Page 5 - Sharing Posts: The Spread of Fake News

are trustworthy.” In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul makes
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much the same argument to his fellow Christians. “Do not lie to
each other,” he advises them in the letter to the Colossians. Is-
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lam, similarly, argues that those who do not tell the truth are not
following the will of Allah, and one of the basic precepts of Bud-
dhism is the promise “to abstain from false speech” —that is,
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making a vow not to tell lies.
American society in general, moreover, places a very heavy
value on truth telling. Those testifying in court are often asked
to promise to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.” Children are routinely instructed not to lie, and old adages
such as “Honesty is the best policy” have long been popular in
the United States. Indeed, some of Americans’ most cherished
stories deal with the importance of telling the truth regardless
of the possible consequences. One such tale, familiar to many
Americans, describes how George Washington chopped down
a cherry tree when he was a boy. His father, angered by the loss
of the tree, asked young George whether he was responsible.
George considered denying involvement but chose honesty in-
stead. “I cannot tell a lie,” he explained. “I did cut it with my hatch-
et.” Ironically, the story of the cherry tree is itself an early ex-
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ample of fake news; it was made up by a minister named Mason
Locke Weems, who included the story in a biography he wrote of
Washington. Though the story is false, the image of Washington
choosing to tell the truth has inspired generations of Americans
to do the same.
The deliberate telling of lies, moreover, has badly damaged
the careers of American public fi gures. In 1998, for example,
journalist Stephen Glass lost his job at a national magazine, the
New Republic, when it turned out that many of the articles he had
written were pure fabrications. More recently, Donald Trump’s
national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned in early 2017
after it became clear that he had lied about his dealings with the
Russian government. While some public fi gures are not harmed
much by reports that they have told lies, many, perhaps most,
are called to account when their falsehoods are discovered. In
general, Americans do not approve of lies or the people who tell
them. One signifi cant objection to the spread of fake news is

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