In October 2016, just before the most recent U.S. presidential election, an online news outlet, The Baltimore Gazette, reported that leaked copies of Donald Trump’s tax returns from 2013 showed that he had paid more than $40 million in federal income taxes that year.
Another story published that same month by World News Daily Report claimed that high ranking ISIS leaders had called on Muslim-Americans to support Hillary Clinton in the election.
Both stories were later proved to be false by snopes.com, one of the largest and most highly regarded fact-checking websites in existence. Both stories, according to Snopes, were purposely falsified stories written by fake news sites masquerading as credible news outlets.
Since the 2016 election, “fake news” has become a commonly heard phrase used widely by Americans, including now President Trump, to describe a variety of news media. The internet and availability of online news has made it increasingly difficult to discern between real and fake news, and the confusion between truth and falsities has, in many cases, destroyed the credibility of legitimate news outlets.
“Technology has really come on so strong, and access to information is so widespread and free that it’s just an issue,” said Virginia Souza, member of the League of Women Voters of Santa Maria Valley. “It’s impacting our lives. And because of the ability for fake news to be accepted as fact, we feel very alarmed at the erosion of truth and media.”
To help shed light on fake news and discuss how to spot it and how to prevent its harmful impacts on knowledge and journalism, the League of Women Voters of Santa Maria Valley, Allan Hancock College, and the Santa Maria Times will hold a free public forum on fake news on Feb. 20 at the Marian Theatre on Hancock’s campus.
The forum—which Souza said was inspired by the League of Women Voters’ state convention, where a representative of Snopes was the keynote speaker—will include a panel of five media and academic professionals who will discuss fake news and answer written questions from attendees.
Panelists include Marga Cooley, managing editor of the Santa Maria Times; Kellye Cohn, an assistant professor and librarian who manages Hancock’s Fake News and Fact Checking Guide; and Kathryn Adams, a Hancock professor who believes critical thinking can help individuals spot falsified articles. Longtime journalists Jerry Roberts and Hugo Morales will also serve as panelists.
“My fear is that fewer and fewer people are looking for multiple sources of information from multiple points of view,” Roberts said. Roberts worked for years at the San Francisco Chronicle and other California papers before founding Calbuzz, a local online news outlet.
The prevalence of fake news has not only had massive negative effects on credible news sources, Roberts said, but it has impacted the way people consume news.
Fake news became a real issue for Americans during the 2016 election campaign, when partisan websites from both sides of the aisle began pushing out falsified stories online, targeting individuals through social media based on their political views. Some stories were too ridiculous to believe, but others were difficult to call. Some fake news didn’t even come in the traditional storytelling format.
One of the most popular pieces of fake news, which spread rapidly across the internet during the 2016 campaign, was a meme.
“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican,” the quote, attributed to a People magazine interview with Trump in 1998, reads. “They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”
The meme was debunked repeatedly by various outlets, including Snopes, FactCheck.org, and BuzzFeed News, but was shared continuously throughout the campaign regardless.
But Roberts said the very phrase “fake news” has become weaponized by politicians and their supporters. “Fake news,” he said, is how many politicians now describe accurate articles that are simply unfavorable toward them.
“And that’s how, if you look at history, that’s how authoritarianism starts,” Roberts said. “I fear that we’re sort of on that road.”
Now, he said, many Americans only read and view news that complies with their already existing opinions, while any story that conflicts with those opinions is regarded as “fake news.”
At the forum, Roberts said he hopes to bring some transparency to the journalism industry by explaining how the reporting and editing process works. He said forums like this, where audience members sit face to face with real journalists, are great opportunities for local news outlets to rebuild and regain trust within the community.
Radio journalist Morales said the overall consumption of news is different for local Latinos, Hispanics, and Mixtecs, who all have very few bilingual news outlets to choose from. And those bilingual sources that do exist, he said, are typically provided by commercial media enterprises that produce entertainment, or are highly censored.
“Commercial media is focusing on making money, and most of the owners are not Latino, nor are they interested in serving the Latino community,” Morales said. “So that’s a real problem when you’re talking about building an educated community, and not only educated but an informed community that is prepared to participate in the democratic conversation.”
In an effort to provide a credible news source for the Spanish speaking community, Morales founded and directs Radio Bilingue, a National Latino Public Radio Network headquartered in Fresno and Oakland. At the forum, he said he hopes to discuss the unique challenges faced by the Spanish speaking community when consuming news.
“It’s an opportunity for us to have a conversation with the community of Santa Maria about why news in Spanish is so important at this particular time and what it means for the Santa Maria community,” Morales said.
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash can be reached at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 15-22, 2018.