It’s a question a lot of people have been asking lately, especially with the Trump presidency and the popularization of the term “fake news.”
And although I hate to take the easy route and say it depends, well, it depends.
Actually, let me reword that:
Yes, trust the media, but take what it says with a few grains of salt.
Now please, before you become click away or become hysterical, let me logic this out.
First of all, remember that the media is a for-profit industry. So naturally, it will do what it needs to make money and gain customers. But it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t intrinsically a “bad” thing; it is profitable for media outlets to deliver a product that appeals to customers, so this drives competition between different outlets to try to make the best product. There are a lot of good things media outlets do, including suggesting related stories, adding meaningful pictures, and searching for the weirdest news like bald guys playing tug of war with suction cups.
On the other hand, some media outlets try to gain customers without delivering a better product. Probably the most common form of this is misleading/clickbait titles. You know what I’m talking about. The thing is that nobody likes them, so I am puzzled as to why they persist.
Well, I’m not actually confused; they exist because they do a pretty good job of attracting an initial influx of people. However, these people are often disappointed when they read the story to find out it doesn’t live up to the title. And so combat this disappointment, fake news was invented.
It’s really stupid if you think about it: instead of just using a truthful title, fake news is making a story fit a misleading one. But this works for two reasons:
- The misleading title attracts people.
- The misleading story shocks people and makes them curious what other crazy things are happening in the world. They then click on more misleading titles and become stuck in a feedback loop.
Of course, the title and story don’t even have to be misleading, they can be completely false.
Now at this point you might be wondering something along the lines of “Then why don’t all media outlets try to mislead people? Or do they?” Well, they don’t because they need to keep a certain image around them that they are truthful and reliable. Otherwise people catch on, and those looking for real news will leave. And it’s very easy for you to identify if something is fake news, so I’m surprised that it’s such a problem. Basically, you should be suspicious if the news story does any of the following things:
- It's too good to be true
- It's too bad to be true
- It's scandalous and has something to do with politics
- It appeals to your beliefs and self-confirms them rather than challenging them
After that a simple Google search will usually be enough to determine the truth of the story.
So the next time you’re reading a news story, don’t automatically label it “fake news” or “biased,” just take it with a grain of salt.
“EU-Media-Futures-Forum-pic 0” by Sollok29 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
