Author: Fake News Fighter

Posted on: December 3, 2020; Updated on: December 3, 2020
By Rebekah Friedman, rebekahb@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7270

If you’ve ever come across a story or image or video online and thought to yourself, “There’s no way this is real,” there’s a good chance you were right. Fake news is a growing threat, and advances in technology are making it harder to spot. 

In November, two researchers in the College
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President Trump on Tuesday dismissed reports that the Justice Department was investigating claims of a bribery scheme involving a possible presidential pardon.

“Pardon investigation is Fake News!” the president wrote in a Twitter message. 

Trump’s tweet came amid reports that court documents unsealed Tuesday revealed that Justice was investigating an alleged “secret lobbying scheme” in which unidentified individuals purportedly offered political campaign contributions to White House figures in exchange for a pardon.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATING ‘BRIBERY CONSPIRACY SCHEME’ INVOLVING PRESIDENTIAL PARDON, DOCUMENTS SHOW

The documents show that Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell in August reviewed a request from prosecutors to gain access to documents that were acquired through a search warrant.

The documents revealed an investigation in which two unnamed individuals allegedly “acted as lobbyists to senior White House officials, without complying with the registration requirement of the Lobbying Disclosure Act” in order to secure “a pardon or reprieve of sentence.”

The names of the individuals under investigation were blacked out as was the identity of the person to be pardoned under the alleged plan. It’s not clear if Trump was connected to the investigation.

TRUMP: DOJ ‘MISSING IN ACTION’ ON ALLEGED ELECTION FRAUD

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Tuesday that if Trump were connected to the scheme, he could be subject to criminal charges.

“He would not be immune to prosecution for it,” Schiff told MSNBC. 

“Someone in this conspiracy has to have a close enough relationship to the president or people around the president to make it happen,” he continued.
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Claims of election fraud have been debunked but repeated. Myths about COVID-19 precautions like masks and social distancing persist, even as a third wave of infections rolls through the country. Research has shown that fake news is bad for democracy — and in a pandemic, it may be a matter of life or death.

About 1 in 5 Americans get their news from social media, according to the Pew Research Center. While a recent Science Advances study stated that not even a tenth of 1% of the content people see is fake news, scientists note that many misunderstand what they are reading or watching, even from legitimate sources. They all agree the spread of fake news and misinformation — including misunderstanding real news — across social media communities is a worsening problem.

Ideas for stopping fake news have run the gamut. Some of them, such as censorship of social media posts, run counter to American ideals and — in some instances — free speech. USC scientists are recommending other moves to curtail the rise of misinformation, including new ideas for social platforms to avoid issues with censorship.

Through quality control, media companies can help stop fake news

Longtime journalist and adjunct professor Marc Ambinder believes that all media companies — not just the social platforms — could implement better quality control for the content that ends up shared among users.

“All platforms need to set up viral ‘circuit breakers’ so they
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Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, says Biden should appoint a Special Presidential Envoy for Press Freedom “to speak out whenever journalists are under threat, and ensure that U.S. foreign policy is focused on defending journalists and their rights around the world.” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel says “we need to rebuild a healthy information ecosystem” and discusses the key role of local news.

Source: CNN

Trying to fight online misinformation and fake news is like a game of Whack-A-Mole, especially during an election season. Social media giants tried to stem the flow during last week’s contentious election and its aftermath. Facebook attempted to make misinformation on its platform “less visible” while Twitter added labels to tweets they deemed “misleading.”

Over the last week, rumors about “election interference” and “voter fraud” have flooded social media. One rumor suggested that 21,000 dead voters in Pennsylvania had “voted” for Joe Biden. At the same time, a video went viral on Twitter, showing an individual burning ballots supposedly cast for Donald Trump. Another rumor suggested that Milwaukee reported more ballots cast for president than registered voters.

All three rumors were proven false, as were dozens of others that have appeared since Election Night. It’s hard to imagine the left wouldn’t make similar claims had Donald Trump won reelection. Remember how the left claimed that Trump “rigged” the 2016 election?

Social media companies’ efforts to control the spread of misinformation and fake news seem to either worsen the issue or fall short. That’s because their “solutions” are usually Band-Aids. Social media content moderation policies — while important — typically address the symptoms of the issue, rather than the cause. Reduction of the spread of harmful, false rumors lies in the classroom, not Silicon Valley.

Both misinformation and fake news are often spread as false rumors. Rumors are
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Consider Andy, who is worried about contracting COVID-19. Unable to read all the articles he sees on it, he relies on trusted friends for tips. When one opines on Facebook that pandemic fears are overblown, Andy dismisses the idea at first. But then the hotel where he works closes its doors, and with his job at risk, Andy starts wondering how serious the threat from the new virus really is. No one he knows has died, after all. A colleague posts an article about the COVID “scare” having been created by Big Pharma in collusion with corrupt politicians, which jibes with Andy’s distrust of government. His Web search quickly takes him to articles claiming that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. Andy joins an online group of people who have been or fear being laid off and soon finds himself asking, like many of them, “What pandemic?” When he learns that several of his new friends are planning to attend a rally demanding an end to lockdowns, he decides to join them. Almost no one at the massive protest, including him, wears a mask. When his sister asks about the rally, Andy shares the conviction that has now become part of his identity: COVID is a hoax.