How to Combat NEWS - LexisNexis · tidal wave of content and it’s impossible to regulate effectively in real-time. ... organisations that focus on the quality of their news reporting

FaKE How to Combat

NEWS

WINNERWINNERWINNER

PolitiFactPolitiFactPolitiFactLie of

the Year

“FAKE NEWS”2016

“FAKE NEWS”2016

Each year, the U.S.-based Pulitzer Prize-winning news site PolitiFact bestows the dubious honor of the “Lie of the Year” award to recognize a misrepresentation that

especially stands out that year in either its audaciousness or its broader social impact.

“Because of its powerful symbolism in an election year filled with rampant and outrageous lying –PolitiFact is naming Fake News the 2016 winner,” the editors wrote. “Fake news is the boldest sign of a post-truth society. When we can’t agree on basic facts – or even that there are such things as facts – how do we talk to each other?”

Meanwhile, the U.K.-based Oxford Dictionaries selected “post-truth” as its word of the year for 2016. The sobering definition they established for this addition

to our vocabulary is: “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

These cultural barometers from two continents illustrate the ominous shift we’ve experienced in the past couple years. Most journalists

agree that “Fake News” has emerged as a very real and serious threat to the reporting of objective news around the world, but what can we

possibly do at this point to combat this dangerous phenomenon?

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS 3

Evolution of Fake NewsTo be fair, the idea of publishing fictional accounts of a purported event and passing it off as real news … is not exactly new.

In fact, this year is “the 2,500th anniversary of fake news” in the eyes of some academics, according to the Wall Street Journal. These historians regard Herodotus — the ancient Greek writer commonly called the Father of History — as a biased observer to the great events of his era that were chronicled in his seminal writings about Greek history.

It appears that the real birth of fake news, though, coincided with the invention of the Gutenberg Press in 1439, which made it possible for news accounts to be published and circulated widely. “There were plenty of news sources — from official publications by political and religious authorities, to eyewitness accounts from sailors and merchants — but no concept of journalistic ethics or objectivity,” writes Jacob Soll, in Politico. That makes fake news even older than objective, verifiable news in the Western world.

For example, in the 16th century, a Roman man sought to influence the pontifical election by writing nasty stories — most of them fake — about all of the candidates except for his preferred choice and posting them for public consumption near the Piazza Navona in Rome. Some of the founding fathers of America, including Benjamin Franklin himself, were accomplished practitioners of fake news who used propaganda stories about King George in order to fire up the colonists for revolution. And don’t look now, but that hero of journalistic integrity in the late-1800s — Joseph Pulitzer — published wildly exaggerated crime stories in order to keep up with the “Yellow Journalism” sensationalism trend led by William Randolph Hearst.

In the 20th century, though, journalism became a far more serious academic discipline and more rigorous standards for truth in news reporting became more commonplace. To be sure, various dictatorial regimes around the world relied on propaganda to prop up their public support, and claims of “media bias” in news reporting are a staple of free societies. But for several decades, the most influential media outlets were characterised by a common devotion to accuracy in reporting and a relentless pursuit of the truth.

2000BC

2500BC

HerodotusGutenberg

Press

1500BC

500AD

1000AD

1500AD

2000BC

JosephPulitzer

Media bias

BenjaminFranklin

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS4

The rise of web-generated news content and a rapidly shifting digital media landscape has challenged those ethical norms and opened the door to the rise of fake news all over again. This has been fueled by the relentless pursuit of page views, total impressions, clicks and social media shares — often at the expense of a commitment to accuracy in the content of the news stories themselves.

The U.K. newspaper The Telegraph identified three primary reasons for the prevalence of fake news in today’s online media world:

Distribution and cost

Audiencesand trust

1Law and

regulation

32

“Digital news, you might say, has brought yellow journalism back to the fore,” said Soll. “For one, algorithms that create news feeds and compilations have no regard for accuracy and objectivity. At the same time, the digital news trend has decimated the force — measured in both money and manpower — of the traditional, objectively minded, independent press.”

Impact of Fake NewsUnfortunately, fake news is more than just an interesting historical phenomenon — it is a corrosive force that does serious damage on multiple fronts.

For starters, fake news undermines the credibility of the legitimate news media. When news consumers are confronted with a barrage of stories online — some of which are objective news stories and some of which are complete fiction — they are more likely to view everything they read with a similar level of skepticism and mistrust.

Sure enough, trust in the news media sunk to its lowest levels last year in the history of Gallup polling on this question. Just 32% of those polled in the U.S. said

The costs of publishing on a blog and

distributing via social media is zero.

If there is no revenue requirement to offset

production costs, there is no need to build trust and reputations are far

more expendable.

The volume of information being

published online is like a tidal wave of content and it’s impossible to regulate

effectively in real-time.

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS 5

they had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the news media to report the news accurately and fairly. As NPR noted, “that’s down from 40% in 2015, 50% in 2005 and 72% in 1976, when investigative journalism was still on a pedestal following the Watergate scandal.”

2016

2015

2005

1976

32%

40%

72%

50%

Second, fake news leads to deeper political divisions and risks undermining the integrity of democratic elections.

“Fake news represents a threat to democracy if people are deliberately using it on social media platforms to spread misinformation around an election,” said Damian Collins, a British lawmaker who is leading a parliamentary probe into the fake news problem in the U.K.

Most observers are familiar with the role that fake news had in the 2016 U.S. elections, but this is a truly global phenomenon. Fabricated news stories led to significant confusion recently in Germany, when false reports of domestic terror incidents circulated online. In France, Facebook took the unusual step of targeting 30,000 accounts to try to crack down on fake news reports being published during the 2017 presidential campaign. A Japanese website touched off horror in that country when it published a fake story involving a violent crime that never occurred.

The Guardian reported on a more exhaustive list of countries in which fake news stories have triggered social turmoil, political problems or deeper cultural divisions in the past couple years, including: Myanmar, Italy, China, Brazil, Australia, and India, among others.

Third, fake news leads to greater social confusion about current issues that impact the community. When citizens are unable to know with certainty which news reports are true and which ones were made up, there is no shared set of facts on which a community can agree as a starting point for conversation.

Citizens around the world understand the gravity of this problem. In the U.S., a December 2016 survey by Pew Research Center found that most Americans suspect that fake news is having a negative impact. About two-in-three U.S. adults (64%) say fabricated news stories “cause a great deal of confusion” about current issues and events, a view that is shared across incomes, education levels, partisan affiliations and most other demographics.

In Norway, 55% of the respondents to a national survey reported reading news at least weekly that they consider inaccurate, and 45% reported reading news they

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS6

consider deliberately falsified. In Sweden, 76% of Swedes surveyed by Ipsos said they think that fake news is having an impact on their perception of basic facts and a majority said that they see news articles they don’t believe to be entirely true on a weekly basis. In the Czech Republic, Czech citizens have become so concerned about the dangers of fake news that the Czech government recently launched a specialised “anti-fake news unit” with the goal of educating the public of the difference between news and disinformation.

Finally, fake news can have an extremely damaging impact on a corporate brand or a company’s reputation. A negative article that is published online and shared via social media can be harmful to the way a company is perceived, can hurt its market share and drag down its overall enterprise value — even if that article is completely fabricated by its author.

For example, one research firm studied the impact of a fake news story that circulated in 2016 based on a quote attributed to the CEO of Pepsi — a comment he never actually made. This fake story triggered calls for a boycott on Pepsi products and led to a measurable negative impact on the company’s reputation.

If journalism is going to survive, readers need to see the value in it

FAKE NEWS

FAKE NEWSForbes.com contributor Jay McGregor

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS 7

Combatting Fake NewsSo what can we do to fight the good fight against fake news? Many experts believe the best defense against fake news is the good offense of great journalism.

“If journalism is going to survive, readers need to see the value in it,” said Forbes. com contributor Jay McGregor. “So much so that they pay for it, not just with a click but a small donation or subscription. Solid, trusted fact-checking is a great way to open that dialogue with readers.”

The fake news problem has created a window of opportunity for media organisations that focus on the quality of their news reporting to stand out as more valuable than ever. In a recent LexisNexis webinar, Barbara Gray, associate professor and chief librarian at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, shared a number of tips for how to fight fake news by fact-checking like a pro:

* Be skeptical and verify before you share. Assume they are wrong and seek corroborating evidence.

* “Smell test” or ”Gut check” every news source. Does this seem unbelievable to you or too good to be true? Either way, verify it.

* When reviewing a story that just broke online, check to see whether the news turns up on any trusted site. Be wary of mistaking quantity of republished stories for quality of legitimate publications as fake news tends to proliferate.

* Be aware of your own confirmation bias. We all have a sub-conscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas or expectations.

* Is the news report making you really angry and emotional? If so, it may be because it was manufactured or doctored to exploit your biases.

* Check for evidence outside of the news media. Licensed data sources may provide you with company, legal and other information that may not be freely available by just searching the free web.

There may be a silver lining in this otherwise dark cloud: The fake news phenomenon appears to be triggering more skepticism from readers around the world. This skepticism is of course a healthy thing, particularly if the end result is a higher level of accountability for accuracy and integrity in news reporting once again.

“It isn’t until something comes under real threat that we all realize how much we value it,” writes Lindsay Williams, former journalist with the BBC and Reuters. “Suddenly, we are all remembering or learning why mainstream, traditional, trustworthy news is important. Fake News is a threat, it’s important that we care about it, and hopefully, some of that concern will convert into dollars, pounds or euros spent supporting good quality journalism.”

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS8

LexisNexis Tools to Fight Fake News

LexisNexis delivers a number of information tools that help professionals across industries to weed out fake news and get to the truth quickly. We’ve been creating reliable premium research solutions for more than four decades and have learned the importance of giving you access to data that is relevant and accurate.

A few of our products that can help you combat fake news include the following:

Deep research with Nexis

Nexis is a premium collection of news sources that has been expertly curated to ensure you get real, relevant news all in one place — no more hunting and picking across the Web, leaping over paywalls and vetting dubious sources. Nexis archives go back 40+ years — including content that is no longer publicly available on the Web — ultimately serving up unique insights from over 40,000 premium, licensed and web sources, including trusted news, company profiles, public records, industry information and social media content all in one place.

Media monitoring with Newsdesk

Newsdesk is a comprehensive media aggregation, monitoring and analytics solution that enables professionals to confidently find, analyse and share key insights about a company or industry. Newsdesk users can build personalized dashboards tailored to their interests or view shared dashboards for collaboration across an editorial organisation.

Risk checking and monitoring with Lexis Diligence and Entity Insight

Lexis Diligence and Entity Insight allow for a thorough understanding of the companies and individuals. The information contained in these solutions enables users to better assess risks, and comprehend the complex relationships and affiliations between companies and individuals — or companies and other companies. The tools also facilitate research into key developments with respect to companies and their suppliers, contractors or partners.

The Fake News phenomenon isn’t going away anytime soon, but professionals and organisations with a serious commitment to high-quality information — and access to the right tools — can be better prepared than ever before.

For more informationbis.lexisnexis.co.uk [email protected] 020 7400 2809

LexisNexis and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks of RELX Inc. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2017 LexisNexis. All rights reserved.

HOW TO COMBAT FAKE NEWS 9

Sources: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/13/2016-lie-year-fake-news/

https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/press/news/2016/11/17/WOTY-16

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-2-500th-birthday-for-the-father-of-historyand-fake-news-1490884822

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/13/the-true-history-of-fake-news/

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/02/28/history/post-perspective/even-ben-franklin-used-fake-news.html

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/yellow-journalism-the-fake-news-of-the-19th-century/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-origins-grew-2016/

http://www.npr.org/2016/12/28/507111963/beyond-fake-news-2016s-most-disruptive-media-moments

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/885784/britain-attempts-to-burst-the-fake-news-bubble#ixzz4gFRDvMO3

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/03/10/519026716/in-a-crucial-election-year-worries-grow-in-germany-about-fake-news

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/media/facebook-fake-news-france-election/

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kotahatachi/fake-in-japan?utm_term=.vnMJ2Nq16#.rhOeAwnLX

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/02/fake-news-facebook-us-election-around-the-world

http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/

https://www.epra.org/news_items/fake-news-norwegian-nma-publishes-survey

https://www.thelocal.se/20170301/fake-news-is-impacting-perception-of-facts-swedish-survey-shows

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-01-18/czech-republic-forms-unit-to-detect-fake-news-sites

http://www.alva-group.com/us/fake-news-affect-corporate-reputation/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/07/why-fake-news-is-actually-good-for-the-world/#3c6443e13771

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsZmsVIAM78&feature=youtu.be

http://themediacoach.co.uk/fake-news-silver-lining/