Gossip Magazines, Wikipedia, Facebook … What’s the Difference?

Posted on by Julia Chatzky

In middle school, I learned: 1. How to set up my Facebook account 2. Wikipedia was not a valid or reliable source. Now, the thought of using Wikipedia has vanished and yet the cite that I once used to communicate and connect with friends across the states — is now where we search for important news articles? Something doesn’t seem so right.

The biggest question I have is: when did we abdicate our responsibility for gathering, investigating, and verifying news sources to sites such as Facebook? Growing up with a with a renowned journalist as a mother, a stepfather who was editor in chief of a top magazine, an activist stepmother, and a father involved in local politics, I was taught the only fake news that affected our society came from magazines that I would see online at the grocery store, such as US Weekly or the National Enquirer. But now, years later, the topic of Fake News has taken over my dinner table conversation.

 

So what should we do? It’s time for us take back our responsibility. Marc Zuckerberg, said in a CNN interview “We need to make it so that trolls can’t spread fake news. We can get in front of this.” But I think, Facebook can make their changes, so can Twitter, so can whoever — but it’s up to the consumers to find the truth. Check the website an article is from. Find out who wrote it, search who it is, and determine whether or not the information and sources are reliable and accurate. When it comes to the generation I’m a part of, we love instant gratification. An article on our newsfeed becomes the quickest way to grab a story. But it’s time we take a step back, become more thorough in our investigations of news stories and opinions.

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