Brief Eight - Misinformation and Fact-Checking
Presidential Promises
Every four years rolls around another election year. Many hopeful candidates take to the polls to share their spiel and ultimately tell the voters what they want to hear. These times often bring forth outrageous promises and claims made about opponents, but what is right. It almost seems as if the candidates themselves can't keep their facts straight, so how can we? Today we will take a look into how America fact checks the misinformation we receive during these elections. The New York Times is a prime example of a newspaper which isn't afraid to call someone out and set the record straight.
Our current president, Donald Trump, has fact-checkers working extra hard with everything he throws to the people. Donald is infamous for speaking unscripted, which makes him make "silly mistakes," not so silly when you are speaking to the entire country. In the 2016 elections, Donald made claims to the people that made no sense and has seemed to follow a similar suit throughout his term. An example of one of these claims would have been when Donald Trump was campaigning with his idea to build a wall at the US southern border, and Mexico would pay for it, a claim he repeated earlier this year.
To offer a more recent example, how the president has health with the coronavirus has also brought forth a need to fact check. In regards to COVID 19, President Trump has been laying on the lies. When it comes to his movement to provide paid sick leave for employees, he hyped it up to the entire country but somehow forgot to mention that this bill didn't apply to companies with over 500 employees... but that's not all! President Trump also accused China of withholding information about the Coronavirus and "wished they told us three months sooner that this was a problem" (Farley). While China may have waited a few weeks to share the news, it was at most a month. Donald's demand for an earlier message was preposterous as there wasn't even a virus at that time!
So how does the media go about fact-checking, you ask? Research, research, and more research. The only way to check the facts is to have all of the facts truly. However, much of the fact-checking we need can be done on our own, since a majority of misinformation is spread to each of us through social media. It is so easy to believe something as soon as you read it and share it with just one click, but if we all take a second, really understand the information, we can decode a lot of this mess ourselves. During an election year, social media feeds flood with debates and the newest thing told by the top candidates, mostly the most preposterous news possible. Whether you wait for the news to sort it out, or do some fact-checking yourself, keep an open mind in a world where misinformation travels fast.
Every four years rolls around another election year. Many hopeful candidates take to the polls to share their spiel and ultimately tell the voters what they want to hear. These times often bring forth outrageous promises and claims made about opponents, but what is right. It almost seems as if the candidates themselves can't keep their facts straight, so how can we? Today we will take a look into how America fact checks the misinformation we receive during these elections. The New York Times is a prime example of a newspaper which isn't afraid to call someone out and set the record straight.
Our current president, Donald Trump, has fact-checkers working extra hard with everything he throws to the people. Donald is infamous for speaking unscripted, which makes him make "silly mistakes," not so silly when you are speaking to the entire country. In the 2016 elections, Donald made claims to the people that made no sense and has seemed to follow a similar suit throughout his term. An example of one of these claims would have been when Donald Trump was campaigning with his idea to build a wall at the US southern border, and Mexico would pay for it, a claim he repeated earlier this year.
To offer a more recent example, how the president has health with the coronavirus has also brought forth a need to fact check. In regards to COVID 19, President Trump has been laying on the lies. When it comes to his movement to provide paid sick leave for employees, he hyped it up to the entire country but somehow forgot to mention that this bill didn't apply to companies with over 500 employees... but that's not all! President Trump also accused China of withholding information about the Coronavirus and "wished they told us three months sooner that this was a problem" (Farley). While China may have waited a few weeks to share the news, it was at most a month. Donald's demand for an earlier message was preposterous as there wasn't even a virus at that time!
The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2020
So how does the media go about fact-checking, you ask? Research, research, and more research. The only way to check the facts is to have all of the facts truly. However, much of the fact-checking we need can be done on our own, since a majority of misinformation is spread to each of us through social media. It is so easy to believe something as soon as you read it and share it with just one click, but if we all take a second, really understand the information, we can decode a lot of this mess ourselves. During an election year, social media feeds flood with debates and the newest thing told by the top candidates, mostly the most preposterous news possible. Whether you wait for the news to sort it out, or do some fact-checking yourself, keep an open mind in a world where misinformation travels fast.
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