JULY 2020 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 15
NEWS LITERACY FILTERING FAKE NEWS
BY JACI CLEMENT
Executive director, Fair Media Council
News got you down? You’re not alone.
If you’ve had enough, there’s one important
step to take to get your news habit
under control: It’s time to take charge.
News has changed dramatically, especially
for baby boomers. News used to
have a beginning and an end. Life went
something like this: get home from work,
flip on the 5 p.m. local newscast, watch
national news at 6 p.m., then get up from
the couch and go sit down at the table for
dinner at 7 p.m.
These innocent times have been interrupted
by technology, which enables
you to access international news, with
24-hour news cycles and social media.
Many people think, “If the news is on,
I must watch it.” The opposite is true
today: “I get to choose when to watch/
read/listen to the news because it’s
always on.”
Step two: Not all news is created equal.
Where the news comes from is often
as important as the news itself, so it’s
important to pay attention to the source.
If you’re directly on a news website, reading
a printed newspaper, or watching a
newscast, it’s easy to find the source.
But online, you run into aggregators,
which deliver news from many different
sources all in one place. Get your news
from Yahoo.com? That’s an aggregator
of news, not a source, which means
you’ll have to work harder to find the
source and decide if you should trust
the information.
Another famous aggregator? Facebook.
Oh, and Twitter. But between news stories
from sources which may not be real,
add commentary from friends, relatives
and self-appointed experts. Suddenly, it’s
hard to tell where the news comes from,
and whether it should be believed.
Read something saying it’s from ABC
News? Look harder: If it says abcnews.
go.com, that’s a good thing. If it came
from abcnews.com.co, that’s fake.
Thing is, finding the source takes work.
False news and misinformation circulate
because most people don’t want to
investigate.
Rule of thumb: No sharing without a
source. It’s irresponsible. And no sharing
articles you didn’t read, because it’s often
a fake headline slammed on a story that
tells a different tale. Sharing it makes you
part of the problem.
Try checking news and social media
throughout the day in small doses, and
know the source. These steps will relieve
that heavy, depressed feeling you get
from ingesting too much news.
POINT OF VIEW
“Rule of thumb: No sharing without a source.”
www.ChefChrisLaVecchia.com • Info@ChefChrisLaVecchia.com • 516-306-5411
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