As a journalist and as a human being truth is the foundation of my daily life, to achieve to be as close as possible to veracity on both my work and personal life is my main goal, nonetheless finding truthfulness in this century and planet we live in is getting complicated.
From the epidemic of fake news I’ve written about before, a world leader who claims to use alternative facts to presidents maintaining the claims of lawlessness against them is only another facet created by the media of them, all of it is part of the political, social and economic system our society resides in today.
World leaders, for example, President Trump have attacked several times the news media, Trump has called it “fake news” every chance he’s dismissing the information is it because it’s is untruthful or because it is not following his personal agenda of public relations?, we can’t tell anymore a lot of lines have been blurred in this presidency but don’t think the United States is the only country succumbing in corruption and fake information, neither it is the top country on the list.
On a lighter note but still as important comes the other forms of information society is consuming, and especially teenagers all of the material being induced by “influencers” call it youtubers, Twitter/Instagram famous people, models, actors, musicians. The views of this influencers affect the views of the people who admire their work, leading to a problematic if they make fake claims about certain information whether they mean to do it or they’re misinformed themselves.
Reports by researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education, published in November 2016, show a lot of students have complications at identifying the source of the information and distinguishing advertisement to news articles. Said investigation covered news literacy of the students, the ability to judge social media feeds, comments, photographs and other forms that shape public opinions and interviewed students from Middle School to College.
“Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there”. said, Professor Sam Wineburg the lead author of the report
Nowadays people focus more on dismissing anything that might turn their own truth around, we don’t know for sure what the truth is in current events because everything is being monopolized leaving the main population oblivious to the reality around them, a characteristic that has been supported by the lack of information the public is consuming which sounds absurd. If “I can’t trust anything because it might be fake”, if there are two, three, four sides to every story or the news outlet are only giving out what they want the public to consume how I can stay informed?
Reading and comparing, there’s thousands of media outlets worldwide, some more reliable than others but the information is there. Beyond reading the titles and fights in the comment sections there’s professionals, communicators out there working to put a message that is important to the public for it to be consumed and internalized whether it is quality information or not depends on each human being, because critical thinking and the material each person decides to read and inform themselves with comes from their own perspective, education and particular upbringing.
