Fake News

Fake News is a term that refers to false information spread deliberately through various forms of news media, including print, broadcast, and social media. Fake news may take the form of online or physical news articles, web posts, photos, etc. This term represents a fairly new development in the information age. Fake news is often utilized in order to cause social damage to a large entity or famous individual, however the subject of fake news can be any person or thing. Historically, there have been many ethical issues involved in media platforms (i.e. Yellow Journalism, sloppy journalism, etc.), but the emergence of social media and the subsequent rise of modern fake news has ushered in a new era of ethical concerns. Due to the ubiquity of social media, any and every single user could be a journalist in some way, tweeting or posting news that they believe to be true but in reality, is not reliable. Fake news is spread for a variety of reasons, ranging from discrediting a person or group of people to the potential monetary gain of a viral article.

Background

History

Fake news became a household term in late 2016 - early 2017 when the U.S. presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, began to use it in speeches and social media posts. It is difficult to trace who coined the term first but the origin of the first big fake news articles stemmed from the small town of Veles, Macedonia. The young adults of Veles figured out a get-rich-quick scheme. They pumped out fake news articles to Facebook in order to gain the advertising money available on the site. Thus a group of teenagers from Macedonia introduced fake news to the general U.S. public, writing many articles mainly centered around the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Any kind of fake news article about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was sure to sell online. Stories such as "Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump" and "FBI Agent in Clinton email case found dead" went viral instantly. The Macedonians demonstrated to the world that intentionally deceitful internet articles centered around popular figure heads are sure to make money.

Variations

Fake news comes in many different forms. The easily identifiable types include: Click bait, Propaganda, Satire, Sloppy Journalism, Misleading Headlines, and Biased News. Click bait is defined as stories that intentionally use a ridiculous headline to gain site views at the price of truth and actual content. Most examples of click bait involve a famous person doing an unthinkable act. For example, "Oprah exposed for lying to the world!" Propaganda is intentionally writing a story with a biased tone in order to achieve some agenda. Satirical fake news is created with the intention of entertainment and comedy. Sloppy Journalism occurs when the writer of an article or post uses unreliable sources containing fake news, it is not necessarily the writer's fault for spreading fake news but it is they are at fault for not double-checking their sources. Misleading headlines are similar to Click bait but with more substance within the article. Finally, Biased News stories are created to appeal to people's pre-existing beliefs. Unlike propaganda, these articles are written to gain attention not necessarily to shift beliefs.

Ethical concerns

Mental and Physical Damage

Whoever posts fake news is intentionally deceiving their audience in one manner or another. It can be for monetary or political gain or simply out of boredom. Either way, the writers are causing problems. Christopher Blair is a prime example of someone who was bored one day and decided to start writing fake news articles to gain entertainment from people's reactions. Blair created his own Facebook page, America's Last Line of Defense -a political right-wing satirical page, where he publishes several articles a day, each making some ludicrous claim either promoting or demonizing a political figure. Blair's page does display a warning that the posts are not real but for many readers, this warning goes unnoticed. A vast majority of Blair's readers are adults and elderly people, many of whom struggle to distinguish real and fake news online. They grew up in an age in which the news was trustworthy, and are unaware that in today's day and age something published online could be false. Blair is not the only one publishing fake news online. There are a vast amount of writers who test their skills with satire online for personal gain. Serious damage can come from these sorts of sites, not only do the immediate readers believe it, they usually share the "news" and it is extremely likely that their immediate circles will believe it too. Coming to this realization can be difficult for the reader, as Harry Frankfurt notes: "When someone is lied to by a person they trust, it causes them to look inwards on their own decision making to see who they can trust.". In other words, many people trust and believe that articles such as Blair's tell the truth, and when they're proven wrong, it can be difficult for them to believe any kind of news in the future. Fake news can also lead to violent interactions in the real world. In 2016 the Pizza Gate scandal occurred. A man barged into a pizza shop in Washington D.C. with a rifle in order to free the child sex slaves he believed to be hidden in the basement. The man fired several shots in the ceiling. While thankfully, no one was hurt, this incident occurred because the man truly believed a fake news article. Incidents of mental and even physical damage have chances of occurring as long as the readers of fake news truly believe in what they're reading.

Proving a point?

Fake news articles seem to gravitate around celebrities, after all stories about popular individuals will gain more attention than one about

George Johnson from Iowa. Justin Bieber has been a headline-worthy celebrity for quite some time, so a YouTube channel known as Yes Theory decided to do a "challenge", to see if they could get a fake news article -about Justin- to go viral. They decided they would hire a Justin Bieber look-a-like, dress him up to look even more the part, and have him do several infuriating, but harmless things around Los Angeles. For example, they had the fake Bieber sit on a park bench and eat a Chipotle burrito from the middle instead of the ends as most people do. The group sent the photos to news editors and posted them online. Within 48 hours, the picture was trending on Twitter, Reddit, and was featured on several news channels. The Yes Theory crew had achieved their goal of seeing if they could trick the world. The picture was taken with the intent to deceive, but was done in a different sort of manner. The foal was not to achieve personal fame or money but was simply see if they could make something go viral. The extremity of the picture differs drastically from articles such as Blair's, a simple photo of a celebrity doing something weird as opposed to an article about a leading politician running a child-sex ring. However, reinforcing Frankfurt's point, lies can hurt people and it is possible that people will not be as willing to believe these kinds of posts when they emerge next time. The news sites who reposted this photo may also take a hit due to their sloppy journalism. In addition, even though Justin Bieber is a celebrity, that does not give people the right to steal his identity.

Misuse of Power

Sometimes fake news can be implemented in order to achieve personal gain. The appeal of personal achievement can drive credible news personnel to stretch the truth and misuse their position of power. In February 2003, Brian Walski -former photographer for the LA Times- submitted a photo from the ongoing Iraq War that was later found to be an alteration of two images brought together. The image -pictured left- was briefly crowned as one of the most breathtaking photos from the war and would have expanded Walski's reputation as an accredited photographer, instead the opposite occurred. When people found out about Walski's rouse, the photo's crown was lost as well as Walski's reputation. Professional journalists and photographers are kept to a high ethical code and when this code is broken, it can be difficult to undo the damage and re-enter the spotlight. Brian Williams, former news anchor for NBC Nightly News, also spread fake news about the Iraq War in 2003. Back then, Williams was an on-the-scenes reporter covering the early stages of the war. One day he was riding in a US military helicopter when Williams said the helicopter was shot at and was experiencing difficulty keeping altitude due to the shots from the ground. Williams circulated this story and it was believed to be true until February, 2015. It was then revealed that Williams had lied about the bullets, fabricating a typical helicopter malfunction into gunshots. Williams was subsequently fired from NBC and has been unable to re-enter the realm of news anchoring since the revelation of his fake encounter. As noted with the teenagers in Veles, Macedonia, monetary incentives drive fake news articles more effectively than anything else. Brian Walski and Brian Williams fabricated fake news surrounding the Iraq War in order to sell their media content and gain popularity within the world of journalism. In the end, the strong ethical code discerning fake news ended the careers of Brian Walski, Brian Williams, and numerous other journalists.

Future Concerns

Today, a decent percentage of people can identify fake news since there is usually a lack any true evidence. However, the era of fake news may evolve into a new form in the near future as rapid technological advancements continue. It is debated that software will soon be available that enables users to create fake videos of people, potentially even using their real voice. Should this software be available, many creators would gain the ability to make videos of celebrities doing odd or damaging things in order to sell the video to news sources. Big names would be greatly impacted as the fake videos would target a plethora of celebrities and politicians. Thomas Kent argues this could even sway entire elections down the line should enough people buy into the difficult-to-discredit videos. The emergence of realistic fake videos would add a new element to the fake news spectrum and likely lead to more and more fake news being credited as real. Careers could be ruined and credible journalism could take a major blow as sites posting the videos cannot tell it's authenticity, the trust of news as a whole could take a turn for the worse. According to Kent, action needs to be taken sooner rather than later, in whatever form possible. He suggests passing laws to discourage the creation of these videos before they eventually come, if they do.

There were some progress being made in limiting fake news online. There are some social media platforms that are taking interest in this issue, Facebook and WhatsApp. Facebook believes that false news has been harmful to the community as it decreases trust and people are being less informed. Their main focuses include disrupting economic incentives, build new products to stop fake news, and help people become more informed. Facebook is not alone as Whatsup as its changing its policies to better limit fake news. Previously, one could forward a message up to 256 conversations at once but now one can only forward a message to five different chat conversations at once to limit informing others. Its safe to say that people were putting forth the effort until something better came along. They were simply just trying to do their part with the resources they had.

Some of these concerns may come to fruition sooner than experts believe. There already exists a very powerful fake text AI known as Deep Fake. Created by Open AI, Deep Fake is a text-generating bot that runs on 1.5 billion parameters while retrieving sample text from 40 gigabytes of top Reddit posts. The text-bot then outputs text based around whatever is inputted into the model, responding with shockingly cohesive and comprehensible text. The OpenAI team quickly realized the potential of their creation to spread fake news across the internet at a whole new rate. They opted to keep the whole 1.5 billion parameter version to themselves and instead released a toned-down version of only 117 million parameters for users to play with. OpenAI were able to realize the true potential of the bot, known as GPT-2, and for the safety of the internet, decided against making profit off their full version. The released version, dubbed GPT-2 Junior, still contains several bugs, indicating the full version likely does as well. However, once the bugs are fixed, even the junior version of the Deep Fake text bot could have the ability to spread fake news across every corner of the internet. The OpenAI team themselves acknowledged that the bot could produce fake news anywhere from the Amazon review section to entire fake ebooks. The potential of bots such as GPT-2 is something to keep a tab on during the next few years as fake news increases in frequency and complexity.