is not news you disagree with. "Fake news" is "fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent. Fake-news outlets, in turn, lack the news media's editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information. Fake news overlaps with other information disorders, such as misinformation (false or misleading information) and disinformation (false information that is purposely spread to deceive people)." [David M. J. Lazer, et al., "The Science of Fake News," Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1094-1096.]. What You Can Do about Fake News and Disinformatiion • Learn to recognize fake news disinformation. Be curious and actively investigate what you read and hear. • Use news sources that are accountable for their content and that follow journalistic ethics and standards. • Use care before sharing news content with others on social media. Pause and reflect on news and information that arouses strong emotions, positive or negative. • Learn to recognize your own biases and compensate for them. Learning to Spot Fake News I: Things to Look for • "Here are five ways to spot fake news: Number one: Look for unusual URLS. If they end with l-o or .com.co, chances are they aren’t legitimate news sites. Number two: Dissect the Layout. Look for grammatical errors, incorrect dates, bold claims with no sources, and sensationalist images. These are all red flags. Number three: Dig Deeper. Find out who wrote the article and who supports the site. If this information doesn’t exist or you need to register to get it, then question why. Number four: Cross Check. Use fact checking sites to confirm information and see whether other credible news outlets are reporting similar news. Number five: Try a reverse Image search. If the same picture appears in unrelated stories, you may have a reason to be suspicious. For more media literacy tips, visit us at commonsense.org" • Learning to Spot Fake News II: More Ways to Recognize It Some websites are created to mimic mainstream news sites: • Look for contact information with a verifiable address and affiliation. • Look for an About page, often in the header or footer of the home page. Read the About page closely for evidence of partisanship or bias. If there's no About page and no Contact page, be very skeptical. • In staff listings (or on the About page), look critically at the list of executives. Are they real people or stock photos? Open a new tab and look for another profile of the individual (e.g. LinkedIn). • Perform an independent search for the news source. Compare and verify URLs. Example: http://abcnews.com.co/ (fake site) is not the ABC Network News http://abcnews.go.com, but the logo and the URL are almost identical. Fake News and Beyond: Types of Information Content Adapted and extended based on the definitions used by Melissa Zimdars' Open Sources project. • Fake News: Sources that entirely fabricate information, disseminate disinformation and deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports. • Misinformation: False information that is spread regardless of an intent to mislead. • Disinformation: False claims and information and conspiracy theories that are spread with the intent to mislead. • DeepFakes: Use of video software to create events that never happened or distort a person's statements for propaganda purposes or to discredit public figures for political gain. • Satire: Sources that use humor, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, satire, and false information to comment on current events. • State-sponsored News: Sources, particularly in repressive or authoritarian states, operating under government sanctions and control that spread disinformation and misinformation. Propaganda. • Junk Science: Sources that promote discredited conspiracy theories or scientifically false or dubious claims. • Hate News: Sources that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of harmful bias and discrimination. • Clickbait: Sources that provide generally credible content, but use exaggerated, misleading, or questionable headlines, social media descriptions, and/or images. • Political: Sources that provide generally verifiable information in support of certain points of view or political orientations. • Credible: Sources that circulate news and information in a manner consistent with traditional and ethical practices in journalism. (Remember: even credible sources sometimes rely on clickbait-style headlines or occasionally make mistakes. No news organization is perfect, which is why a healthy news diet consists of multiple sources of information, especially sources that issue corrections on previous reporting). Audio from National Public Radio: Experts In Cult Deprogramming Step In To Help Believers In Conspiracy Theories For insight into one aspect of how media disinformation is spread, see this report on "source hacking" that lays out the specifics on how media manipulators work: Source Hacking: Media Manipulation in Practice. Accountability I: Use News Sources with Explicit Editorial Policies & Ethical Standards Look for journalistic standards of reporting. High-quality, investigative news sources have explicit editorial policies and follow a code of ethics or professional standards. Examples: Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics; Ethical Journalism Network's 5 Principles of Ethical Journalism. Does the news source you are using have an explicit Editorial Policy? Does it follow a Code of Ethics? Lack of an explicit and prominent editorial policy or a statement of ethical standards is a red flag indicating suspect content. Specific examples of policies and standards: • BBC Editorial Guidelines • The Guardian News & Media Editorial Code • New York Times Standards and Ethics • NPR [National Public Radio] Ethics Handbook • American Society of News Editors (ASNE) links to individual news sources codes of ethics and newsroom practice. o Specific examples from the ASNE website: o Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines o Hearst Newspapers: Statement of Professional Principles Accountable sources issue corrections for errors and inaccuracies they subsequently discover. Fake news sources are not accountable for their content. Fake news creates or uses content that is partially fabricated or contain misleading information as well as outright falsehoods. Accountability II: Look for Qualified Article Authors Accountable sources usually sign their stories and take personal responsibility for the content. Articles should have bylines (the names of the authors). An individual or group of individuals take personal and professional responsibility for the accuracy of the information in the article. Lack of a byline is a red flag indicating suspect content. Click on the byline if it's linked. Where does it lead? Google the author names. Is there a LinkedIn profile? some other form of biographical information? What has the author done in the past? Does the author's background and experience qualify them to write on the article topic? Personal Bias What is bias? • Bias is a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others, which often results in treating some people unfairly. • Explicit bias refers to attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or group. Explicit and implicit biases can sometimes contradict each other. • Implicit bias includes attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) about other people, ideas, issues, or institutions that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control, which affect our opinions and behavior. Everyone has implicit biases—even people who try to remain objective (e.g., judges and journalists)—that they have developed over a lifetime. However, people can work to combat and change these biases. • Confirmation bias, or the selective collection of evidence, is our subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas, expectations, and/or hypotheses. Therefore, confirmation bias is both affected by and feeds our implicit biases. It can be most entrenched around beliefs and ideas that we are strongly attached to or that provoke a strong emotional response. Consider Source Bias Factual Reporting vs. News Analysis "Evaluating news sources is one of the more contentious issues out there. People have their favorite news sources and don't like to be told that their news source is untrustworthy. For fact-checking, it's helpful to draw a distinction between two activities: • News Gathering, where news organizations do investigative work, calling sources, researching public documents, checking and publishing facts, e.g. the getting the facts of Bernie Sanders involvement in the passage of several bills. • News Analysis, which takes those facts and strings them into a larger narrative, such as 'Senator Sanders an effective legislator behind the scenes" or 'Senator Sanders largely ineffective Senator behind the scenes.' Most newspaper articles are not lists of facts, which means that outfits like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times do both news gathering and news analysis in stories. What has been lost in the dismissal of the New York Times as liberal and the Wall Street Journal as conservative is that these are primarily biases of the news analysis portion of what they do. To the extent the bias exists, it's in what they choose to cover, to whom they choose to talk, and what they imply in the way they arrange those facts they collect. The news gathering piece is affected by this, but in many ways largely separate, and the reputation for fact checking is largely separate as well." [italics and emphasis added] .