The Truth Behind Fake News

"The Yellow Kid" by R.F. Outcault

Fake news can start with creative titles to draw in their readers. This causes them to want to know more and then start reading and begin to believe it even though it's fake. It is with most cases too that they read it because they want it to be true. Yellow journalists know what the people really want to hear even it's not the truth. They aim to please the reader so that they will gain more money and write more stories.

Researchers at the University of Florida stated that yellow journalism first began with two writers named William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer II. These two were in a battle for the best newspaper during the 1890's . Pulitzer came up with the idea to create a cartoon for his newspaper named "The Yellow Kid". His newspaper then became very popular among the public, and this got Hearst to think of ways to to make his just as popular. Hearst then offered a huge salary for the cartoonist that drew "The Yellow Kid" for Pulitzer and he had it embedded in his newspaper. This created an ongoing feud with the two writers, and ultimately led to them printing outrageous titles and over-dramatized articles in order to gain popularity with the public.

Terrance McCoy, writer for the Washington Post, writes about two men, Paris Wade and Ben Goldman, who post alarming titles with false or biased articles linked to them on their blog, just as Pulitzer and Hearst first did with their newspapers. One of their titles was "THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn't Want You To See What Hillary Did After Loosing...". This kind of title causes people to click and read more. Wade and Goldman wrote with a biased view in order to tell readers what they wanted to hear rather than the truth. The goal was to gain enough viewers in order to collect money. With every click to their blog there was more money in their pockets.

According to The New York Times' Sabrina Taverenise, fake news leads people to doubt articles even when they are true, yet they read them anyways to provide a 'good feeling'. It is even more of a problem when people start forming their beliefs around the fictional stories they read. The article defines fake news as "... a made-up story with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks". In the recent year fake news has been targeted towards political issues. The latest election has gotten many fictional articles to come out and many believe them. "The online content can be frustrating, with headlines that promise more than the stories deliver".

To find out just what kind of impact fake news had on the public during the 2016 election, Robert Siegel, National Public Radio host, talks to economist Matthew Gentzkow who calculated the results. It was said in the interview that in order for one false story to persuade a person to vote one way or the other it would be the same as watching 36 TV commercials. Even with these numbers it seems as though people are persuaded easily if it pertains to their opinion.

All of this research has a couple things in common. Yellow journalism was used by creating false headlines to gain readers and more money. This causes false news to be reported just for popularity of the article. Fake new is hard to interpret and therefore harder to know what is fictional and what is not. Journalists often do this in order to tell the public what they want to hear, but sometimes it's not always comforting.