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Travis and Brandon talk about fake news sites and whether social media should do more to stop the flow of misinformation!
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/19/13685548/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-fake-news-problem-solutions
Show Notes
What is fake news?
- We are not talking about The Daily Show or Weekend Update. While these outlets do use comedy to drive a message, they are still (typically) rooted in truth or based on reality.
- The problematic fake news is the sort of stuff flooding your social media feeds that looks legit, but may not have any foundation in truth
- Should Cable news fall into this category?
- Probably not, but you have to identify the bias and sensationalism of it
- Anchorman 2
Should Social Media Services shoulder the blame?
- Following the election, Mark Zuckerberg fielded a lot of questions about how Facebook was used to distribute fake news stories and what it was doing to fix it
- Personal Responsibly: Do you feel Facebook is at fault in this case?
- Should social sites be required to fact-check the posts of its users?
- Is the bigger blame on the people that look to these sights for news?
- We can’t really control what social media users choose to believe can we?
Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/elements-journalism/
- Truth costs money
- People are not paying for News (newspaper sales are at all time lows)
- Now “journalist” are forced to run click bait and puff pieces to drive revenue
- The issue here, is the important stories that are not being reported because the funds are lacking.
- Spotlight
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