19/12/16 - In a world of fake news, real journalism must be paid for (29)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/16/fake-news-journalism-digital

This article, firstly starts off with a strong opening saying the following: "the news has itself become the news." It also went on to talk about how important 'real journalists' are to the real world and that without them, fake news will never be solved and how in which everyone will be mislead as everyone will believe that this 'fake news' is real. In addition, the article also discusses what the audience themselves believe; they believe that the fake news should be removed from the internet instantly, which would then result in less people viewing it and the word wouldn't spread to a lot of people. However, after this statement, the article then discusses how these actions would be extremely difficult as it would be hard to pick out whether the certain information someone has put up, e.g. onto a social media site, is fake news or not.

• There’s the question of the so-called “filter bubble”, the fear that citizens who rely solely on them for news and opinion live in what TS Eliot once called a “wilderness of mirrors”, only exposed to perspectives like their own.
• There are obvious incentives for unscrupulous politicians to spread fake news – it’s a way of viciously attacking opponents while retaining deniability and pretending only to be encouraging a “debate”.
• If you as a citizen are worried about fake news, put your money where your mouth is and pay for the real thing.

In my opinion, I believe that the fake news issue is starting to become very serious now and we should do something from preventing this from happening even further. Having said that, the article has clearly stated the main reason why it may be extremely difficult to prevent this from happening; It would clearly take a long time, first of all, to find out if a specific statement is false and therefore, would need to act upon it with whoever else may have spread the word around. Linking back to the last bullet point, I believe that the writer of this article mad a good point about this. If people are so worried that they may be reading fake news and don't want to, then they should seriously consider paying for their news as it would be 100% reliable, as it would then be backed up by journalists who get paid to find out this information.