We have been living with fake news for a long time. If we are honest with ourselves, we have often read them for our entertainment. There is a media industry that has made “Fake News” (“false news” or “fake news”) its successful business model for decades. After all, who does not know her or has she ever been looking around amused in one of her magazines? Prince Charles and Camilla divorced – in truth, they are happily married. The Yellow Press provides readership every week with news about celebrities and aristocrats. Long before the advent of the term “fake news”, the term “tabloid journalism” had become established.

Fake news becomes political

Political have become “fake news” (to German “false news” or “fake news”) since the election of Donald Trump to the new US president. The Boulevardesque bustle sounds relatively harmless compared to the Fake News, which stir up fear and hate. Or are we fooling ourselves maybe? The yellow press fake news can hurt people and cause resentment. This is the case, for example, when the family of the injured Michael Schumacher is confronted with periodicals with constantly new and false statements of happiness or shock.

Difference to clean researched news

Cleanly researched news is the foundation of journalism. They cost time and effort: Journalists have to go through the world with their eyes and ears open, asking questions and understanding, classifying what is said and putting it on paper with a comprehensible “news value”. Serious media make use of an apparatus of reporters, editors and correspondents.

Fake News spreads so easily …

Anyone who wants to carry a lie into the world, in addition to malicious imagination does not need much: A computer with an Internet connection and a matching hashtag on which the targeted target group starts. The dissemination of the content of the fake news is then usually like wildfire in the social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter. Free of any research travel fake news with light luggage. The Breitbart News Network site, formerly a consultant of Trump’s team, is a model of Fake News production and distribution.

Develop the “antidote”

I’ve watched and evaluated the emergence of fake news campaigns in the US election campaign with my students in the Social Media Manager course. The indignation over the spread of fake news was great. In any case, it is a first step to take a closer look and keep a close watch on social networks as well as tabloids with carefully researched journalism. The press and personality right forces the producers of false reports to make confessions in the form of counter-reports.
What is your opinion on the topic? Should new, stricter laws be used to put false reports into the world?