Trump
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It is hard to believe that it has been an entire year since President Donald Trump first tweeted about fake news. And yet, since December 2016, the words ‘fake news’ have been tweeted by Trump over a 150 times.
Due to the sheer enormity of the internet and media in general, it is hard to accurately pinpoint how much fake news is actually viewed by the general public. The best statistics come from polls and studies conducted of internet users on how often they felt they had been exposed to fake news. One Stanford study, conducted in August 2017, found that 31 of respondents felt they had been exposed to fake news more than once a day on social media. This was a 20 increase from what the study had first recorded in February 2017.
This spike in awareness among internet users could easily be attributed to the recent fake news crusade pushed by Trump into the mainstream of politics. As controversy continues to swirl around the current administration, Trump has taken to regularly denouncing any news sources he feels is not portraying him in an honest light. Many of his main targets include several well-established media groups such as CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post, all of whom have been proclaimed as fake news on more than one occasion.
And how much of what Trump says is fake is actually true? A closer look revealed not very much.
After the white supremacists rally in Charlottesville, VA, Trump used the term after news channels simply reported what he had stated about the Neo-Nazis. "The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news," Trump said at a campaign-style rally in Phoenix, AZ. Despite being more than justified in reporting Trump’s public stance on the awful event that took place in Charlottesville, innocent journalists found themselves under attack from Trump and his supporters, all for just attempting to do their jobs.
More recently, Trump used the term repeatedly when news organizations covered basic facts about the government’s own investigations into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election. He tweeted "It is the same Fake News Media that said there is ‘no path to victory for Trump’ that is now pushing the phony Russia story. A total scam!" shortly after news of the inquiry broke on most major news outlets. Once again the real issue was lost in petty arguments over what was true, despite the reliability of all sources mentioned, and once again reporters were forced into a position of having to answer to unwarranted backlash due to the impulsive tweets of President Trump.
Of course it’s bad enough that the President of the United States has been openly criticizing the press he is supposed to be working with, but he is also alienating the people from respectable and reliable news sources.
According to Aly Col?n, the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University, Trump has a more profound impact then he might realize when he impulsively identifies a media outlet as fake news. "What becomes most prevalent is people are inclined to believe whoever they came to the dance with," Col?n said. "Until something very obvious and visible contradicts that, they’re not going to have a very strong basis for accepting things from people they don’t trust."
As more and more news sources are labeled as fake news by Trump, his supporters have become increasingly reliant on him as their main source of news, especially through Twitter.
However, the sources and information Trump frequently tweets or retweets are found to be less than accurate.
The latest false tweet scandal occurred on November 28, 2017 when Trump retweeted a video of a ‘Muslim immigrant’ assaulting a Dutch boy on crutches. The incident was said to have been recorded in the Netherlands and Trump posted the following caption under the video, "Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!"
The incident was quickly dismissed by the Netherland Embassy who released a statement saying the attacker had not been a migrant, but in fact had been born and raised in the Netherlands. They also chastised Trump for spreading rumors without receiving any confirmation of truth.
The damage had already been done, however, with thousands of retweets and untold amounts of screenshots and views of Trump’s tweet rapidly spreading throughout various social media platforms.
For a president so keen to criticize fake news, Trump has taken no steps to rectify the false information he has spread. The tweet in question is still visible and accessible on his Twitter page. All the people who stand by Trump still believe his imagined version of what occured is what really happened, and fake news, as Trump has stated numerous times, continues to spread.
This type of blatant disregard for journalism, and the truth, cannot go unchallenged, especially since this disregard comes from a place of such power. The responsibility now falls to the people to check to see if what is being said by the current administration is valid or not. The time of taking governmental statements at face value has passed.
This is a satirical website. Don't take it Seriously. It's a joke.
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