Last week, I attended a Rose Cafe where Professor Dan Schwarz talked about fake news. In today’s day and age, we are constantly bombarded with multitudes of sources of news. How do we sort through all of this clutter? How do we decide what to believe? Oftentimes, we believe what comes up first in a google search from what seems like a credible source, such as CNN or the New York Times. However, an interesting point was brought up in this talk. The reason that CNN’s new is seen as fake news is because they tend to put news out as soon as it happens, without digesting it. On the contrary, the New York Times tends to be more credible because they have a much larger team of people working on sorting out the details of events, trying to give the most accurate analysis of the news.

Fake new also goes beyond just news organizations. Fakes news is also a big problem in the scientific world, and it is important for people to be wary of what they believe because of the consequences that could follow as a result of believing or not believing something based off of faulty premises. It is in all of our best interests to evaluate where we get our information from, who we trust, and how we come to conclusions about what we believe.