It's easy to spot fake news.
It's kind of easy to spot when you see it, 'cause a lot of it is very click-baitish.
There'st he kind of fake news that's like a blown up picture of Owen Wilson,
it's like 'you won't believe how much weight this actor has lost.'
We quizzed people on Venice Beach to see if they really could pick out fake news headlines
like this one: 'Breaking News: Hillary Clinton Killed During FBI Raid.'
That's false!
Trump Tower opens in Pyongyang, the capitol of North Korea.
Yeah that's fake news.
Everyone we spoke to spotted those bogus headlines easily.
But what about this one, from the progressive news site Salon.com?
Donald Trump threatens to deport NFL players who defy him and that's just the beginning.
He probably would say something super crazy and dumb like that.
A lot of stuff has been happening with the NFL lately and Trump
so I mean, and he does, I feel like he does have the power, it could be true, yeah.
That's like a fake news headline, like he said something along the lines of, like,
that someone could like extrapolate that from whatever his tweet said,
but I don't think that's technically true.
That's pretty much what happened.
Trump said that players who don't kneel for the national anthem
'maybe shouldn't be in this country'
and Salon took the logical leap to infer that the president wanted to deport
insufficiently respectful players
but what about misleading headlines that come from mainstream sources, like CNN?
Trump asks Japan to build cars in the U.S. it already does.
True.
Yeah I did hear about that, I read about it.
He may have heard about it on CNN, which later corrected the headline
to reflect the fact Trump said he wanted Japan to build more cars in America.
Given that, would you consider that headline to be fake, misleading?
It's just a little bit misleading.
Yeah the way it's phrased makes it sound like he's so dumb.
As the media environment continues to fracture,
it's natural for consumers to gravitate to sources they trust and ignore ones they don't.
But even respectable news sources often deliver factual information subtly blended with commentary.
Take this Politico headline which states the fact that the Fed raised rates
paired with an editorial comment that such a move signals the strength of Trump's economy.
this news/commentary hybrid led some of our interviewees
to believe the headline came from a pro-Trump source.
I feel like that would be more not a mainstream media source though.
I feel like it'd be Fox News.
It's actually Politico.
Politico?
Yeah.
And then there's the confounding fact that partisan sources
occasionally report factual information
such as this fairly straightforward headline
about the content of recently revealed text messages
sent by an FBI agent high up in the Clinton email server and Trump/Russia investigations.
Justice Department IG Report Says Peter Strzok Had 'Biased State Of Mind'
Do you think that that sounds like a legit headline?
Uhm yeah that sounds legit, what website is that on?
That's from Breitbart, do you consider them legitimate?
No it's awful!
Yeah so definitely screwed up on that one.
So what's the news consumer to do in this confusing environment?
One proposed solution is the regulation of fake news.
Congress held a hearing on just this matter on October of 2017
with senators threatening the social media giants to step up or be regulated.
You have to be the ones to do something about it, uhm or we will.
French politicians have begun debating legislation
that would give judges the ability to block what they deem to be fake news
in the months leading up to an election.
I think that infringes a little bit,
I would be surprised if judges in France can review every news story possible.
I mean that just sounds crazy.
But Americans have proven much more skeptical
with polls showing a strong majority disagreeing with government regulation.
Do you think the government should step in and regulate it?
Nah 'cause the government is corrupt and every time they touch something
it just goes like, like completely wrong.
You can say that government can play a role in it
but then that kind of breaks, you know, freedom of speech.
Do you guys think that social media companies like Facebook or Twitter
should do something to stem the spread of fake news
or should they control it or regulate it in some way?
I mean they should but the issue there is bias.
Americans have been slightly more open to the idea of tech companies policing fake news
which wouldn't violate the First Amendment.
In general do you trust companies like Facebook to be transparent and have accountability?
I do, yeah I do.
But there's a generational divide on the question,
with younger Americans being more skeptical of tech giants regulating speech.
Do you trust those companies to be transparent and accountable?
Of course not, no, what are you talking about? No!
And perhaps in that generational divide lies an answer,
younger Americans don't know anything else, a fractured media environment
is the reality into which they were born.
They don't really watch the news, they're not on in the morning watching Fox, like they're not!
Yeah no one watches TV anymore, nobody watches TV anymore.
I don't go on Facebook as much anymore, like Facebook is now getting for like older people.
Much concern about fake news is ultimately rooted in a fear of echo chambers or filter bubbles
that cut off consumers from diverse viewpoints.
But that's an overblown fear with recent studies showing
that most Americans are in fact exposed to a diversity of viewpoints.
The echo chamber panic may ironically be largely the result of an echo chamber of political journalists
telling each other it's a big problem.
We're more opposed to censorship I think because we're so used to the variety of opinions online.
Media literacy and critical thinking skills
are the most valuable weapons for combating fake news
and Generation Z just may be more equipped to navigate the complicated media landscape
than are Baby Boomers, Gen Xers or even Millenials.
The Baby Boomers don't understand it, you know, and the Millennial kind of understand it
but they haven't, they aren't used to it in the same way.
We're more able to do our own fact checking and more willing to
whereas like my mom clicks on something and is like
'this is the only article about this topic, wow, I can't believe I found this!'
Owen Wilson really got fat.
He really did, look at him!