Unleashed

In September last year, a quote from Trump went viral on Instagram. “They’re eating the dogs […] they’re eating the cats” became one of the most well known audios. This accusation created a new era of journalism; fact-check journalism. Verifying facts is as old as journalism itself, but with the rise to social media and 24-hour news, fact checking has become less of a requirement for those reading the headlines (ABC News).

Social media has kickstarted an epidemic, one where misinformation and disinformation, spread all too easily. We often prefer fast news over factual news, choosing to believe the videos on Instagram, rather than carefully researched articles. Now the newspapers are working overtime, publishing specific fact checks. Among them, they have debunked manipulated footage in the Israel-Gaza conflict, and investigated claims that planes are crashing more often when they actually aren’t.

Disinformation is now “the top global risk for the immediate term or the next two years”. It is defined as “knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion or obscure the truth for malicious and deceptive purposes”. Misinformation, on the other hand, is spreading false information due to “ignorance, or by error or mistake, without the intent to deceive” (Australian Electoral Commission). (University of Melbourne).

Despite arguments, fact checking does not infringe on free speech. “Fact checkers in Australia and elsewhere have unwillingly become part of the culture wars and a target for people who want to make the claim that free speech is being squashed” (William Summers, former chief fact-check journalist for AAP Fact Check). In fact, fact checking does nothing to limit free speech, instead it provides an opportunity to know what is actually going on in the world, rather than falling into the propaganda traps of either political side. “Fact-checkers need to do the day-to-day work that helps the public understand that facts and evidence do matter, and that reality will eventually assert itself over lies” (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

So why should you care? 

1. You should be reading the truth, not wondering whether what you’re seeing is actually real.
2. Fake news destroys your credibility, making your arguments harder to believe (especially if they are built off of misinformation you have seen online)
3. False information can have real consequences. In July, anti-immigrant riots broke out in towns across England due to disinformation of a murder at a dance class in Seaport (BBC). In late October and November, Valencia, Spain was devastated by floods. Disinformation falsely claimed that the floods were artificially created by the Spanish government, which had failed to warn people (European Digital Media Observatory).
4. In this way, misinformation isn’t just an issue for journalists; it affects all of us. If we don’t take fact-checking seriously, we can fall into the trap of stories designed to mislead, and can unknowingly spread this disinformation.