A Nonpolitical Look at Language and Learning
Fake news is apparently everywhere. On television. In print. Online. You can’t help but trip over it every day, no matter where you get your news. It has invaded our culture and perverted our political system.
At Ray Access, we’re not interested in writing about politics, but we are passionate about language. So, these questions kept popping up: What is fake news, really? How do you define it? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, fake news is:
“False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views.”
In other words, fake news is propaganda, which the same dictionary defines this way:
“Information or ideas that are spread by an organized group or government to influence people’s opinions, especially by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts.”
Definitions, Please
The reason the term fake news has caught on — or gone viral, as the saying goes — is that it’s succinct and catchy. It’s just two common words, but two words that until recently were never joined together. Everyone, even a child, understands what fake means. And most adults realize that news is more than an acronym for North, East, West and South. So, let’s examine each word for its meaning:
- Fake. Not the real thing, an imposter or substitute. Margarine is fake butter. Naugahyde is fake leather. Cubic zirconia is a fake diamond. Of course, these examples can be proven fake fairly easily.
- News. Information published or delivered as meaningful and relevant. The weather is news, although you could successfully argue that tomorrow’s weather is mere speculation. Sports scores are news, as is current traffic and this week’s lottery numbers. News is, by definition, a report of past or current facts.
Putting the Ache in Fake News
When considering the term fake news, based on the definitions above, you may think it contains facts that aren’t real. But real news is a reporting of something that’s already happened. The games are over, and the scores are in. No one disputes that. The stock market rose or fell by a certain percentage. It’s the same number regardless where you look. Doesn’t that make it real?
The issue that the term fake news raises — which is both brilliant and chilling — is not the reporting of facts, but the interpretation of those facts. Is it fake news to declare that the stock market rose or fell because a popular sports team won or lost? Suddenly, the cause-and-effect logic of reality skips a beat, and anything seems not only possible, but probable.
What’s in a Report?
Fake news also plays on people’s base fears that the media or the government can’t be trusted. If you buy a dozen eggs, and one turns out to be bad, you may not want to try the other 11. If you visit a distant city that seems just like your hometown, suddenly every city is the same, and it doesn’t matter where you live. Similarly, if you pick out one quote from a newscast that is proven false, you no longer believe anything on that channel.
Additionally, while the definition of fake has stayed relatively stable over the years, the term news has morphed again and again. Today, celebrity gossip is delivered as news. News isn’t just what a person said, which is all that actually is real, but what he meant by it, which is pure speculation. Today’s news has a spin, and it may be classified as fake if it spins away from the direction you lean.
Stopping Fake News
The simplest way to stop fake news is to question the term itself. When a report is labelled with that phrase, ignore the words and ask questions to determine what about it is fake and what about it is news. You may learn that it’s fake, but it’s not really news, as this article defines it. You may learn that it’s not fake and it’s not even news. Whatever you learn, you’ll have learned more than if you had simply accepted the label.
The more complex way to stop news that’s fake is not by shutting down newspapers or censuring speech. There may always be lies, just as there may always be poverty, crime or taxes. The way to ultimately stop fake news is not to shut the mouth that speaks, but to change the eye that sees and the ear that hears. Learn to discern facts from speculation. Learn to be wary until facts emerge.
A Transferable Skill
What does this topic have to do with a small business that writes website content and blog posts? Why write about fake news at all? It’s simple, really: media literacy is a transferrable skill. Media literacy is the ability to comprehend what a news report is really saying. If you can learn to tell real news from fake news, you’ve become not just a better citizen, but a smarter consumer as well.
Media literacy is a skill not many people cultivate today, but it’s a skill that benefits you every day, especially online. When you’ve read as many websites as the team at Ray Access has, you get a sense of what’s real and what’s fake. Is a promise genuine or an attempt to sell you something? When you can determine the answer to that, you won’t need anyone else telling you what’s real and what’s fake news.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.