What’s With Fake News These Days?

Admit it, you’ve heard someone say, “that’s not news!” at least once in your life and judging by how such comment is delivered, it usually means that a piece of article or report is still news, but isn’t really fresh or interesting. Yes, daily news that aren’t worthy of your attention are a commonplace these days, like when someone reported about necrophilia on the front page of a paper, but the thing is nothing is really worse than fake news.

The way fake news is defined today is totally different to what we perceived several decades back. The very reasons (s) they’re written and published today has changed as well. For many of the instances, fake news are created by people who believe that the compelling subject or topic will force the hand of a reader to click on the link and read the content in its entirety. The saddest part of it is not the fact that readers are being deceived, but the realize that there never is truth to the news in the first place.

The most disturbing attribute of fake news is that it uses false information for the purpose of discrediting and disrespecting the very foundation of journalism. More and more people, even organizations, are using it since it’s one of the most effective ways of getting maximum attention without even spending a dime. In a way, fake news is done in the same outlook and perspective to that of a traditional advertising tool.

Another unsettling observation about fake news is that it usually is hosted on websites that have been intentionally built to mimic and appear like that of the most popular online news sites. Another outrageous thing about these fake news sites is that the name or domain they use are in a way synonymous or similar to actual and legitimate new sites, the obvious purpose of which is to create the impression that they are of the same nature.

Whenever someone clicks on the fake news link, he will redirected to that website and as a result, there’s a sudden high volume of traffic for that site, and high traffic usually means profit.

One good proof of how legitimate the threat has become from this fake news trend is the fact that international news agencies like the BBC are now taking huge strides to address and eventually fight off these websites and the people running them. The UK-based news agency recently launched a project that will make them use multiple verification of the information they receive before publishing it as news. The obvious intention of BBC is to keep its name clean and out of that group of news and media sites and social networking platforms that are being criticized for allowing fake news to be hosted in their respective platforms or pages.

The truth is the biggest challenge BBC will be facing is how to stop the spread of fake news because as of this writing, they are becoming more and more popular due to the simple fact that readers today seemingly are more interested in something that’s controversial and intriguing without even considering if it really is legitimate news based on facts.