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news february 28, 2017
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Fact v. Fake
fake news continued from p.1
Are Engulfed in Flames”
Clinton in 2013: ‘I 4. “Hillary would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought’”
artist Abraham 5. “French Poincheval entombs himself in boulder”
Answer Key
1. Fake; published on the Denver Guardian website which was proven to be a fake news source.
Politifact
The Sunlight Foundation
Washington Post’s Fact Checker
Politifact is run by the Tampa Bay Times and fact-checks claims made by politicians on various levels. They utilize a scale called the Truth-OMeter to describe the truthfulness of a claim.
This site tracks spending in U.S. politics as well as its effects on elections and public policies. Open Secrets also tracks the money spent by the private sector, industry groups, unions and others spend to lobby Congress.
The fact-checker is run by journalist Glenn Kessler, and distributes Pinochios based on a claim’s level of accuracy. It assesses statements made by politicians and political advocacy groups.
This nonprofit organization led for public accountability data journalism and offers state-by-state data sets on criminal justice.
information provided by http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/best-fact-checking-websites/
Student reaction to events in our world
Their death freaked me out a lot because I go in the woods a lot to take pictures of things like trees a lot and stuff like that.
SpaceX launched a rocket to supply the International Space Station on Sunday after an aborted launch on Saturday. The rocket was the first SpaceX rocket launched from Launch Complex 39A, the same launchpad the shuttle missions and Apollo missions were launched from.
Nation
Two girls from Delphi, IN, Liberty German and Abigail Williams, were found dead on a hiking trail. It is unclear how to girls arrived at the trail. The police have no released a cause of death. The cell phone of one victim recorded part of the murderer’s voice.
State
Area
Remnants of Dakota 3. “Last Access Pipeline Protest Camp
2. Fact; published on The Week website on June 12, 2016.
freshman
patriotism”
Trump literally flag to show his
3. Fact; published on Time on Feb. 22, 2017.
Tyler Knapik
2. “Donald hugged a
Open Secrets
The site originated in 2003 from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It checks claims made by the President, Congressmen and TV ads. The Viral Speech section is devoted to internet rumors.
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It would be unfortunate if the prices went up because parents would have to pay the additional money, so it is good that they are pushing it back.
apartment murder-suicide”
FactCheck.org
views on news The city council has postponed plans to increase residents’ utility bills. The city’s Utility Committee officials stated that a rate increase would be anywhere from 19 to 25 percent. They think a 20 percent raise would be a “worst case scenario.”
agent suspected in Hillary 1. “FBI email leaks found dead in
Snopes.com
The site was founded in 1995 and has since become most’s go-to website for discovering the truth about internet rumors. It was originally founded to debunk rumors and questionable information from chain emails and message boards.
Research what you read on these six non-partisan fact-checking sites
Can you tell if these headlines are factual or fabricated? Find the answers at the end of the quiz.
4. Fake; published on ConservativeState. com which is a popular Macedonian fake news site.
Check Your Facts
“You have to just check (information) yourself. Fact check things … (False information) isn’t that big of a change sometimes … You don’t know if it’s true or not. It’s a small factor of it all. Like if people started changing small (facts). No one really cares (to research) it, but they read about it in the news,” Gnesevich said. “No one’s going to take the time to delve into (an article), so that’s how you find those fake news stories. Figuring it out is really just digging deeper.” Though fake news can be taken as the revival of yellow journalism as Ingelhart stated, Gnesevich attributes the phenomenon to social media and the simplicity of sharing. “If any news story, whether it’s fake or true, whether it’s seen as something surprising or interesting, people will spread it without a second thought. Social media is definitely the one place that you can spread it easily. People can spread stuff in a second by the tap of a button,” Gnesevich said. “I feel like social media has a really big effect and a really big presence in news nowadays. You know, Trump tweets all the time, and that’s how he gets his news or opinions across instead of a conference on television. It proves just how big social media is now, especially for America.” The prominence of the internet in fake news is not lost on communications teacher Kit Degenhart. He believes it is difficult for audiences to believe what they are consuming when the media’s image has been tarnished. “I think that there’s just this murky, murky line, and it’s not new. I mean, the National Enquirer has been around for however many decades. This isn’t new, but with the internet, you click on a news story and you scroll down to the bottom of what is a legitimate news story. At the bottom there will be all these links to similar news stories or additional news stories,” Degenhart said. “The line has become really blurred. If you don’t know any better, you’re clicking on something and you kind of get into this whole slippery slope of what’s news and what’s not news. I think that all media is guilty of this.” No matter how one views the media, White believes that the key to discovering the truth lies beyond how information is communicated. She believes readers must be aware of the information they are consuming. “We’ve got to teach people how to be more media literate, how to be more critical of what they consume. We can’t ... manage everybody’s personal mobile devices. The best we can do is try to teach people how to analyze and evaluate the media they consume, so they can make good choices themselves because we can’t control the other stuff that’s out there,” White said. “We can only do our jobs as best we can (as journalists) and try to help people get the truth. If (the media) asked us to read the truth, then it’s not going to do any good. Any work we do is not going to do any good unless people bother (finding) out what they trust and what they can’t.”
5. Fact; published on BBC News on Feb. 22, 2017
“I think every time you turn on CNN, it says it’s breaking news. It’s not always breaking news. It’s just simple news. There’s nothing that outstanding. At times, they get caught up in that, so the legitimate press has kind of fed into this yellow journalism a little bit,” Ingelhart said. “I would say that any time you’re watching a talk show, especially at night, that’s reporting the news but has different people from political parties that are debating issues back and forth, they’re often saying things that are flat out false, and they can’t always be cleaned up. That’s kind of gotten into the history of this to feed that narrative. … That’s just been the reality here of more recent political races because the nation in a sense is so divided.” The bias that has become apparent in the media leads to mistrust in consumers. If said bias does not fit one’s narrative or point of view, it is labeled as fake news. It has tainted the images of credible news sources for some like sophomore Gavin Stuckey. “CNN (is fake news) because they say fake stuff about Trump. (I know it’s fake) because they don’t have statistics. No (I don’t keep up with the news). It’s exhausting because it’s all fake,” Stuckey said. “Without using statistics you cannot prove anything correct resulting in false information ... making it fake news.” Similarly, senior Syrus Anderson hesitates to trust Fox News, and Anderson feels those who conduct the reporting are at fault for bias. “My definition of fake news is Fox News because Fox News is hypocritical and racist,” Anderson said. “If it’s an old white guy talking, and he’s from Fox News, it’s fake.” Anderson also attributes biased headline writing to citing fake news. Others, like freshman Kaytlin Whisenand, do not take sources at face value based on the wording of articles or reports. “News today is very biased, like only showing a Republican or Democratic point of view on numerous things,” Whisenand said. “I try my best to find the most popular article (to know it’s real). I mainly focus on facts and (articles that are) not saying ‘in my opinion’ or ‘my point of view.’” While some stay informed to relate to those around them, others, like Grapenthien, gather information to ensure they are sharing facts. “It affects me because, sometimes (CPTV) gets our stories from the news. So if those stories are fake, then there’s a lot of problems with the stories. It also kind of makes us look bad because people aren’t necessarily going to believe us. So I think (we) lose our credibility as well. We are the media as well,” Grapenthien said. Like Grapenthien, senior Rachel Gnesevich believes she is directly affected by the news, so Gnesevich takes extra measures to ensure the news she reads is real. She believes fact checking is the safest method to discover the truth.
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Emily Campbell sophomore
A woman was arrested at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport for murdering Kim Jong Nam. Kim’s death has not been publicized in North Korea. Malaysian police say he was poisoned by VX nerve agent, which is listed as a chemical weapon.
World
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I think it’s good they’re trying to find new things in space like when they did the Apollo missions.
Josh Whitaker junior
Murder is wrong, so she should be punished for her actions. I guess the people in North Korea should know about it, but it is not that big of a deal.
Tara Lugo senior