Page 14 - Sharing Posts: The Spread of Fake News

Fake News and Health Reporting

Many legitimate news sites run articles describing new discoveries and advances in the
realm of health care. Stories about nutrition, disease, and exercise are often popular in
mainstream news outlets; many newspapers and some television newscasts devote pages
or segments to health news. Not surprisingly, fake news creators also write frequently
about health issues. Unfortunately, the information and advice they give is erroneous, and
people who are taken in by the stories may suffer a consequence. In the spring of 2016,
for instance, a news item claimed that Los Angeles’s tap water had been contaminated
with prescription drugs. The story was not true, but many Los Angeles residents believed
it—and spent hundreds of dollars on water ltration systems as a result.
Later the same year, Americans became aware of the threat posed by the Zika virus.
The disease was real, as was the threat, and plenty of mainstream news organizations
covered the story. But so did many fake news outlets. By one count, 12 percent of Zika-
related stories shared on Facebook were false. That was an issue, because the tone of the
fake news items was much more alarming than the tone of the mainstream reports. The
bulk of the fake news items argued that the virus posed a greater threat than of cials were
admitting. Some charged that the virus was a plot by pharmaceutical companies to sell
vaccines. These stories led to heightened anxiety about the disease—and cast doubt on
the legitimacy of genuine news reports on the topic.

That, for the most part, is where things stand today: The US
population is divided into two opposing sides, each with sharply
differing beliefs and an unwillingness to listen to the other. Even
demonstrating that a news item really is objectively true or false
does little to change minds that are already made up. Indeed,
accepting a story as true or rejecting it as false has become a
way of demonstrating loyalty to an ideology or political candidate.
“You want to show others that Republicans are bad or Democrats
are bad, and your [side] is good,” points out researcher Sean
Westwood. Using social media to spread news items, fake or
not, Westwood adds, “provides a unique opportunity to publicly
declare to the world what your beliefs are and how willing you
are to denigrate the opposition.” People are more interested in
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accepting or rejecting a news item on the basis of their ideology
than they are in determining whether the item is actually true.

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