Learning Targets: I can analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
I can integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Class assignment: Due at the close of class on Thursday, or by midnight if you receive extended time. Please send along as one document.
Part 1: There are three articles below relating to fake news. Please respond to the following questions as your read through them. (Class Participation Grade)
From The New York Times
1. How has Mr. Tucker come to distribute false information? Give a brief synopsis of the article.
2. From what two sources might actual misinformation be manufactured?
From The Washington Post
1. List the six bogus stories about Clinton and Trump
2. From where do the 100 Pro-Trump websites originate?
3.From where did the idea that Obama would flee the United States originate?
From How to Spot Fake News (Make sure your read these!)
1. List the eight ways the article suggests to check a news source.
Part 2: real or fake. Graded homework assignment!
Copy out the headline and write real or fake afterwards. You might have to do some research.
1. Thousands of fraudulent ballots for Clinton have been found in a warehouse in Ohio. (Christian Times)
2. Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke is a KKK member (National Report)
3. Trump to punish 'job traitor' firms (BBC)
4.Blonds Are Going Extinct (Science)
5. At Liberty University, All Sins Are Forgiven on the Altar of Football.(New York Times)
6. Americans Love the Iranian and North Korean Presidents (Iranian News Agency FARS)
7. Rochester to spend $70 million in public money to connect every home with fiber-optic cable.
(Democrat and Chronicle)
8. Stores sell out of Pumpkin-spiced flavored condoms (DIGG.com)
9. A night of music and dancing turns into a deadly inferno (LA Times)
10.The iPhone 5 Will Have Hologram Projection (Gizmodo)
News article 1 from The New York Times
How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study
Images posted on Twitter by a marketer in Austin, Tex., the day after the presidential election.
Mr. Tucker's post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong. There were no such buses packed with paid protesters.
But that didn't matter.
While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.
Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker’s now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon. It is an example of how, in an ever-connected world where speed often takes precedence over truth, an observation by a private citizen can quickly become a talking point, even as it is being proved false.
Mr. Tucker, who had taken photos of a large group of buses he saw near downtown Austin earlier in the day because he thought it was unusual, saw reports of protests against Mr. Trump in the city and decided the two were connected. He posted three of the images with the declaration: “Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in. #fakeprotests #trump2016 #austin”
Mr. Tucker said he had performed a Google search to see if any conferences were being held in the area but did not find anything. (The buses were, in fact, hired by a company called Tableau Software, which was holding a conference that drew more than 13,000 people.)
“I did think in the back of my mind there could be other explanations, but it just didn’t seem plausible,” he said in an interview, noting that he had posted as a “private citizen who had a tiny Twitter following.”
He added, “I’m also a very busy businessman and I don’t have time to fact-check everything that I put out there, especially when I don’t think it’s going out there for wide consumption.”
News article 2 from The Washington Post
This is a real news story about fake news stories
Fake news reports have been a problem throughout the presidential campaign. We’re not talking about reports that are merely flawed or thinly sourced; we’re talking about stuff that is completely made up. The Fix’s Philip Bump wrote in April about a fake news site called Prntly that has routinely duped Donald Trump supporters — and even Trump himself.
Things [only got] worse in the final weeks of the race. Here are seven totally bogus stories that have popped up online since October.
Donald Trump is dead
As fake news stories go, this is about as brazen as it gets, considering how easily it could be debunked. Undeterred, an NBC News imitation site claimed in October that the Republican presidential nominee had died of an apparent heart attack. Another site made the same false claim in August, launching the hashtag #RIPTrump.
As everyone knows, Trump’s doctor has stated “unequivocally” that his patient “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” So no one should have believed Trump was dead.
Hillary Clinton will be indicted
Many conservative news sites have been hoping to print those words for more than a year. The fake news site World Politicus decided not to wait for reality to catch up to the dream and last week claimed to have the scoop — courtesy of unnamed FBI sources — that Clinton was going to be indicted in connection with using a private email server while she was secretary of state. Tens of thousands of people shared the “news of the millennium” on Facebook.
BuzzFeed reported that WorldPoliticus is just one of more than 100 pro-Trump websites originating from a single town in Macedonia, where online scam artists are pumping out fictional clickbait for the real estate mogul’s followers.
Clinton’s campaign chairman is into the occult
Among the hacked John Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks was one in which Podesta’s brother, an art collector, forwarded an invitation to a “spirit cooking” dinner party hosted by performance artist Marina Abramovic. Podesta appears not to have responded to the message from his brother, and he did not attend the dinner.
Never mind that. Infowars, the site run by 9/11 truther Alex Jones, used the original email to concoct a story last week about how Podesta “is apparently into spooky occult rituals involving menstrual blood and semen.” From there, the Drudge Report ran a banner that declared “Podesta practices occult magic.”
A postal worker in Ohio is destroying absentee ballots cast for Trump
This was a joke. Not a very funny one, perhaps, but no one should have taken it seriously. It came from a Twitter user who frequently makes ridiculous, obviously made-up claims on social media. Claims such as:
Conservative blogger Jim Hoft thought the ballot destruction was real and wrote about it. Drudge picked up the story. So did Rush Limbaugh. The U.S. Postal Service and Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted ultimately debunked the tweet.
President Obama is thinking about fleeing the country if Trump wins
This was also a joke. It originated on a Canadian satire site called the Burrard Street Journal, which in August published a story that pretended to quote Obama saying a move to Canada is “something Michelle, the kids and I have discussed as a potential solution to the Donald.”
Two months later, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a news conference that Trump's campaign rhetoric “raises questions in the minds of many Americans about whether or not he's committed to the kind of inclusive society that are consistent with long-held American values.”
“So he wouldn't move to Canada or New Zealand if Donald Trump is elected?” a reporter replied.
“He's working very hard to make sure that nobody has to move — has to leave the country as a result of an electoral outcome that the president doesn't support,” Earnest answered.
The Daily Mail then used that exchange to report that the White House was refusing to give a straight answer to the “rumor” that Obama might leave the United States. Sean Hannity did the same thing on his radio show. But there was never an actual rumor — just a joke by a Canadian version of the Onion.
Obama unfollowed Clinton on Twitter
After the FBI renewed its investigation of emails that passed through Clinton’s private server, Your News Wire fabricated a report that Michelle Obama had unfollowed the Democratic nominee on Twitter and also deleted supportive messages. That led to additional false claims on the Internet that Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had done the same.
A quick visit to Twitter could have disabused any reader of the notion that three of Clinton’s top surrogates were abandoning her on social media. But the hoax still fooled Hannity, who told radio listeners that the president’s digital cold shoulder “means they know it's huge. You know why? Because Obama's implicated! He's implicated here, and he's pissed. You know what his legacy might be? Jail.”
Hannity later apologized. On Twitter, of course.
Article 3:
How to Spot Fake News
Fake news is nothing new. But bogus stories can reach more people more quickly via social media than what good old-fashioned viral emails could accomplish in years past.
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. Perhaps that could dissipate the amount of malarkey online, though news consumers themselves are the best defense against the spread of misinformation.
Not all of the misinformation being passed along online is complete fiction, though some of it is. Snopes.com has been exposing false viral claims since the mid 1990s, whether that’s fabricated messages, distortions containing bits of truth and everything in between. Founder David Mikkelson warned in a Nov. 17 article not to lump everything into the “fake news” category. “The fictions and fabrications that comprise fake news are but a subset of the larger bad news phenomenon, which also encompasses many forms of shoddy, unresearched, error-filled, and deliberately misleading reporting that do a disservice to everyone,” he wrote.
A lot of these viral claims aren’t “news” at all, but fiction, satire and efforts to fool readers into thinking they’re for real.
We’ve long encouraged readers to be skeptical of viral claims, and make good use of the delete key when a chain email hits their inboxes. In December 2007, we launched our Ask FactCheck feature, where we answer readers’ questions, the vast majority of which concern viral emails, social media memes and the like. Our first story was about a made-up email that claimed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to put a “windfall” tax on all stock profits of 100 percent and give the money to, the email claimed, “the 12 Million Illegal Immigrants and other unemployed minorities.” We called it “a malicious fabrication” — that’s “fake news” in today’s parlance.
In 2008, we tried to get readers to rid their inboxes of this kind of garbage. We described a list of red flags — we called them Key Characteristics of Bogusness — that were clear tip-offs that a chain email wasn’t legitimate. Among them: an anonymous author; excessive exclamation points, capital letters and misspellings; entreaties that “This is NOT a hoax!”; and links to sourcing that does not support or completely contradicts the claims being made.
Those all still hold true, but fake stories — as in, completely made-up “news” — has grown more sophisticated, often presented on a site designed to look (sort of) like a legitimate news organization. Still, we find it’s easy to figure out what’s real and what’s imaginary if you’re armed with some critical thinking and fact-checking tools of the trade.
Here’s our advice on how to spot a fake:
Consider the source. In recent months, we’ve fact-checked fake news from abcnews.com.co (not the actual URL for ABC News), WTOE 5 News (whose “about” page says it’s “a fantasy news website”), and the Boston Tribune (whose “contact us” page lists only a gmail address). Earlier this year, we debunked the claim that the Obamas were buying a vacation home in Dubai, a made-up missive that came from WhatDoesItMean.com, which describes itself as “One Of The Top Ranked Websites In The World for New World Order, Conspiracy Theories and Alternative News” and further says on its site that most of what it publishes is fiction.
Clearly, some of these sites do provide a “fantasy news” or satire warning, like WTOE 5, which published the bogus headline, “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement.” Others aren’t so upfront, like the Boston Tribune, which doesn’t provide any information on its mission, staff members or physical location — further signs that maybe this site isn’t a legitimate news organization. The site, in fact, changed its name from Associated Media Coverage, after its work had been debunked by fact-checkingorganizations.
Snopes.com, which has been writing about viral claims and online rumors since the mid-1990s, maintains a list of known fake news websites, several of which have emerged in the past two years.
Read beyond the headline. If a provocative headline drew your attention, read a little further before you decide to pass along the shocking information. Even in legitimate news stories, the headline doesn’t always tell the whole story. But fake news, particularly efforts to be satirical, can include several revealing signs in the text. That abcnews.com.co story that we checked, headlined “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide,” went on to quote “Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin.” We have to assume that the many readers who asked us whether this viral rumor was true hadn’t read the full story.
Check the author. Another tell-tale sign of a fake story is often the byline. The pledge of allegiance story on abcnews.com.co was supposedly written by “Jimmy Rustling.” Who is he? Well, his author page claims he is a “doctor” who won “fourteen Peabody awards and a handful of Pulitzer Prizes.” Pretty impressive, if true. But it’s not. No one by the name of “Rustling” has won a Pulitzer or Peabody award. The photo accompanying Rustling’s bio is also displayed on another bogus story on a different site, but this time under the byline “Darius Rubics.” The Dubai story was written by “Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers.” The Pope Francis story has no byline at all.
What’s the support? Many times these bogus stories will cite official — or official-sounding — sources, but once you look into it, the source doesn’t back up the claim. For instance, the Boston Tribune site wrongly claimed that President Obama’s mother-in-law was going to get a lifetime government pension for having babysat her granddaughters in the White House, citing “the Civil Service Retirement Act” and providing a link. But the link to a government benefits website doesn’t support the claim at all.
The banning-the-pledge story cites the number of an actual executive order — you can look it up. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Another viral claim we checked a year ago was a graphic purporting to show crime statistics on the percentage of whites killed by blacks and other murder statistics by race. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump retweeted it, telling Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly that it came “from sources that are very credible.” But almost every figure in the image was wrong — FBI crime data is publicly available — and the supposed source given for the data, “Crime Statistics Bureau – San Francisco,” doesn’t exist.
Recently, we’ve received several questions about a fake news story on the admittedly satirical site Nevada County Scooper, which wrote that Vice President-elect Mike Pence, in a “surprise announcement,” credited gay conversion therapy for saving his marriage. Clearly such a “surprise announcement” would garner media coverage beyond a website you’ve never heard of. In fact, if you Google this, the first link that comes up is a Snopes.com article revealing that this is fake news.
Check the date. Some false stories aren’t completely fake, but rather distortions of real events. These mendacious claims can take a legitimate news story and twist what it says — or even claim that something that happened long ago is related to current events.
Since Trump was elected president, we’ve received many inquiries from readers wanting to know whether Ford had moved car production from Mexico to Ohio, because of Trump’s election. Readers cited various blog items that quoted from and linked to a CNN Money article titled “Ford shifts truck production from Mexico to Ohio.” But that story is from August 2015, clearly not evidence of Ford making any move due to the outcome of the election. (A reminder again to check the support for these claims.)
One deceptive website didn’t credit CNN, but instead took CNN’s 2015 story and slapped a new headline and publication date on it, claiming, “Since Donald Trump Won The Presidency… Ford Shifts Truck Production From Mexico To Ohio.” Not only is that a bogus headline, but the deception involves copyright infringement.
If this Ford story sounds familiar, that’s because the CNN article has been distorted before.
In October 2015, Trump wrongly boasted that Ford had changed its plans to build new plants in Mexico, and instead would build a plant in Ohio. Trump took credit for Ford’s alleged change of heart and tweeted a link to a story on a blog called Prntly.com, which cited the CNN Money story. But Ford hadn’t changed its plans at all, and Trump deserved no credit.
In fact, the CNN article was about the transfer of some pickup assembly work from Mexico to Ohio, a move that was announced by Ford in March 2014. The plans for new plants in Mexico were still on, Ford said. “Ford has not spoken with Mr. Trump, nor have we made any changes to our plans,” Ford said in a statement.
Is this some kind of joke? Remember, there is such thing as satire. Normally, it’s clearly labeled as such, and sometimes it’s even funny. Andy Borowitz has been writing a satirical news column, the Borowitz Report, since 2001, and it has appeared in the New Yorker since 2012. But not everyone gets the jokes. We’ve fielded several questions on whether Borowitz’s work is true.
Among the headlines our readers have flagged: “Putin Appears with Trump in Flurry of Swing-State Rallies” and “Trump Threatens to Skip Remaining Debates If Hillary Is There.” When we told readers these were satirical columns, some indicated that they suspected the details were far-fetched but wanted to be sure.
And then there’s the more debatable forms of satire, designed to pull one over on the reader. That “Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin” story? That’s the work of online hoaxer Paul Horner, whose “greatest coup,” as described by the Washington Post in 2014, was when Fox News mentioned, as fact, a fake piece titled, “Obama uses own money to open Muslim museum amid government shutdown.” Horner told the Post after the election that he was concerned his hoaxes aimed at Trump supporters may have helped the campaign.
The posts by Horner and others — whether termed satire or simply “fake news” — are designed to encourage clicks, and generate money for the creator through ad revenue. Horner told the Washington Post he makes a living off his posts. Asked why his material gets so many views, Horner responded, “They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore.”
Check your biases. We know this is difficult. Confirmation bias leads people to put more stock in information that confirms their beliefs and discount information that doesn’t. But the next time you’re automatically appalled at some Facebook post concerning, say, a politician you oppose, take a moment to check it out.
Try this simple test: What other stories have been posted to the “news” website that is the source of the story that just popped up in your Facebook feed? You may be predisposed to believe that Obama bought a house in Dubai, but how about a story on the same site that carries this headline: “Antarctica ‘Guardians’ Retaliate Against America With Massive New Zealand Earthquake.” That, too, was written by the prolific “Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers.”
We’re encouraged by some of the responses we get from readers, who — like the ones uncertain of Borowitz’s columns — express doubt in the outrageous, and just want to be sure their skepticism is justified. But we are equally discouraged when we see debunked claims gain new life.
We’ve seen the resurgence of a fake quote from Donald Trump since the election — a viral image that circulated last year claims Trump told People magazine in 1998: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.” We found no such quote in People‘s archives from 1998, or any other year. And a public relations representative for the magazine confirmed that. People‘s Julie Farin told us in an email last year: “We combed through every Trump story in our archive. We couldn’t find anything remotely like this quote –and no interview at all in 1998.”
Comedian Amy Schumer may have contributed to the revival of this fake meme. She put it on Instagram, adding at the end of a lengthy message, “Yes this quote is fake but it doesn’t matter.”
Consult the experts. We know you’re busy, and some of this debunking takes time. But we get paid to do this kind of work. Between FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, the Washington PostFact Checker and PolitiFact.com, it’s likely at least one has already fact-checked the latest viral claim to pop up in your news feed.
FactCheck.org was among a network of independent fact-checkers who signed an open letterto Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg suggesting that Facebook “start an open conversation on the principles that could underpin a more accurate news ecosystem on its News Feed.” We hope that conversation happens, but news readers themselves remain the first line of defense against fake news.
On our Viral Spiral page, we list some of the claims we get asked about the most; all of our Ask FactChecks can be found here. And if you encounter a new claim you’d like us to investigate, email us at editor@factcheck.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment