Our ‘Real’ Combat to ‘Fake’ News
4:50 AM |
| “What we share must be on our cautiousness. Our political polarity must not prevail over the authenticity of what we share. On sharing stories, we have to contemplate about the consequences—are we helping or are we aggravating?” |
Fake news are published stories which
are not true or unverified, sometimes created for advertising, or else, just to
simply create disruptions. Untrue but catchy stories beckon more clicks which
generate income to the publisher through ads. But a catchy story has never
always matter, as characters in its ill fabrications were sometimes beat online.
One of the popular fake news which
buzzed in different languages was a said photoshopped family picture of a
Chinese girl who was divorced by her husband after he knew that she undergone
plastic surgery. In reality, this disgrace had sullied her modelling careers
and it inflicted serious depression which will no longer appeased by our online
community.
But fake news is not just an
international occurrence. Last day, messages directly sent by our Facebook
friends about the said simultaneous bombing of terrorists Maute-ISIS in
different regions of the country alarmed us. In local context, uncertain news
about fugitives from Masbate spreading asperities by looting houses and killing
residents in the countryside of Iloilo and Capiz also freaked us. These were just
among thousands of misleading notions which propel us into useless mass hysteria.
But what really inflames the spreading
of fake news? Sharing is one of the vital features of our social media.
Everyone can share stories and links and everyone can read it. The distressing
part is that, some popular pages of actors and politicians share fake news,
which is responsible why it is careering throughout the web through their
millions of followers. These noxious information are not just shared by our ordinary
citizens but professionals share it too, making it more convincing and credible
in the eyes of other naïve readers.
It instigated Sen. Joel Villanueva to file a
bill penalizing individuals and entities who publish fake news with hefty
punishments. But the road of this bill into law remains uneven with questions
on its practicability and constitutionality. But do we really need a law to
combat these online fabrications? Is exhorting our online community to become
wise readers is not a profound answer?
Our combat to fake news is also a combat
to a crime against malicious dissemination of false
information. We have to stop it with ourselves.
Fake news are easy to spot. These are sometimes
accompanied with grammatical errors, improper capitalization and punctuations
and misspellings on its headlines and contents. Sometimes, it has no identified
authors and has heavy obscene popping ads.
Free domains were sometimes used, as that the one ending
in .tk. Sometimes the domain is imperceptible as bogus when they intently
change letter “i” into “l”, “e” to “3”, among others to appear as legit.
Moreover, fake news in not just a website. Sometimes we
receive disruptive fake news directly sent to us in Facebook or any of our
social media sites in form of a deceptive screenshots or texts. It is ideal
that before we believe in it, or before we share it, verify it first in our trusted
mainstream media such as GMA News, ABSCBN News, PhilStar, Rappler, Inquirer,
among others.
Local and hyperlocal fake news are hard to verify because
our trusted media are sometimes limited only to national news. The ideal thing
to do is to call our local police hotline to verify if it is true, especially
if it is a security concern, or it is a threat in our community.
What we share must be on our cautiousness. Our political
polarity must not prevail over the authenticity of what we share. On sharing
stories, we have to contemplate about the consequences—are we helping or are we aggravating? Human battle against misinformation has never easy because we
contend with our fellow humans to fight against its rapid spreading. But if
this problem remains exacerbated, then we can come into a question if our
population is now outnumbered with vigilant, or worse, most of us were now
complacent ignorant. ♦
0 comments