Page 6 - Sharing Posts: The Spread of Fake News
P. 6
Americans generally
place high value on
truth telling. This is
evident in the familiar
tale of a young George
Washington thinking
about lying to his father
about having cut down
a cherry tree. George
ultimately confesses
after deciding he cannot
tell a lie.
simply that the distribution of deliberate lies is in direct opposition
to that value. Telling lies is wrong in this formulation; therefore,
fake news is a problem.
Harming Reputations
More specifi cally, because it tells malicious lies about people,
fake news is harmful to the reputations of public fi gures. A fake
news item appearing in early 2017, for example, claimed that
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