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Letters / On ‘Fake News’ and Journalists

Dear Editor,

When I was a child going to elementary school I had a class called current events. In this class we would study resent news articles and discuss the validity of the articles and it’s relevance in our lives. Magazines like Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and many others. But now we have a new term “Fake News.”

Even though fake news is a web site base term, large numbers of people have decided to apply this term to all media. Especially the media that reports negatively on an issue they find to be positive. Deliberately publishing hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation to promote a specific idea or belief has been going on for hundreds of years. Perhaps thousands. But the majority of these deceptions are perpetrated by governments, business and religious organizations.

So this new “Fake News” thing is really old and people over time have had the knowledge to weed through all the falsehoods. I did this in a class over 25 years ago as a teenager!! Have we become so uninformed that we can’t weed through blatant lies? Are we so blind that we replace facts with beliefs? Are we to think ALL the news outlets are working together to misinform us? I think that is just silly. Because there are over 80,000 journalists in just the US alone.

Getting the real news is easy these days. Its all right there to see and hear. It just depends on what your looking for. Facts or Beliefs?

Ryan Abrams
Boone, NC