Hello I'm Hugo and I'm Sam - welcome to
Fake News: Fact and Fiction from BBC
Learning English. In this series we're
looking at the fake news phenomenon,
what it is, where it comes from and how
we can fight it. Yes and we're also looking
at the language and vocabulary around
fake news so words and expressions that
you might hear or want to use when
discussing this hot topic. And in the
programme today how social media has
changed the fake news landscape. And I'll
be giving you some news about news.
We'll also try to understand what fake
news is and what it isn't. Now, Sam,
last time you talked about the word fake
what have you got for us today? Yeah so
today I'm talking about the word news so
where do you think that word comes
from, Hugo? It may be an acronym like
the first letters from north, east, west and
south like the points of the compass?
Very good.
That's a good guess and you're not alone
in thinking that but let's find out if
you're right. Here's something I recorded
earlier.
News, news, news, news is all
around me. Wherever you get yours from,
where does the word itself come from?
Is it an acronym for north, east, west and
south? Nope.
Does it stand for notable events, weather
and sports? Nope again. Does it simply
mean things that are new? Yes. It comes
from the late 1300s from the French word
nouvelle. News is simply new information
about something that has happened. It's
unusual in English because the word new
is an adjective, but news is not an
adjective, it's a noun, an uncountable
noun, and even though it has an S, it's
singular. So news is good or bad.
We have several expressions in English
using the word news, for example, 'no
news is good news', which basically
means
if you haven't heard anything, there are
no problems. 'That's news to me', I didn't
know that. 'Breaking news',
new news, something very important that
has recently happened, and 'if you break
the news' you are the person who passes
the news on, but, if you do break the
news, make sure it's not fake news.
That's really interesting and a lot of
that was news to me. Ah, very good,
Hugo, I see what
you did there. And what about you, Sam,
where do
you get your news from? Honestly truly I
mostly get it from the BBC News app.
That goes without saying - obviously -
yeah I also get
my news from the BBC but I find it
really important to get you know news
from different sources because you can
always get different voices and
different takes on what is happening. So
we know about the word fake and the
word news - put them together and you'll
get fake news but what does it actually
mean? Here's the BBC's Media Editor
Amol Rajan.
Fake news is lies and propaganda told for
a political or commercial purpose which
deploys digital technology,
social media, new networks to go viral to
reach around the world and influence
millions of people very very quickly.
So fake news
is information that isn't true and the
reason might be political or commercial,
to change opinion or make money. Yes so
I'd like to talk about one of the words
that Amol used - the word propaganda.
So this comes up a lot when talking
about this topic and let's just check
that we know what it means before we
move forward, so propaganda is a noun
and it describes information which is put
out for political reasons to get support
for a political party or a political
cause and it's designed to promote a
particular agenda, so to persuade people
to think a particular way or make people
support a particular policy. Propaganda
isn't always completely fake, but it's
often very one-sided and unbalanced and
may mix lies and the truth. So I guess
that's one of the challenges of being a
journalist, Hugo, is making sure that
you can actually determine what is true
and what isn't. Yeah it's a big challenge
and it's not made easier by social media.
Amol mentioned that digital technologies
and social media are tools used to spread
fake news but what is the problem here?
Let's get more about that, so earlier we
put some questions to today's expert
guest.
Hi my name is Samantha Bradshaw. I'm a
researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute
and I study how
disinformation affects democracy. Fake
news
has been around for as long as we've had
the printing press, so there's nothing
necessarily new about fake news. The
ways in which digital technologies can
enhance the spread and the precision of
these kinds of stories is something that
is new. So fake news on social media can
spread much more quickly and to many
more people because the flow of
information is very free compared to in
the past where we had journalists,
editors, TV channels controlling the flow
of information and what would or would
not get published. Today anybody with a
keyboard can essentially be a publisher.
Lots of interesting stuff there. Yes so
the first thing I noticed is that she
used the word disinformation and that
is often used to describe kinds of fake
news or false information that is
deliberately published and spread. She
also made the point that fake news, as we
know, is not new but it's always been
around but with social media and the
digital world it's allowed to spread
further and faster and without it being
controlled by traditional broadcasters
and publishers. So, now I know there's a
problem there obviously but doesn't this
also mean that there's now a bit more of
a democracy of information? Isn't it a
good thing that we don't only have these
traditional sources particularly if
those sources are government run or run
by one particularly powerful individual?
That's a very good point because if you
remember what happened during the
Arab Spring in the Middle East or even
protests in Iran and in many other
countries around the world social media
gave people a very important tool to
express themselves and well basically
journalists got to know what was
happening because of that - because
they weren't allowed in the country in
some cases - absolutely. The difference
here is that maybe those people who are
publishing these you know
this kind of information they don't go
through all the checks that we working
for mainstream media or traditional news
organisations have to go through which
is we interview people, we check the
facts, we recheck the facts to make sure
that everything is accurate. Of course we
make mistakes but when we do we
acknowledge them and correct them.
Yeah and also Samantha said anyone can
be a publisher so there's lots of people
out there sharing stories putting stories
out onto social media but they may not
have the knowledge or the resources to
check whether those are real stories and
therefore some of the stuff out there
might be inaccurate, it hasn't been
checked by anyone. Yeah there's a
famous saying which goes: A lie can get
halfway around the world before the truth
has got its pants on. Well I think these
days I can get all the way around the
world before the truth has even woken up
and what makes it even more challenging
is when people have been told not to
trust mainstream media. Hmm is this
what you mean? Let's have a look.
It's totally fake news - fake news - fake
news - you are fake news - it was fake
news. Thank you.
Yes the American President gets a lot of
criticism from
mainstream media. He says that has
been
an unfair attack on him. He uses the
phrase fake news when talking about
news that he doesn't like, that he doesn't
find convenient and when one of the most
powerful politicians in the world
accuses the mainstream media of being
fake news, that's a problem. Here's Amol
again. A lot of politicians or people in
the public eye have started to use the
words fake news or the phrase fake news
to basically describe news that they
don't like. If you're a politician who
wants to close down debate then you
might use the phrase fake news because
you don't want people to ask you
questions about something
uncomfortable so it's really important that
we're clear about what fake news does
and doesn't mean.
So it seems that the most
famous user of the phrase fake news
perhaps the person who's made it as
famous as saying as it is actually uses
it to mean something completely
different from the rest of us. Indeed.
Well to be clear when we're talking
about fake news we mean false
information, information that is not true
or not correct but which is published
and shared particularly on social media.
Well it's about time we wrapped up this
programme - Sam remind us of some of
today's key
vocabulary. Absolutely, of course. So we
learned that the word news comes from
the French word nouvelle and although it
has an S at the end it is not plural
it's an uncountable noun, so it's
always singular. We can say 'that's news
to me' if we find something out that we
didn't know before. 'No news is good
news' is an expression which means that
the lack of news probably means
everything's fine everything's OK because
if something bad had happened we
probably would have been told. 'Breaking
news' is new news, so something
important, and 'to
break the news' is to be the person who
gives the information to someone.
Propaganda is political information
which could be false or very one-sided
information and then we also had
disinformation which is a term for false
news, false stories that are spread
deliberately. Mainstream media refers to
traditional and established news
broadcasters and publishers just like
the BBC for example. Thank you, Sam,
and thank you for watching. Do join us
again next time for Fake News: Fact and
Fiction. Goodbye. Goodbye.