The Pros And Cons Of Fake News

Fake news comes from countless places and spreads at an alarmingly fast rate. Usually, false stories start as a hoax on a small scale website, blog, or even social media post. A journalist from a slightly bigger news

On the internet there are hundreds of thousands of different news articles, but not all of them are real. Fake news is a type of hoax or deliberate misinformation that you can find almost anywhere mostly because of social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and News Feed.

When Americans attempt to find the truth in the media, it is important Americans realize what bias each individual media platform has. In the beginning of television, there were only 3 major news channels. These news networks were: ABC, CBS, and NBC; also known as “Mainstream Media”. The mainstream media held views that aligned with American liberals and seemed to always side with this group and were the only news stations for Americans to view. Ultimately, since these were the only news outlets available, whatever views these news stations presented to its watchers, were the only opinions that the majority of Americans held. However, as time went on cable television was created and gave Americans additional news networks. In 1980, CNN debuted

In the article, Media Bias in The 2016 Presidential Race, it brings up a key element that “there are only so many pages in a newspaper or so many minutes in a nightly news program and not every important story can be published” (Papastefan). This leads to the conclusion that news outlets must determine which piece of information they would like to put out there for millions to see, bringing out the biased part of these news channels. Papastefan also points out that the news outlets are obviously going to look to publish the stories that will bring their ratings up, so it is up journalists to pick which stories they find to be the most interesting and will bring attention to their audience. Obviously these journalists are going to pick the to release the stories that they find praises their political party and downgrades those they dislike. This can be compared to a child picking someone for their kickball team and the only two people that are left is their best friend and a kid he or she loathes greatly; clearly the kid he hates will not be

News media has a largely, overwhelming influence on Americans in this day and age. Over the years, audiences have been exposed to various types of broadcast journalism, each with their own forms of bias to generate attention towards various topics. The audience perceive bias in news media program. An in-depth analysis of bias on opinionated news compared to non-opinionated news is key to figuring out how the news media may be sensationalizing a problem.

Using a “common understanding” of what liberal and conservatism means, National Review and the Progressive were chosen to be the standard of conservative and liberal media. Time and Newsweek were considered to be largely more neutral in their coverage. So, by comparing the two neutral magazines to the two partisan magazines the amount of bias could be measured (Adkins). The results found that Time and Newsweek proved to be largely centrist; however, there was a slight bias to the center-left. This finding, however, was not statistically significant and the two publications remain in the “center” range (Adkins). Other studies have shown that there is little evidence to support the notion that the media as a whole is significantly biased in one direction or the other. However, there is evidence that there is a slight liberal bias in television network news (D’Alessio). Despite these findings, 70% of Americans believe that the media as a whole are biased compared to just 55% in 2014. However, earlier findings and studies show that on a large scale there is roughly a balance between conservative and liberal media sources which refutes the idea that as a whole the media are “biased”. Instead, it is more akin to a “tug-of-war” in which each side balances each other out. So this leads to the question as to why a greater number of

Before the time of the internet, people got their news strictly from that of basic television, radio, and newspapers. This limited the amount of viewpoints any given person could hear or see, and in turn left the opportunity to spin information one way or another open. Today, that flaw still exists, but there are now competing views of any given story. For television networks, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and ABC are seen as liberal news stations, while FOX is seen as a conservative station. Both sides are guilty of having a bias toward their respective views,

During the recent 2016 presidential election, candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton could be seen glorified on the television screens of an MSNBC segment. On the other hand, viewing Fox News reveals a very noticeable conservative bias, favoring ideology from candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and John Kasich. CNN, thought to be the most neutral of the three, is only considered unbiased because it always has “at least one conservative and one liberal pundits” reporting on an issue (Garcia). News media rarely provides information unbiasedly, there seems to be some sort of political leaning to almost every news report. Although biased news allows for more perspectives and grants more information to the audience, the extent to which

Media bias is a topic that has been in great focus of many political leaders over the past few presidential elections. However, what many people fail to see is that media bias has been around since the beginning of major news companies. Most Americans do not know what media bias is or how to identify it. That stated many people have noticed that most news stations are biased towards one religion, political party or even gender. This has been like this for decades however has become much more prominent during major wars, the great depression and many social and political reforms such as the industrial era or the civil rights era. However the type of bias has been shifted mostly from a war focus and the focus on exposing corruption to

Today's media has displayed countless ways they show media bias. Many channels have depicted a different side to one story and base information on a political party in which the channel supports. Each news source has one goal, and that is to state what will make the chosen party to have a good platform for the public to see. In the series of events that have occurred recently one can see how different news sources have pushed for what each channel believes is the main point needed to be crossed and have shared beliefs in either a liberal or conservative way.

The public get their news from networks such as ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. One of the differences between all these networks is all of the networks get fairly amount of viewers from which many of the most popular in the country like to go from right or left. CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC have audiences that lean left while the audience on fox lean toward conservative. Another one is the if these networks are being truthful or if what their telling the audience is fake. A poll by Rasmussen declared that CNN is the least trusted news network on cable television (Tapson 1).

Fake news is a type of journalism or propaganda that is created to influence one’s political views. It is often presented as real news and broadcasted through the internet or social networking cites. The issue of fake news has been heightened within society since the rise of technological advantages, such as the Internet and social networking services. One particular fake news publication, The Washington Post’s Craig Timberg, created controversy in the 2016 presidential election claiming that Donald Trump received numerous support from Russian propaganda, which may have misled voters and in result, punished Democrat Hillary Clinton. Though this and other stories constructs the concern of fake news in political elections, to completely censor it on social networking services in regard to political elections would be to contradict their creations, restrict internet users of their freedom of speech, and may indirectly eradicate one political party or the another. In efforts to show the lack of harm fake news poses in politics on social networks, I will respond to some criticisms of fake news and show weaknesses in arguments that claims fake news is harmful. I will explain the importance of freedom of speech and use it to show moral reason to not regulate fake news.

In the modern world, technology plays a larger role than ever in influencing all types of people. Furthermore, the media is also one of the biggest influencers on the internet from the news, to fashion, to anything that will make them money. News companies are also the most important opinion makers because of their impact on important topics like major elections in North America such as U.S.A’s Presidential election and Canada’s Prime Minister election. Major news companies have also been known to have a bias towards major political figures either Republican/Right Side or Democratic/Left Side. Major news companies like Fox News and MSNBC are the most popular news stations in the United States and by them being biased they strongly sway the way people vote and as a result, inexperienced people try to become a political leader are elected and cause major economic problems for their country. News companies have an influential role with how they represent political figures and they should remain unbiased in order to show a fair representation of political figures.

Mainstream media such as television is a large factor in media bias. For example, CNN tends to lean liberal in most areas while Fox News tends to lean conservative. Research conducted at Harvard University found that “The CNN programming studied tended to cast a negative light on Republican candidates – by a margin of three-to-one. Four-in-ten stories (41%) were clearly negative while just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral.” Charlie Rena, a former Fox News producer, wrote that Fox News would ‘slant’ the daily news to fit the president at the time, George W. Bush’s (Republican) agenda. “...unlike the AP, CBS, or ABC, Fox News's editorial policy is set from the top down in the form of a daily memo: "[F]requently, it also contains hints, suggestions and directives on how to slant the day's news—invariably in a way that was consistent with the politics and desires of the Bush administration." Both of these examples from CNN and Fox News

Gautam 4 Kriti Gautam Professor Sherry Sharifian Federal Government 2305-71433 30 November 2017 Fake News and Real News In today’s world, fake news is prevalent all over the world. People need to be more aware of these news stories, so that they become more educated about what is happening around them. In 1998, a fake news story was published about an endangered species that doesn’t exist. The fact that many people thought this story to be true, exemplifies how uninformed the public is. This story was compared with a real story on the CNN website in order to examine the differences between real and fake news, which are discussed later in this paper.