A Radioactive Deal?

A Radioactive Deal?

Day in and day out fake news and slanderous material is published about politics. During the 2016 presidential race the Democratic and Republican parties dug up every bit of dirt they could on the other party. One story about Hillary Clinton was that she sold Russia 20% of the U.S.’ uranium supply for donations to the Clinton Foundation. According to Snopes.com this story came from a book called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, an exposé of alleged Clinton Foundation corruption written by Peter Schweizer”. Snopes states “A chapter in the book suggests that the Clinton family and Russia each may have benefited from a “pay-for-play” scheme while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, involving the transfer of U.S. uranium reserves to the new Russian owners of an international mining operation in exchange for $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.” This is infact a fake article and Hillary is completely clean in this story.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/

Photoshop or Frankenstein's Monster?

Photoshop or Frankenstein's Monster?

You hear day in and day out about “alien sightings’ or seeing Sasquatch, but have you ever heard of a camel that is missing half its body? A recent Instagram post from the profile Wild Viewing posted a picture of a camel with only the front half of its body. The post was accompanied with the caption “This Camel in Saudi Arabia had lost half it’s body when it unfortunately wandered onto a land mine. After losing the back portion of its body, surgeons worked tirelessly arranging the internal organs into a functioning system. They also created the Camel a new functioning Anus. The Camel has made new friends with the local Ostrich family where they have adopted him as one of their own. The Camel is able to regurgitate water directly into the Ostriches mouths when there is no other water source available”. Anyone who saw that picture should have had their suspicions, but as the usual some people still believed. The picture looks as absurd as it sounds, and even though it isn't real it does make for one heck of a story!

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/half-body-camel/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BglaOdigunq/?hl=en&taken-by=wildviewing

Fake News World

Fake News World

On March 20th, 2018 the Facebook page News World uploaded a video of supposed Muslim immigrants “attacking” a catholic church during mass. This accusation is untrue, but was based off a real event. According to Snopes.com “The post contains no evidence that backs their conclusions about the protesters’ religion or whether they were new arrivals to the country. Furthermore, the protesters did not “attack” a Catholic church, and mass was not in session during the incident as claimed”. Additionally, a French news article said “The Coordination des sans-papiers group has deployed a banner denouncing the "Asylum - Immigration" bill put forward by the government. "They were very respectful. They made noise, that's all. There was no aggressiveness, "says an employee of the Basilica”. The supposedly hostile group that “attacked” the church was in reality just a group of peaceful protesters that a Facebook news source took and slapped an untrue label on.  

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/muslim-migrants-attack-catholic-church-mass-france/

http://www.leparisien.fr/seine-saint-denis-93/saint-denis-80-personnes-manifestent-dans-la-basilique-pour-les-sans-papiers-18-03-2018-7615809.php

https://www.facebook.com/786888781492026/videos/942478112599758/

Lion Murderer On Conservation Council?

Lion Murderer On Conservation Council?

Earlier this month people began circulating rumors that Walter Palmer, the person who shot Cecil the Lion, was appointed to a newly formed wildlife conservation council. This is not actually true though. The rumor came from a WashingtonPress.com article with a cryptic headline. The article itself was also very confusing which led to people posting on social media about something untrue. According to Snopes.com “The claim was widely misinterpreted, with many inferring from reports that the Trump administration had personally appointed Walter Palmer to the International Wildlife Conservation Council. Formation of the group was announced on 8 November 2017. Palmer was not listed among its sixteen members. This is just another example of how not looking into your sources can lead to the spread of misinformation.

https://washingtonpress.com/2018/03/16/trump-just-put-cecil-the-lions-killers-hunting-club-on-new-federal-wildlife-panel/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cecil-lion-wildlife-conservation-council/

Touchdown for the Media

Touchdown for the Media

In late January an article emerged saying that an NFL lawyer was found dead in his car in New York, but this turned out to be another fake news story. The suppososive story said that he told reporters that the NFL rigs the games for maximum profit. Politifact, one of the many websites to debunk this story said “We found no evidence that an NFL lawyer named Dan Goodes even exists, or that he was found dead in his BMW in Manhattan”. Additionally the picture used for the headline of the original story was of the the crime scene but this was taken from another murder story that had happened beforehand. Fortunately this was quickly disproved and people went back to their day to day lives.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/feb/02/eco-news/story-nfl-lawyer-said-super-bowl-rigged-and-was-mu/

Teaching How to Spot Fake News

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2018/03/arming_teens_in_the_fight_agai.html

In an age where fake news is becoming more prolific and more convincing, it is becoming extremely important to teach the next generation how to determine if information is relevant and true.  Recently, states have been pushing for laws that would require “schools to teach media literacy,” hopefully increasing awareness and independence of thought when online. Further, “school librarians” have already begun to teach this skill to younger people. MediaWise is a new project backed by Google with a similar goal to teach children to separate fact from fiction.  These laws and organizations will be extremely important for years to come as more aware people will lead to better and more informed voting decisions.

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The 7% Lie

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/scott-kelly-dna-fake-news/555794/

Last week, many news sites reported on a similar story - that Scott Kelly, an astronaut and identical twin to Mark Kelly, had had his DNA altered by 7% while in space.  This ridiculous claim was the result of misinterpreted wording during a press conference where genetic researchers were discussing the summaries of their study on Scott’s gene expression in space versus Mark’s.  Despite the story’s falsehood, it spread “like wildfire” among Twitter, even reaching and confusing Scott himself. Fake news spreads extremely, and it seems that part of its draw may be the wording of the articles - often “associated with surprise or disgust.”

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Confirmation Bias and Fake News

https://ijnet.org/en/blog/new-report-highlights-what%E2%80%99s-missing-research-fake-news

There are many factors on the spread of fake news, but one of the most important pieces of the puzzle is discussed on Laura Owen’s journalism blog; she highlights the role that confirmation bias has on our perception of new facts.  When people are presented with information that contradicts their point of view, they might dig in “more strongly on their original position.” Relevant to Fake News, someone that already opposes the political position of a candidate would only visit sites that discuss their personal beliefs and be much more resistant to other points of view.  As a result, when fake news is discussed in their side of an argument, that person is more inclined to support it as fact.

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Twitter’s Role in Fake News

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/08/media/fake-news-mit-study/index.html

Sinan Aral and two others completed a two year study recently, focusing on the speed at which Fake News and real news is disseminated.  They found that it takes “about six times longer” for true events to get to 1500 people than fake news. Fake news, moreover, is able to get to twenty thousand people “three times faster” than true news.  Aral is concerned that this trend may be present in most other social media outlets, where arguments are fevered and frequent. Further, posts that concerned politics typically traveled deeply and broadly, and fake posts were even faster than estimates in other categories of news.

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The Pathways Fake News Follows

https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/03/fake-news-real-research/

The NULab conference is held every year to discuss the various works of research groups.  David Lazer [center] attended this year’s conference to discuss his methods of research into Fake News.  To verify his data pool, he cross-referenced Twitter accounts and voting records to find out which were real people and which were bots.  He then compared their political biases and found that there were what he calls “neighborhoods of consumption,” where those who consumed Fake News were more likely to consume much more and share that with the rest of their virtual ‘neighbourhood’.  In turn, these groups tend to consume much more Fake News as a while and tend to become less receptive to other neighborhoods’ ideas.

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JUUL is Not CUUL?

For those who may not know, a Juul is a concentrated nicotine vaporizer, or vape, which have become increasingly popular among adolescents. Many teens believe that because it is not an actual cigarette, this a non harmful way to intake nicotine. For this reason, it is not surprising that adults would try finding new ways to scare kids away from the habit. There are many tweets saying that vaping can cause cancer and one even includes a link to a Pediatric Publication. However when you read the article thoroughly it says that “e-cigarettes do not produce... cancer-causing agents” debunking itself.

https://twitter.com/AskDocG/status/970781403720826881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-check%2Fdoes-juuling-cancer-young-people%2F&tfw_creator=kimlacapria&tfw_site=snopes

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/03/01/peds.2017-3557?sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR:+No+local+token

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New Transgender Icon?

The american actress Julia Stiles is best known for her work in the classic ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ and ‘The Prince and Me’. As of late, however it seemed to be believed that a piece of her past has been uncovered; “she is transgender”. This statement is completely false and anyone in contact with modern media would be able to debunk this claim quickly. Just by looking at the pictures, her “before” picture is actually the Fault In Our Stars actor, Ansel Elgort. Ansel Elgort even jokingly  tweeted about the false claim, even proving its ridiculousness even more.

https://me.me/i/roses-are-red-spaghetti-is-slender-31-stars-you-forgot-4222313

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RIP Pamela Anderson?

Pamela Anderson is the famous canadian american actress. Se is most well knows for shows like Baywatch and Home Improvement. Because of her beloved work, it was truly a shock when an article was published stating that she had passed away. The article, which seemed to be from abc news, claimed that “during the course of her treatment Anderson developed pneumonia and died at 10:04 [that] morning after going into cardiac arrest”. This however is all false. Even though the article seemed to be from the official abc it was really from ABCNews-us.com which is made to fool readers.

http://web.archive.org/web/20180316142110/http://www.abcnews-us.com/2018/03/15/pamela-anderson-famous-playboy-model-and-baywatch-star-dies-aged-50/

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Missing Malaysia Flight Warns us of.. Aliens?

On twitter about last week, a user names Ty started a thread of events that had been happening to him over the course of a couple days. This included a mysterious voicemail and claims that people were taking pictures of his house in the middle of the night. What made the voicemail so unusual is that is was from an unknown number and said “Danger SOS it is dire for you to evacuate be cautious they are not human.” The message then reads off a series of numbers: 042933964230. It was these numbers that would later be believed to be correlated to coordinates of where the MH370 flight went down. However this is certainly fake news as it is only a conspiracy theory with no real basis whatsoever, even the coordinates aren't exact and people but chose to believe they were true.

https://twitter.com/strayedaway/status/973604056005570560/video/1

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Animal Killer on Conversion Counsel?

In March 2018, people began to believe that Trump had appointed a well known animal hunter to be on the Wildlife Conversion counsel. Based of some headlines, it was perceived that Trump's administration made the bold more of hand picking Walter Palmer to be apart of a new group meant to help wildlife. This, however, is not true. This fake news began to spread with misleading articles like “Trump just put Cecil the Lion’s killer’s hunting club on new federal wildlife panel” from the Washington Post. The article stated that “At least ten of the 16 members of the panel are affiliated with “Safari Club International” including Palmer, but that can easily be debunked because SCI has over 50,000 members. Also the list of the International Wildlife Conversion Council was published in November and Palmer was not on it.

https://archive.is/eKK8c

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Duffelblog and Satirical Fake News

Duffelblog is a site well known in the veteran community for hosting outlandish stories relating to military operations. Unfortunately some people still don’t bother to actually read the article and believe the article straight from the title. A little peering into the article will show anyone the nature of such an article like with the quote “If we can confiscate millions of firearms in a country where we don’t speak the language or understand the culture, the U.S. should be easy,” in this article where the U.S. military is drawing up plans for nationwide gun confiscations. It does seem easy to be fooled though, with many of these articles not being too far from the actual truth.

https://www.duffelblog.com/2013/01/military-drawing-up-plans-for-nation-wide-gun-confiscations/


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Fake News, Phony Site, False Hope

This fake ABC site article opens up with some great news for Floridian stoners, stating “Weed smokers rejoice, The state of Florida can now be added to the growing list of US states that have past bills to legalize the use marijuana”. However, with just a quick search on Google with the keywords “Florida” and “marijuana”, the fake news is quickly exposed. This is an example of fake news that can be dangerous if believed with any amount of zeal. Imagine an individual getting arrested for smoking weed because they thought it was legal. As always, make sure your sources are credible and not some phony site, and even if it is a site you trust make sure to fact check anyways.


http://www.abcnews-us.com/2018/03/14/florida-passes-bill-legalizing-recreational-use-of-marijuana/


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Trump and Fake News

Rarely does a conversation about fake news go without mentioning the man himself, Mr. Donald Trump. In this article a proud Mr. Trump boasts about his great achievements in exposing these dark secrets, stating "’...there’s a lot of fake news out there, and I’m proud that I exposed it.’ ‘People really do get it. There is a lot of fake news out there,’ he added. ‘Nobody had any idea. I’m actually proud of the fact I exposed it to a large extent. It’s an achievement’”. While it is great that such an influential person has coined a term for fake news, many people think that his statements in the article are a result of his own ego judging by the comments.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/379795-trump-takes-credit-for-exposing-fake-news-as-president


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Fake News, Real Politics

In this article, the website Tumblr comes out, unmasking “84 accounts that it says were used by a shadowy Russian internet group to spread disinformation during the 2016 US election campaign”. According to Tumblr, the accounts were “being used as part of a disinformation campaign leading up to the 2016 US election”. This is interesting as it shows that there certainly are groups out there dedicated to changing the flow of politics, going so far as to create “troll farms” to do so. Tumblr says it’s now only allowed to disclose to the general public what happened after working with the US Justice Department which leads one to wonder what else there is on other sites and how deep the rabbit hole really goes.


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/24/tumblr-says-russia-used-it-for-fake-news-during-2016-election


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Fake News is Everyone’s Problem

Fake news might seem fine and all once it gets exposed, but the problem with it in the first place is that its inception in the first place can be quite destructive. This NPR article cites a study showing that people have a shocking inability to tell fake news from real. According to this study, “‘Only a quarter of the students recognized and explained the significance of the blue checkmark, a Stanford press release noted. "And over 30 percent of students argued that the fake account was more trustworthy’”. This is dangerous as it can create misunderstandings about important issues that one gets from social media.

http://researchguides.austincc.edu/c.php?g=612891&p=4258046

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Ridiculous Putin Story

http://www.the-postillon.com/2018/03/salisbury-putin.html

An utterly ridiculous example of a fake news story; this article makes the claim that Vladimir Putin’s passport was found at the scene of the recent poisoning of the former Russian double agent and his daughter in the UK. They were poisoned by a nerve agent that is known to be a Russian made poison; which means it is very likely that Russian was involved, but the idea that Putin himself would be directly related in any way is just so incredibly silly. The article even claimed that Theresa May said “Russia has 24 hours to extradite Vladimir Putin for questioning in London.” as well as “Refusal will be taken as admission of guilt.” If it is somehow unclear, Snopes has fact-checked this story and obviously confirmed it’s fake.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/putin-passport-salisbury-poison-attack/

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Google vs. Fake News

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43473938

Google, the giant tech corporation that we all know, has decided to commit three hundred million dollars to the cause of fighting Fake News. They, along with Facebook and other companies, have recently gotten a lot of flak for not doing enough to combat the countless sites constantly generating fake news. Google has already taken steps to be more successful with filtering out fake news with their search engine and wishes to use the planned investment to launch more projects; such as MediaWise “to help young news readers "distinguish fact from fiction online" to further assist in combating fake news. Google plans to work together with organizations in the news industry to come up with new ideas for the future of news companies in this age of digital news consumption.

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Fake News Problems In Europe

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/world/europe/fake-news-italy-election-europe.html

Italy expects to have problems in its upcoming election with the prevalence of fake news in recent years. Fake news across the rest of Europe in places like the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Spain and Britain have made some Italian politicians worry that “the misinformation might skew the voting process and stoke tensions.” The most common source for most of this fake news was social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. This article focuses on briefly detailing the different individual occurrences in these different countries. Considering how widespread the problem is, it’s very likely that the fear of fake news having some effect on Italy's election is not completely unwarranted.

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Huff’s Tips on Dealing With Fake News

This article lists the exact steps it gives in the picture and gives further details on each individual step. The first two are perhaps the most effective and the easiest to carry out: reading past the headline and checking what news outlet published the material. Often fake news publishers will simply “write the beginning of a story in a straightforward way before filling in the rest with obviously false information.” The second thing that the Huffington Post recommends is to check the publisher. Most of the time fake news articles come from confirmed “Fake New Sources”, therefore it’s easy to know not to trust anything from those sites. The other steps detailed can often help knowing if whether or not a questionable article is legitimate or not.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fake-news-guide-facebook_us_5831c6aae4b058ce7aaba169

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False Florida Fun

http://www.abcnews-us.com/2018/03/14/florida-passes-bill-legalizing-recreational-use-of-marijuana/

Abcnews-us is the perfect example of a known fake news website, and their false claim of legalized recreational marijuana in Florida is a perfect example of a story that sounds like it could be true, but isn’t. The article makes the somewhat believable claim that a vote to legalize in the state passed; though Snopes confirms that it is false. Snopes notes that while the democrat Janet Cruz is a real democrat, the quotes “This bill is so much more than legalizing marijuana—it’s about legalizing opportunity and prosperity,” and “The state budget was due two weeks ago, and Florida simply can’t afford to wait any longer. We deserve a real plan to create new jobs and stimulate our lagging economy, and that’s what this bill is.” are completely false. Using small bits of truthful information is a common method that fake news sites use to make their stories appear more legitimate.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-florida-pass-recreational-marijuana/

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Tricky Names

Recently there has been some buzz that Florida had supposedly legalized the recreational use of marijuana. This claim is indeed fake news. The source originated from "a link to what appeared to  be an ADC News article," stating that a bill had been passed that would make the use of cabanas legal in the state, (LaCapria). The media outlet Snopes was quick to call the bluff, stating how "the item was hosted on ABCNews-us.com," which is a fake news site created to trick people into believing that it has some affiliation to the real ABC News outlet; "the actual domain for that outlet is ABCnews.go.com," (LaCaprai). This is another example of how websites will have a very similar domain name so they can try and fool the public into thinking it is a real story. Fake news can be very sneaky especially when paired with a tricky website name. [1 image, 1 link, 2 quotations, 149 words].

False Claims

After the high school shooting in Parkland, FL, there were many interviews with some of the people involved. One of the people who were interviewed was Colton Haab, a survivor of the school shooting. Haab's first claimed that "CNN had refused to allow him to ask a question at the town hall about arming teachers," and was given a scripted question, (Levine). He had an interview by Fox News where he asserted that CNN tried to stage the town hall meeting by making him ask a scripted question. Originally the boy's father presented emails the seemed to state CNN having interest in the boy reading a script. This story was soon dropped when more evidence came into light. Multiple news outlets covered the story as the events unfolded, two of which were Tampa Bay Times and The Wrap. CNN responded by stating they "did not provide or script questions for anyone," and provided copies of the emails sent to the boys father, which were different from the ones the father had originally presented (Levine). Later the father "acknowledged he omitted words in an email he sent media outlets accusing CNN," of providing his son with scripted questions, (Press). News outlets were quick to revoke their statements and stories about the situation after "news emerged that Haab's father had doctored the emails and removed key phrases that served to incriminate CNN," (Levine). [1 image, 2 links, 3 quotations, 231 words].

How to Spot Fake News

According to “How to Spot Fake News” certain strategies can be of aid to users. The article states that “Concern about the phenomenon led Facebook and Google to announce that they’ll crack down on fake news sites, restricting their ability to garner ad revenue.” While google and facebook are creating a safe environment for its users, cautionary measures should still be taken. This includes deleting spam, checking headlines, checking publishing dates, researching the author, and consulting experts. Fact check states “We’ve long encouraged readers to be skeptical of viral claims”. By being vigilant, fake news will stop spreading because “news readers themselves remain the first line of defense against fake news.” [1 image, 1 link, 2 quotations, 111 words]

Creator of Fake News

Craig Silverman, a buzzfeed news media editor, actually came up with the term “fake news”. He first discovered a false story, about an ebola outbreak in texas, in 2014, which he exposed by tweeting about it. After encountering a busting fake news over the past few years, Silveran stated in the headline, “I Helped Popularize The Term “Fake News” And Now I Cringe Every Time I Hear It.” He then goes over many fake articles that he has come across, which are mostly political. Experts say that he “helped generate the ‘fake news’ crisis. Silverman explains this not something that he is bragging about and even states it feels more like his association with it is an “indictment.” [1 image, 1 link, 2 quotations, 118 words]

Marijuana Being Legalized?

Recently an ABC based article stated that florida would be legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. The website was actually ABCNews-us.com, which tricked users into believing it was actually from ABC news. Snopes.com was able to prove that while, “Janet Cruz is real, the quote and legislation are not.” Snopes.com ultimately came to the conclusion that this news was fake. While this is something that some citizens want to bring in legislation, it will be a long process according to News-Press. News-Press pointed out that John Morgan, a runner for governor is in favor of legalizing marijuana. However most believe “that recreational marijuana's chances in the short-term don't look great in Florida.” [1 image, 2 links, 2 quotations, 121 words]