As consumers of information, we are expecting that the news that publishing companies put put if reliable and true. We expect that the information that we read is true and has facts to back up any claims that may be made. Despite this hope for the news to be true, consumers of news have little leverage on the publishers to force them to write accurate articles. Ultimately, they decide what gets published and what doesn't, and a big factor in that decision is clicks. How many clicks would this article produce? How many readers will go to their website after it's been written? Sometimes, the desire to get visitors on their page outweighs their unsaid obligation to write accurate articles. A recent real-life example of fake news harming people is China's handling of the Coronavirus when it started to break out. Robert Boxwell states that the Chinese government tried desperately to keep the Coronavirus situation in China a secret; to not let people know about their issues. In fact, he claims that an Ophthalmologist named Li Wenliang tried to raise concerns about the disease to neighboring countries, which only resulted in him "be[ing] punished for trying to raise the alarm". China tried as hard as they could to contain the information, but, as detailed in Boxwell's article on https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/04/china-fake-news-coronavirus-164652, obviously some information leaked out. China's dedication to creating fake news regarding their patient's numbers and death reports endangered the lives of millions of people across the globe.
[257 words, 1 image, 1 quotation, 1 link]
Комментарии