2. Separating Fact from Fiction Online

No doubt you’ve seen them online: headlines, news stories, links to web pages that make claims that don’t feel quite right. Maybe it’s something about the behavior of a given politician, or the details of some supposed new law, or even some wild claim that sounds more like a conspiracy theory than a news headline.

Chances are that what you’re seeing isn’t factual. It’s what some people call “fake news”—a bunch of lies and hoaxes fool the public into believing the unbelievable. And, if you’re not careful, you can easily be duped by the latest round of falsehoods circulating on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.

(WARNING: This chapter contains multiple examples of fake news, conspiracy theories, urban legends, and other unsavory topics. I apologize in advance for any offense these items may cause, but they’re all to be found in social media online.)

That last sentence is important, so please read it again:

Just because someone says something online doesn’t mean it’s true.

If you remember nothing else from this chapter, remember that. Although the Internet can be a great source of news and information, it can also be a breeding ground for misinformation, lies, and propaganda. In fact, social media such as Facebook and Twitter exacerbate the problem, making it easier than ever before to spread rumor, innuendo, and plain old lies.

Today, however, all someone has to do is post the latest piece of misinformation on Facebook or Twitter, and literally seconds later it can spread around the entire planet. One influential person makes an ill-informed tweet and hundreds of thousands of people or more hear about it—and take it as the gospel truth. It gets even worse when some of these people pass on the original post to their online friends; pretty soon millions of people worldwide are exposed to the misinformation, and the original falsehood takes on a life of its own that is now difficult to dispute.

This is how fake news becomes a real issue. It’s especially prevalent in the world of politics, but it can permeate rational discussion in all fields of interest.

What kinds of fake stories are we talking about? Well, here are some of the top fake news headlines shared on Facebook in 2016, in no certain order:

• “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools Nationwide”

• “Brad Pitt is Moving to Morganton, NC”

• “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide”

• “Clown Kills 3 Teens in Oak Ridge, TN”

• “Ireland is Now Accepting Trump Refugees from America”

All of these stories were totally fake. Not a drop of truth in any of them (which means if you saw and believed any of them, you got taken).

Let’s look at one such fake story in more detail. During the 2016 presidential election, a white supremacist Twitter account made the claim that the New York City Police Department had discovered the existence of a human-trafficking ring operating out of a Washington, DC-based pizzeria named Comet Ping Pong. This ring was supposedly tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff, John Podesta.

This claim was, of course, totally fabricated. Although there is a pizza joint in Washington named Comet Ping Pong, it is not the headquarters for any human-trafficking operations, and Clinton and Podesta are not tied to the pizza parlor or any such unsavory operations.

The truth of the matter didn’t stop the original tweet from being passed around online from person to person, and eventually being picked up by multiple right-wing message boards, Twitter feeds, and Facebook feeds. It even got top billing on many so-called fake news websites, which helped the unfounded rumor to spread even further and faster.

Before long, “Pizzagate,” as the ruckus was ultimately dubbed, had to be addressed in the mainstream media. Many unwitting individuals believed what they heard and took to harassing the owners and staff of Comet Ping Pong online and in person. One such true believer even took it upon himself to personally visit the pizza place and fire off three rounds from an AR-15-style assault rifle. (He was arrested—and apologized—for that.)

And all this happened because one person posted something totally fabricated to his Twitter account. That’s how fake news and innuendo spread and become truly dangerous online.

On the surface, much of this fake news is relatively harmless. (I mean, Bigfoot? Seriously?) But some of this false information could be deadly.

Take, for example, the topic of fake medical news. Yes, there are websites dispensing bogus medical advice, oftentimes pushing naturopathic and alternative cures in lieu of proven medical solutions. Fake news stories emanating from these sites have oozed across the Internet in recent years, many promising miracle cures that the medical establishment is, for some reason, hiding from the public.

If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you’ve probably seen a few of these articles. Some of the more popular ones purport to offer a true cure for cancer, typically via some form of naturalistic treatment. One of my favorites has the headline, “Dandelion Weed Can Boost Your Immune System and Cure Cancer.” Which, of course, it can’t.

In every instance, the claims in these fake medical news articles have been discredited by doctors and healthcare researchers. Yet the fake stories persist, and people persist in reading and sometimes believing them.

This is not harmless folly. If you are a cancer victim and take these articles at face value, you might think you can stop your current expensive and often invasive treatments and switch to one of these holistic (and wholly disproven) solutions. Abandoning traditional medicine in favor of fake solutions could literally result in death.

First, people tend to believe what they read online. We’ve been conditioned to trust the information provided by traditional newspaper and magazine journalists, so we don’t automatically question similar information presented online. We want to believe what we read; we don’t want to have to question everything.

Then there’s what experts call “confirmation bias,” which we all have to one degree or another. This is the tendency to interpret new information as confirmation of our existing beliefs. If we see something that aligns with what we already believe, we take it as further proof—whether it’s true or not. Put another way, when someone introduces a new fact, we try to twist it around so that it seems to support our prior opinions. And if we can’t, then we discount that new information as being somehow fake or illegitimate.

People also want to believe that there’s hope. If you are the victim of a serious disease, you want to fervently believe that somewhere out there exists a pill, a treatment, an elixir you can take that will cure you. If you’re deep in debt or can’t find a job, you want to believe that the latest work-from-home scheme really does pay $40 per hour. We need to believe, and when conventional means offer little hope, we reach beyond. It’s the same desperation that has fueled miracle cures and get-rich-quick schemes for generations.

When you combine fake news with the speed and efficiency of the Internet and social media, you amplify the problem. You see, one of the bad things about social media, and the Internet in general, is that you can filter it so that you only see those posts and stories that you want to see. You only have to visit those websites you want; you don’t have to view any sites you don’t like. The same thing with the news feeds you get on social media; you see the opinions of your friends and the people you follow, and don’t see any the opinions of anyone else.

This also means that you tend to see the same stories and information multiple times. You might read the initial source of the information then see that story reposted by one or more of your friends. The more often you see something, the more likely you are to view it as a fact—even if it isn’t.

This all creates a kind of echo chamber, where you only hear from people and sources like you, and never get exposed to any opposing views. The echo chamber reinforces your existing views and never challenges them. You keep hearing more and more of the same thing, and less and less of anything remotely different—which makes you even more susceptible to fake news that buttresses what you already believe.

In other words, fake news is fiction, in the form of a purportedly (but not really) real news article.

You find fake news stories in people’s social media feeds, and on fake news websites. These are sites that exist purely to disseminate fake news articles—hoaxes, disinformation, and propaganda. The stories posted on these websites then get shared via social media, which is why you see them posted by your friends in your Facebook and Twitter news feeds.

The intent of these sites is to mislead people into thinking they’re reading real news articles. They’re neither satirical nor accidental. The writers are purposefully crafting believable-sounding but totally fraudulent articles, typically for their own financial or political gain.

Because of the outsized influence of these fake news sites, especially during the 2016 presidential election, many view this sort of propaganda as a threat to democracy. If enough people believe the fake news, not only are voters misled but genuine news is delegitimized. It becomes more and more difficult for people to determine the real from the fake, and that shakes everything up.

For some reason, some people have trouble calling a lie a lie. In the mainstream media, you’re more likely to hear that someone “misspoke” or told an “untruth” or “falsehood.” Sometimes a person is said to have “distorted the facts.” And some politicians now refer to “alternative facts.”

Whatever you call it, a lie is a lie, and the person telling it is a liar. But what if a person doesn’t tell the original lie, they just pass it on via a social media post? The person sharing the lie has the excuse that someone else said it, and they’re just relating it without judgment. This might technically absolve the second person from the original sin, but passing on a lie as if it’s the truth is just as good as lying, if you ask me.

In any case, be on the lookout for people lying or sharing lies on Facebook and other social media. Again, just because someone (even someone important) says something doesn’t make it true. It may not technically be fake news, but it’s just as false.

In fact, conspiracy theorists have become more emboldened in recent years, thanks to others sharing their theories over the Internet. Social media makes it easier for those of like mind to pass their theories back and forth and to gain additional exposure to the previously uninitiated. If you haven’t yet seen a particular conspiracy theory, it might look reasonable when you see it in a friend’s news feed.

Social media has also helped spread newer conspiracy theories, often immediately after some tragic event in the news. More recent conspiracy theories have sprung up around climate change (it’s a hoax perpetuated by greedy scientists), the 9/11 attacks (a “false flag” event planned by the U.S. government), vaccines and autism (the first causes the second), and Beyoncé (apparently she’s been replaced by a clone). None of these theories has any amount of truth to them, yet they persist, especially in social media.

Why do some people believe these wild claims? For some, it’s a way of trying to make sense out of seemingly random events. It just doesn’t make any sense that a lone gunman could slip through the cracks and shoot a president, so there has to be more to the story. Hence the creation of a conspiracy behind the whole thing; that’s somehow more comforting than acknowledging that random events sometimes just happen.

In any case, social media is rife with conspiracy theories of all shapes and sizes. Don’t believe them.

We’re all targets of propaganda—from one or the other political parties, from our government, even from foreign governments. For example, China has built a multi-billion dollar media empire to spread pro-Communist propaganda around the globe; Russia has similarly been accused of using propaganda to influence elections in several countries. And some claim that the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network is being used to spread Islamic propaganda throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Political propaganda isn’t new, nor is it limited to foreign actors. No doubt some people abroad see the broadcasts of Voice of America as a form of propaganda. For that matter, some right wingers in our country see certain news media as spreading left-wing propaganda—just as some left wingers view other news media as spreading right-wing propaganda.

The fact is, big players—political parties, governments, and movements—have always used propaganda to influence the masses and will undoubtedly continue to do so. What’s changed is they’re now doing it via social media.

Let’s be honest here. We live in a politically polarized society, where one side doesn’t trust the other and few want to work together for the common good. This polarized environment spreads to news outlets big and small, with those of a particular viewpoint claiming that media with a different view are biased and not to be believed.

It is true that some news media strike a bias to the liberal or conservative side of things. For example, it’s fair to say that Fox News is somewhat biased in a conservative direction, whereas MSNBC holds somewhat of a liberal bias. (Compared to these two outlets, CNN lies somewhere in the middle.) This can be seen by the stories they choose to cover, the “experts” they choose to interview, even the slant they put on their coverage. That doesn’t mean their coverage is fraudulent, just that it comes from a certain viewpoint.

Ideally, you know the political bias of a certain outlet and take that into account when reading something from it or watching it. I always think it’s good if you can avoid getting all your news from outlets that share the same bias; you want to get a variety of viewpoints to avoid creating your own echo chamber.

Several days a week, at the end of the newscast, Walter turned the desk over to Eric Sevareid for two minutes of analysis and commentary. We knew this wasn’t news reporting because the word “Commentary” appeared at the bottom of the screen. Mr. Sevareid was voicing his opinions, and they were clearly labeled as such. You could never question what his colleague Walter Cronkite said because it was hard news, but you were free to agree or disagree with Mr. Sevareid’s opinions.

Fast-forward half a century and take a look at today’s media landscape, where there are more opinions than facts being broadcast, whether on cable TV news networks or on talk radio. Much of the programming on MSNBC and Fox News is pure opinion, dominated by a coterie of talking heads and their slates of like-minded guests, and CNN isn’t much better. Turn on the radio and all you hear are the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Becks, and the occasional left-wing variation. It’s all talk, all the time, with very little news to break up the conversation.

There’s nothing wrong with espousing one’s opinion—over the airwaves or online—as long as it’s clearly understood as such. The problem comes when viewers, listeners, or readers take these opinions as facts, and view the commentators as reporters. They’re not. Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, as much as you might like or dislike them, are not journalists. They’re commentators, offering their own opinions on the day’s events. What they say may be interesting—and it might even be true—but it’s always served up with that person’s own particular brand of biases. It’s not news, it’s opinion—even if it’s not always identified as such.

Fifty or so years ago, during the Cronkite/Sevareid era, television news belayed any potential confusion by clearly labeling the opinion pieces as “Commentary.” You couldn’t easily confuse fact with opinion when that one word was emblazoned across the screen during the latter segments.

Today, however, opinions are seldom labeled or presented as such, especially online. Some people hear Hannity or Maddow and take their words as gospel—and share them on social media as such. That’s not a good thing. Opinions are fine as long as we know they’re just opinions. We cannot confuse them with facts.

So when you see someone quoting their favorite left- or right-wing commentator, know that you’re hearing that person’s opinion. The facts of the matter may be different.

Take, for example, The Onion (www.theonion.com). This site started out in 1988 as a satirical print newspaper, akin to National Lampoon and similar rags of the time, and it eventually made the transition to an online publication. It has an established reputation as a source of humorous made-up news stories, with headlines like “Winner Didn’t Know It Was Pie-Eating Contest,” “Drugs Win Drug War,” “CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years,” and “People Far Away from You Not Actually Smaller.”

Most of what The Onion publishes is quite silly and wouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone paying attention. But there are other satirical sites out there that use actual events as the basis for their content, thus creating satirical stories that may be confusing to people reading them out of context.

In other words, not everybody gets the joke.

Here’s an example from the parody news site The Daily Currant a few years back: The headline read “Sarah Palin to Join Al Jazeera as Host.” The story was pretty funny but, as I said, not everybody got the joke. In this instance, the esteemed Washington Post got confused and cited this satirical story as fact in a profile of Palin. Whoops!

Other legitimate news organizations, both here and abroad, have been fooled by this type of satirical news item, as have millions of individuals who unwittingly repost the fake stories on Facebook and Twitter. I guess parody sounds all too real to some people, who then pass it on to their friends and family.

So satirical news stories aren’t really fake news, but they’re certainly not real news, either. They’re meant to be funny and not to be taken seriously. If you run into one of these articles in your Facebook news feed and feel the urge to laugh, it’s probably satire.

As such, you need to be especially wary of the “news stories” and web links shared by your friends on Facebook. There’s a halfway decent chance that any given news item you see shared in your Facebook news feed is biased or fraudulent.

Facebook realizes this and has started flagging items that it believes are fake news. If a link in a post is suspected of being fake, you see a notice that says the link is disputed, and by which source(s). You can still click the link and read the source material, but at least you’ve been warned.

A disputed link in a Facebook post.

Facebook has also introduced a way for you to report posts that you think contain false information. On a computer, click the down arrow at the top-right corner of a post; on a mobile device, tap the down arrow or three dots in the same corner. Tap or click Report post and then, on the Choose a Reason screen or panel, select It’s a False News Story. You can then opt to mark this post as false news; block all future posts from this person; hide all posts from this person; or message this individual to let him know you think this article is false.

For example, if you see an article shared from CNN or ABC News or the AP, it’s real news. If the article comes from a source that’s less well-known, not known to you at all, or known to be a fake news site, you should treat that article with a grain of salt.

If you can’t find any corroborating stories then it’s likely the original story was fake. If you do find similar stories, but they’re all from similarly questionable sources, then the original story might still be fake. If, on the other hand, you find similar stories from trusted sources then the story is probably okay.

For example, would you believe a story with the headline “President Trump to Give All Legal Voters $1000”? Although this would be nice if true, it just doesn’t seem likely. It smells funny, and it is funny, too.

This doesn’t always go the other direction, however. Some fake news is designed to sound legitimate, even if it isn’t. A headline like “Firefighter Jailed 30 Days by Atheist Mayor for Praying at Scene of Fire” isn’t wildly outlandish, and it might even sound like something that could happen. It might pass your smell test, even though it’s fake from start to finish.

All in all, though, trust your instincts. If something doesn’t seem plausible, dig into it a little more to evaluate the source and legitimacy of the article. Don’t accept questionable content at face value.

You can browse the latest and most popular news articles and urban legends, or use the top-of-page search box to search for specific news items in which you’re interested. Just enter the title of the questionable article and Snopes likely has information about it. Snopes tells you if a given article is true, false, or somewhere in between.

Fact checking at the Snopes website

Checking bias and conspiracy levels at Media Bias/Fact Check

Your challenge from here is to not only avoid being influenced by fake news, but also to not spread it to your friends and family. To be a responsible social media user, you need to keep your news feed as factual as possible and avoid spreading information of questionable validity.

Here’s what you need to do.

If you’re going to share something with people you know and respect, respect them enough to read the thing you’re sharing. You might discover, on closer inspection, that the article is obviously fraudulent, that it doesn’t actually say what the headline promises, or that you disagree with what it ends up saying. If you want your friends to read it, the least you can do is read it first.

Bottom line, you need to be careful about what you share on social media. There’s a lot of phony stuff out there, and you don’t want to be duped into sharing it with people who trust you. Keep their trust by not posting fake news.