Is the decline of freedom of press causing fake news. Or are we?
- May 5, 2019
- 2 min read
How are we as a society to believe what we read and hear in the news. Fake news, this term seems to be all we hear nowadays. This dilemma can be best said by Katharine Viner the Editor-in-chief of The Guardian when she says,
“Three years ago we faced a very different situation, when a broken business model for news was threatening to destroy media organisations around the world: print advertising was collapsing, newspaper sales were declining, and the promise of digital advertising growth was going almost entirely to Google and Facebook. These threats still exist, and while we’ve found a way to counter them, the situation remains fragile.“
According to freedom house, only 13 percent of the world enjoys freedom of the press as can be seen by the diagram below.
But is it this 'lack' of freedom which is causing this fake news or are we the culprits?
Every bit of news that we create we can now instantly share with others. So how do we know what is real and what isn’t?
Just like the scandal on Facebook that had all parents worried that their children were harming themselves. A story that surfaced and made its way around the world in 24 hours. A story that had parents mad and irritated, causing children throughout the world to be banned from YouTube by their parents. But within 72 hours, parents realised it wasn’t YouTube that was harming their children, but it the parents themselves who had been spreading the wild rumours about Momo.
What had they done? Believing this story to be real parents told their children various details of what this Momo character might do to them is they were to watch her videos. Causing havoc in the children’s world any having nightmares from the stories the parents had told them. But how did parents get this information, through gossip both on facebook and instagram. I too almost joined this world of gossip, asking one of my friends if she had seen one of the videos her. No, she replied but the videos are out there….
So who is to blame for this fake news? It appears us…but this is only one blog posting, I would need a novel for this story!
If you are interesting in more information about the freedom of press and how it works you can click on the links below.
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