'Fake News' Is A Symptom Of 'Lack Of Media Literacy' - How Did 'Fake News' Originate?

We hear a lot about "fake news," but that term, which was coined fairly recently, is really a symptom of much larger problems, including the lack of media literacy. In fact, Stanford Graduate School of Education recently found that more than 80% of middle and high school students surveyed were unable to distinguish between advertisements and real news stories. I already wrote about the commonly asked questions regarding Fake News and on this post, we are taking a look to what Fake News is all about and how it actually originated.

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As parents and educators, it’s our job to help our students become more savvy consumers of information. But it’s not just kids who need a lesson in media literacy. Adults do as well. A 2016 Pew study found that nearly a quarter of adults admit to sharing fake news in the past. Most didn't know it was fake when they shared it.

Until fairly recently, media were concentrated in the hands of a few organizations, but now it's all around us. In addition to the so-called "mainstream media" outlets, there are now many online blogs, podcasts and videos from a wide variety of providers from all walks of life, as well as social media where anyone can be a "citizen journalist."

While this has created a vibrant and dynamic array of information sources, it has also made it more difficult to know which sources can be trusted. So, regardless of whether you're a media consumer, media creator or both — the need for media literacy is greater now than ever.

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And, sad to say, we can’t always trust people in authority to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." There are far too many cases where government officials and corporate leaders have been caught telling falsehoods, whether deliberately or because they were misinformed. There are also popular culture examples such as false claims about celebrity deaths and doctored photos.

In this uncertain climate, how can parents and educators help the children they care for to be critical, but not jaded, consumers of the media they encounter?

History

History is full of widely accepted falsehoods, some with disastrous outcomes, like the victims of the Salem Witch Hunt. There are plenty of internet-based rumors like the claim that the post office was about to levy a 5 cent email tax, the story that Facebook would soon charge $5.99 a month for a private account, or that people could earn $5,000 from Bill Gates simply by sharing his picture online.

Not everything that's inaccurate is necessarily a deliberate lie. The once widely held view that the world is flat was based on what people thought they knew at the time. Without intent to deceive, a falsehood should not be considered fake news. Likewise there are examples of people simply not being able to discern entertainment or parody from reality. The Onion is an example of a parody site designed to amuse people with decidedly false information. The information is false but the intention is clearly comedic, though that might not be obvious to all who see it.

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