Fake news distract the press – American journ scholar by MA. LEANDREA A. TAMARES photo by SHANA ANGELA S. CERVANIA
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AKE NEWS diverts the press’ attention from reporting important stories to factchecking less important ones, American journalism scholar Stephanie Edgerly told journalism students in a forum. Edgerly, who teaches audience insight at the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University, lamented how journalists need to “press pause” on their stories to verify claims. "Stories that they want to tell, they have to press pause on, because they have to go over here and investigate and debunk some claim that they did not intend to spend any time on whatsoever because there’s no story. It should not be a story," she said. Edgerly said what worries her more is not how people believe in fake information but how they refuse to believe in facts. “They don’t know where to go or who to trust, right? Oftentimes, that results in them just disengaging from the news environment. […] They don’t want to choose wrongly, so they just withdraw from news altogether,” she said.
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Sixty-seven percent of Filipino internet users consider fake news a “very serious” concern, a Social Weather Station survey revealed in June. Edgerly added that the danger of fake news is that it almost seems plausible when readers have no expert knowledge on the subject, especially when it comes to natural disasters. “When natural disasters happen, we are super susceptible to fake information because information needs to be quickly disseminated and we are more likely to believe that eyewitness accounts of people with their phone are giving us real information,” she said. Fake news a ‘part of human nature’ Edgerly said fake news is a historical concept and human nature is one of the reasons why it “has been around forever.” “There is a big tendency for us to believe something, or agree with something, or think it’s more credible and trustworthy when it supports our identities, when it supports our viewpoints,” she said. UST journalism lecturer Marishelle Medina echoed Edgerly, saying fake
news exists because readers want to believe such stories. “We need to question our belief. As a journalist, what is our task? Our task is to disbelieve,” she said. Edgerly noted that while Facebook prides itself as a platform that gives relevant content, relevance does not equate to trustworthiness or quality. “Oftentimes, the content we will engage with is not the highest quality content,” she said. Assoc. Prof. Jose Arsenio Salandanan, chairperson of the Department of Communication and Media Studies, urged journalism students to read more to stay informed. “As journalism students, I think the only way to deal with fake news is to be informed. That’s the reason why you should gather information [and] the only way to be informed is to read,” he said. The 3rd John Jefferson Siler lectureforum titled Getting Real About Fake News was held at the Tanghalang Teresita Quirino auditorium on Nov. 7, 2018. The event was organized by the UST Journalism School and the Journalism Society. F
