Killeffer 1

Zan Killeffer

Ms. Norton

English III

January 27, 2017

The Fake News Epidemic

There is an epidemic spreading across this country. Almost everyone has been tricked at

some point in their life into believing a fabricated news article. These fake news articles are

quickly spreading throughout the internet; they often look so similar to actual news articles that

its nearly impossible to discern which one is which. The damage that these articles are causing is

catastrophic; theyre not only spreading misinformation about live events happening in the world

but also greatly influencing peoples political opinions tricking them into believing false

information about certain candidates. It is quite difficult for many people, especially younger

generations, to identify fake news, but there is a possible way to help with it.

Identifying fake news can often be difficult; lots of false news sites will format their

articles in such a way that induces some sort of emotional feeling so as to cover up the fact that

they have no real evidence for any of the claims theyre making. This is evident in the article

titled Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools

Nationwide; (Rustling) this article of course is satire, which can be assumed from the final few

paragraphs when it mentions things like Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin (Rustling) and

gives a Westboro Baptist Church hotline as the phone number required to contact members of the

Obama administration about his Pledge of Allegiance ban, but this satirical article still provides a

good example of how a couple of well-crafted paragraphs can fool millions. Millions of people

are tricked everyday by sentences like Obama told reporters that he believes the inclusion of
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under God runs afoul of the First Amendments establishment clause. He summed up his press

briefing by challenging congress to create a new pledge that more accurately reflects Americas

values; (Rustling) these two sentences sounds like a completely legitimate occurrence and if

someone already had some emotional feeling about this topic they could easily overlook the fact

that the article never actually gives any sources for their information (Donald).

There are some possible solutions to the problem at hand. A study done by Cambridge

researchers has discerned that there is a possible vaccine to the fake news epidemic. This study

consisted of people being presented with actual facts then, with artificial ones: the impact that

these artificial facts had on the subjects greatly outweighed the real facts, however, when the

subjects were given both real and fake information in the consecutively the subjects were much

more capable of sifting through the information and forming a more accurate idea of what the

article was really about (Cambridge Scientists Consider Fake News 'vaccine').

Many people will argue that fake news is not nearly as impactful as people say. There is

indeed some basis behind this claim. Its possible that fake news is merely a problem among the

more ignorant portion of people, who are either not capable of identifying falsehoods or have not

had extensive information given to them about the impacts of fabricated stories. The reason why

this is untrue can be synthesized through a couple of different recent events. The fairly recent

presidential election was plagued with fake news stories and alternative facts; it was nearly

impossible to get a full story about any event because they were all either made up or so

politically skewed that they were manipulating facts.

The United States and the world as whole has been infected with the disease of fake

news, and there is no foreseeable solution. Studies have shown how susceptible people are to the

ploys of mischievous news sources are, but they havent given us any solutions just more
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unanswered questions. While falsified information spreads like a plague through the United

States and the world, people are left wondering how it came to this. The scariest part about the

future isnt the truth but the lies.

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Work Cited

"Cambridge Scientists Consider Fake News 'vaccine'." BBC News. BBC, 23 Jan. 2017. Web. 27

Jan. 2017.

Donald, Brooke. "Stanford Researchers Find Students Have Trouble Judging the Credibility of

Information Online." Stanford Graduate School of Education. N.p., 22 Nov. 2016. Web.

27 Jan. 2017.

Rustling, Jimmy. "Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools

Nationwide." ABC News. ABC, 12 Dec. 2016. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.