In a three piece serial we shed light to how the media has covered terrorist attacks around the globe, how the media influenced the popular mass by spreading fake news and misinformation. The Western media was even criticized for taking a biased approach on covering the New Zealand terrorist attack, thus exposing the International media’s double standard. We present to you the third part of the series and on this final part we talk about the survey that was conducted by Pew Research Center which gave a surprising result, stating that half Americans are more afraid of fake news than terrorist attacks.
It’s not the journalists fault but they should fix it!
Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be stopped, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 6,127 U.S. adults conducted between Feb. 19 and March 4, 2019, on the Center’s American Trends Panel. Indeed, more Americans view made-up news as a very big problem for the country than identify terrorism, illegal immigration, racism and sexism that way. Additionally, nearly seven-in-ten U.S. adults (68%) say made-up news and information greatly impacts Americans’ confidence in government institutions, and roughly half (54%) say it is having a major impact on our confidence in each other. The public singles out two groups of people as the primary sources of made-up news: political leaders and activist groups. Close to six-in-ten U.S. adults (57%) say political leaders and their staff create a lot of made-up news, and about half (53%) say the same thing of activist groups. Even though Americans do not see journalists as a leading contributor of made-up news and information, 53% think they have the greatest responsibility to reduce it – far more than those who say the onus mostly falls on the government (12%) or technology companies (9%). [1]
The people need to take action
Almost four-in-ten Americans (38%) say they often come across made-up news and information, and another 51% say they sometimes do. Given their concerns about made-up news, Americans have also changed their news and technology habits. Almost eight-in-ten (78%) say they have checked the facts in news stories themselves. Roughly six-in-ten (63%) have stopped getting news from a particular outlet, about half (52%) have changed the way they use social media and roughly four-in-ten (43%) have lessened their overall news intake.
Concern about made-up news has also affected how U.S. adults interact with each other. Half say they have avoided talking with someone because they thought that person would bring made-up news into the conversation. In the digital environment, half of social media news consumers have stopped following someone they know because they thought the person was posting made-up news and information, and the same percentage have stopped following a news organization for this reason.[2] Even though the poll clearly shows that the public is well aware that fake news exists, still they don’t know what the solution is; they feel that there should be a more solution oriented action in order to tackle the world’s “biggest threat” – fake news.
Meral Musli Tajroska – a psychologist, an expert on violent extremism and radicalism and a woman rights activist
[1] https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/
[2] https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/
FINANCED BY
This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
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