Recently I was reading about how Russians had supposedly influenced the Brexit vote and the US election. There are lots of conflicting stories about this and it got me thinking about fake news.
Fake news is a type of journalism consisting of deliberate misinformation. The idea is that it is written to mislead readers in order to damage someone or something’s reputation or for someone to gain politically or financially. Fake news is often written to invoke feelings of outrage in readers. By doing this, readers will likely form strong opinions about something and will do what the author of the article wants them to do. Fake news is a big issue at the moment thanks to controversies surrounding Donald Trump, but people seem to forget that fake news isn’t a new concept. Fake news has always been a problem throughout history and working out the difference between what is real and what is not can be tricky.
A good example of an event where fake news caused trouble in the past is what happened In Trent, Italy on Easter Sunday 1475. A two-year old went missing and a Franciscan preacher known as Bernardino de Feltre went about claiming that members of the Jewish Community had murdered the child and had drunk his blood to celebrate the Jewish Passover holiday. These rumours spread quickly and it wasn’t long before Feltre began to claim that the child’s body had been found inside a Jewish House. As a result of these rumours, the Prince-Bishop of Trent ordered that the city’s Jewish community be arrested and tortured. Fifteen Jewish people were found guilty and were burned at the stake. Through spreading false information, Feltre was able to push his anti-Jewish agenda, showing just how effective and deadly fake news could be.
Obviously fake news doesn’t result in people being literally burned at the stake these days, however, it does result in people being manipulated into believing false stories and it creates prejudices. People can still use fake news to push their agendas, whether it’s spreading lies to make certain groups look bad or if it’s to manipulate people’s political views. As we can see, fake news can have a very real influence on real life and it’s up to everyone to stay very weary of false stories.