This is an age of Misinformation
January 12
"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you read it, you are misinformed." These are the words the multi-awarded actor Denzel Washington when asked about fake news in 2016.
Academy Award-Winning Actor Denzel Washington.
Source
He was referring to the misinformation spread by the mainstream media.
Hello wonderful readers. I hope you are having a wonderful day, today. They say since the birth of the Internet, they called it the Age of Information! Maybe that is the case in early 2000. The Internet has become a major source of information. Surely, you can read almost anything on the Internet.
As technology progresses, people these days have access to different media, including videos. That made things worse.
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Battle for the First
With millions of web pages in existence today, companies started competing to be on the first page of the search results. Since blogging, podcasting, and vlogging have become a major source of income to many, being on the first page of the search result has become a battle along with the mainstream media.
Thus a double-edged sword was created. To be on the first page, both independent content creators and the mainstream media have pushed important aspects of information to the side. THE TRUTH!
The mainstream media would emphasize the negative half of the truth to attract attention. According to headline analyzer tools like MonsterInsight.com, negative sentiments attract more attention than neutral ones.
All they want is to have more clicks, and more people reading their half-truth content. More clicks, more readers, means more money for them.
"Secretly Sponsored" News
This is rampant in politics. At least that's what I have observed here in our country. Do you want to destroy your political opponent? Hire some "journalists" who have forgotten what it is to be a true journalist and let them dig up the dirt for you and publish them as a news item. Sometimes though, they are true. Some contain only half-truth, and a few can be purely fabricated.
Alternatively, hire some trolls, and let them do whatever they can to destroy a politician's reputation.
"Sponsored" Silence
The opposite of secretly sponsored news is the sponsored silence. Maybe you have observed this. One they a news reporter would put a public figure, a politician, a rich businessman, into a bad light. Then suddenly, that story will vanish or fade away and the spotlight will be focused on another "breaking news!".
Not all Journalists Are Bad
I would like to emphasize this. Not all journalists are like the ones I described. There are still honorable journalists who refuse to accept bribes and would even put their lives on the line for the sake of the truth.
If there are J. Jonah Jameson type of journalists, there will always be someone like Louise and Clark. Even without the latter's alter-ego in a red cape.
Bad Influencers
The so-called social-media influencers are popping up like mushrooms. There are of course a lot of great social-media influencers. We even have some of them here in read.cash. But there are a lot of these misguided influencers who would do anything to attract attention. Some would even inflict pain on themselves to appear funny. I wanted to share one of such videos, but I blocked most of them.
There are YouTubers who classified their videos as safe for children but would entice their viewers to get some money from their parents' wallets.
Mixing Truth With Fiction
What's worse than telling lies? Mixing the truth with fiction. Not just telling the half-truth but mixing it unproven conspiracy theories. I'm not talking about mainstream media, anymore. I'm talking about irresponsible content creators. Here is an absurd example.
Image source: usplash
While it is true that the covid-19 vaccine will not completely eradicate the virus, it will not surely turn the vaccinated into flesh-eating zombies!
Ok, that one is just a joke. The second part at least.
I could go on further, but I believe I have already said what I wanted to say.
In Closing.
We are swimming in an ocean of information. The sad thing is, not everything is true. Just as the ocean is now littered with trash that has become the great pacific patch--- an island of trash as big as the state of Texas; the cyberspace is also littered with junk information.
The huge question is, what are we going to do about it?
Thanks for reading.
Reference:
Related post:
https://read.cash/@Pantera/the-internet-of-bots-and-the-anti-bch-propaganda-3bed0c6b
https://read.cash/@Usagi/why-i-dont-like-meokbang-vlogging-0bd24299#comment-ab44e790
It is hard to differentiate lies from the truth due to the excessive supply of information from verified and even unverified sources, it is one of the reason I really don't go to the Internet for news except if it is very important.
Spreading false information is a trend to bring people to your content and we must be careful with how we react and handle things we see online.