Bench 1

Cortney Bench
Professor Silver
Writing 2010
February 7, 2017

Types of Fake News

Fake news has been here throughout centuries, and it never seem to go away. It has

become worse than it has ever been before. Fake news is one of the many problems we have in

our society that we do not have much control over. Many readers or viewers of the news can not

even determine if the news they are viewing is from a credible or noncredible source. It has

gotten so out of hand now, that we have specific terms to describe the types of fake news that is

being published to the public. Some types of these fake news are called Unintentional, Satire,

Extreme Bias and etc. The articles that discuss fake news are When Fake News Becomes Real,

Disinformation and the media: the case of Russia and the Ukraine, We Have to Choose to

Stop Invasion of Fake News, and Solving the Problem of Fake News. While these articles

have contradicting views, they can all agree that fake news is a problem that needs to be given

more attention so that many lies can finally come to an end.

One article that looks into the situation of fake news is Solving the Problem of Fake

News by Nicholas Lemann. This article is written as a satire because it was published to

ridicule the government because of their lack of control over fake news. Lemann states

throughout this article that the government should be the one to step in and fix this fake news

problem. A few examples he uses to support his claim includes Platos vision of people who

think shadows on the wall are real, the Trojans falling off a horse in the Iliad, Shakespeares love

for the misinformation in his most famous pieces of works called Twelfth Night and The
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Tempest. But to Lemann, the biggest cause of fake news is based off of the elections. He

believes the solution to this problem is to have Facebook regulate fake news because it is one of

the main social media apps where a lot of viewers get their information. Another solution

Lemann suggests is having government-funded broadcast news networks. There are some

networks like National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting system but they either have low

government funding or a connection between national and international. Overall, Lemann

believes that the government is the one to blame for this and they are the only ones to fix it.

The other article, When Fake News Becomes Real by Balmas, is more of an

unintentional type of fake news because it is shown as more of an accidental article that reflects

the writers main overall idea. The perception of fake news depends on how much hard news has

been consumed by the viewer or reader itself. Balmas researched the consumption of hard news

and fake news using surveys, and came to an interesting conclusion. According to the research,

people who have read more fake news than hard news are more likely to believe that the fake

news is real. They not realize that it is fake because they do not read enough hard news to

compare it too. On the other hand, viewers who have been exposed to both fake news and hard

news are more likely to tell the difference between the two. Balmas has come to the conclusion

that in order to understand why we have fake news, we need to do our own research.

Another article that represents satire is Disinformation and the media: the case of Russia

and the Ukraine by Mejias and Vokueu. This article is similar to the other article, Solving the

Problem of Fake News by Nicholas Lemann. In Mejias and Vokueus article, it summarizes that

it is not only the internet that is the leading causes of fake news, but it is also the people

themselves using social media to generate, consume or distribute false information (1). Using
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the internet gives politicians the opportunity to spread false information to the public and social

media is a the main tool that distributes that information. Russia and Ukraine have come up with

many solutions to control the distribution of false information, for example, SORM, troll

factories, and twitter.

Furthermore, an article that represents an extreme bias type of fake news is We Have to

Choose to Stop Invasion of Fake News by National Catholic Reporter. This article is written by

a staff member who is a part of the National Catholic Reporter but the writers name is

anonymous. The writer starts off his statement by talking about the recent election and how that

is the main reason so much fake news has been distributed. The media seems to be the one to

blame for fake news. Now in the media, real facts are not as important as fake facts. The problem

with fake news is that America allows free speech; anyone has the right to say anything.

Freedom of speech can get out of hand, thus creating fake news. Overall, fake news will never go

away but a way to slow this problem is by educating ourselves so that we can decide if it is real

news or fake news.

Though these articles may have different ways of expressing what type of fake news they

are, they all argue that fake news is a big problem that needs to be solved. Some possible

solutions are: the government steps in, the media has more restrictions on what people post, or by

the readers educating themselves about real news and fake news. All the articles can agree that

fake news is ongoing, but there are solutions to help control this issue. Using a prezi allows

people to visually see points of comparison and contrast between the articles. Fake news will

never go away, but there are ways we to help us prevent from being fooled, all we have to do is

to not believe in everything we are told.

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Works Cited

Lemann, Nicholas. "Solving the Problem of Fake News." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 30

Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.

Balmas, Meital. "When Fake News Becomes Real." Communication Research 41.3 (2014):

430-54. Web.

Mejias, Ulises A., and Nikolai E. Vokuev. "Disinformation and the media: the case of Russia and

Ukraine." Media, Culture & Society (2017): 016344371668667. Web.

Https://www.facebook.com/NCRonline. "Editorial: We have to choose to stop invasion of fake

news." National Catholic Reporter. N.p., 30 Dec. 2016. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.