Alternative facts

While misinformation has been a part of human communication for many centuries, the now well-known term “fake news” was coined in the 2016 American presidential election. Unashamedly used to create false facts for self-promotion, it marked a turning point in reporting and has made professional writers’ lives much more difficult. Fake news was cemented when presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway invented the phrase “alternative facts” a few days after Trump’s inauguration in early 2017 to back up false claims about the size of the parade.

Like the Ricky Gervais character in The Invention of Lying, the realisation that, if you don’t like particular facts, you can easily just make new ones up to hook your audience, has become a staple of the political establishment. This apparent need to distort information has quickly migrated into social media circles where people, desperate for online attention, will say anything – however outrageous – just to get likes.

However, in most cases, rather than being overtly malicious, fake news is peddled by commentators who often cannot identify what’s real anyway. This, of course, is a long-identified human flaw, for which the satisfying word “ultracrepidarian” – someone who opines beyond their expertise or knowledge base – exists. 

Social media algorithms

Misinformation has been a bigger issue in recent years as more people turn to social media channels for their daily dose of news too. Social media sites work via algorithms that give users content similar to that which they have already viewed. Once a source introduces fake news to your feed, you can expect to be deluged with all manner of fabricated matter, which looks real and sounds plausible. As long as you can see it for what it is, then it’s amusing, but if it becomes believable, then it’s a problem.

Of course, fake news and alternative facts need perspective; we don’t really care if Facebook users genuinely believe that cats can drive cars based on a video that they have seen, but we do care when lives are at stake. In 2016, a pizza shop in Washington D.C. became the scene of a serious incident as a result of a Facebook post that falsely claimed the shop was the base of a paedophile ring led by Hillary Clinton. Most of us would spot it as fake news immediately, but others simply believe such nonsense. It was certainly taken as fact by the man who turned up with a gun to “carry out his own investigation”.

Misinformation can have harmful consequences, particularly if the subject is medical or science-based. There is still huge debate, for example, surrounding the effects of COVID vaccines, climate change and the causes of autism due to recklessly shared misinformation. What can we do to stem the flow and ensure that our article research is untainted?

Fighting back

The most obvious way of ensuring that our writing is factually correct is to only use peer-reviewed sources, or to cite technical information straight from a company or official website, but even those can become polluted with fake and counterclaims. This is plainly a case where artificial intelligence can be our best friend.

A number of fake news detectors can now be installed as add-ons to major browsers. They sit in the background and silently check your writing against reliable sources. Using advanced AI algorithms, they can spot spurious information in an instant and either highlight it as such or simply correct it. Because they are AI-driven, the algorithms are constantly training themselves to spot new sources of misinformation as they arise.

What can you do as a writer ?

From a professional point of view, writers owe it to their readers to ensure that any facts stated are fully researched and substantiated. There are a few simple ways in which you can help stem the tide of fake news.

• Use tools to flag fake news sites. As said earlier, there are a few good Chrome extensions designed to flag up fake news as you browse. Have these switched on.
• Invest in an AI-powered search engine that focuses on providing direct, accurate, and sourced answers by summarising curated web content and traceable academic papers.
• Know your sources. Being able to identify reliable information will help you tell fact from fiction, and having a list of common fake news sites is very handy. Check these to see if information you are sourcing appears on them.
• Be cynical of new sources. If you’ve never heard of an information source before, be sceptical and exercise extra caution.

Whether intentional or ultracrepidarian in nature, fake news and misinformation are a growing problem, particularly for those of us who stake our professional reputations by crafting factual articles. It is essential that we take all possible steps to ensure that our information is correct; otherwise we are just perpetuating fake news, and that doesn’t help anyone.