NewsLiteracyPlaybook - Flipbook - Page 18
History of Misinformation
Technology companies. These businesses,
which now power almost every aspect of society
worldwide, should invest in fact-checking technology
and ways to use human monitors more wisely. They
should “stop the monetization of fake news” by
weakening the financial incentives that lure trolls
to place sensationalized or false stories. (During
the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, teens in
Macedonia wrote or shared on Facebook completely
untrue stories meant to appeal to U.S. supporters of
Donald Trump. Their 140 websites and hyperpartisan
Facebook pages earned them “easy money,” in one
teen’s words, by drawing an enormous number of
clicks and shares.)
Educational institutions. Governments should
be encouraged to fund news literacy programs,
especially in countries where people are going
online for the first time. Of particular importance are
programs for young people.
Public awareness. Finally, members of the public
need to take responsibility for their media habits.
The strategies taught in educational programs —
checking a variety of sources, learning how to judge
news sites and verifying images and content before
sharing — are ones the general public can, and
should, use too.
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According to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research
Center in Washington, D.C., about two-thirds of
Americans get at least some news from social
media, though many of them now expect that what
they see there is inaccurate and untrustworthy. The
2018 digital news report by the Reuters Institute for
the Study of Journalism found that, worldwide, as
news literacy increases, trust in news from search
engines and news from social media becomes less
widespread.
In short, as Yale University historian Timothy Snyder
has written:
“Believe in truth. To abandon
facts is to abandon freedom.”