The Fake News Paradox
Since the election, the news has been playing an interesting meta game with itself, generating article after article about news, more specifically fake news. While there have been innumerable inflammatory articles on exaggerated and twisted statements made by various presidential candidates, even more startling are the outrageous stories such as the fake CNN porn scare that spread rapidly across the Internet last week. Starting with just a single unverified tweet from a Twitter user, @solikerose, the story was quickly picked up by The Independent, Mashable, The New York Post, The Daily Mail, Esquire, and Variety, all without any verification from CNN or RCN, the cable company that supposedly aired the porn.
While in The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, journalism’s first obligation is stated to be the truth, in practice there are many factors that cause the media to deviate from this practice. First and foremost, media corporations are corporations, with profits to make and investors to keep happy (or just the owner for small websites). Thus, in the case of fake news, they must play a delicate game of balancing the benefit and cost of publishing an article. On the benefit side, a sensational piece can attract readers and generate ad revenue in the short term, but they also must consider the damage publishing an article that proves to be false will do to their reputation. Additionally, publishers must also consider the value of speed as being first to pick up a story compared to waiting and verifying an article to ensure its accuracy. And as we move through this fast paced digital age, unfortunately it seems as if the better strategy is shifting towards playing the risky and loose game of publishing more and more fake news.
Moreover, we can see from the CNN porn scare scenario that information cascade plays a huge role in the spread of viral fake news. Once the first reputable/well known news source, The Independent, picked up the story, their decision to publish acted as a signal of approval for the story and publisher after publisher quickly followed suit in spite of the fundamentally flawed source. In doing so, the subsequent publishers ignored their own research, or lack thereof, and based their decision on the decisions of previous publishers in a classic information cascade scenario.
- http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/25/13748226/cnn-accidentally-airs-porn-fake-news-boston
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/18/this-is-how-the-internets-fake-news-writers-make-money/