Fake News in the Past and its Effects on the Future

Over the past few years, nations across the globe have been subjected to the media pandemic of fake news. From tedious Facebook posts about cats with 5 legs, to swaying public opinion and influencing elections, it has grown increasingly hard to deny that fake news has made an appearance in your social media news feed. But as we as a human race look forward into the next coming years, many people are skeptical that the world isn’t falling into a giant spiral down the metaphorical toilet, due to the fake news epidemic. In order to predict what is to come in the future, it is important to look at the impact that fake news has had and draw reasonable conclusions from them.

Looking back at the 2016 Presidential, a huge controversy started as rumors started to fly that the Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were running a pedophilia ring in the basement of a DC pizza shop. While the rumors were later proven to be false, the impact of those words would end up having real life consequences as a man would later walk in to the alleged pizza shop and incite a shooting. Even though luckily no one was injured in the shooting, this incident may very well likely not be the last of its kind. This leaves the question, should people be held accountable for their intentional starting and spreading of fake news?

In the case of the DC pizza shop, news outlets and personalities such as Alex Jones from Infowars has admitted to his wrong doing and apologized to the owners of Comet Ping Pong. Others however have not seen such a reply. During a segment on the daytime talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg responded to a fake news story that she was mentioned in. In the story, she was misquoted as saying she thought the wife of a dead soldier, who was being celebrated by President Trump, was doing it for attention. While Goldberg went public that she in fact did not make the alleged statements, the damage was already done, as she stated she was forced to spend money in order to protect herself and her family as to avoid a similar atrocity such as the one in DC.

Another topic brought up in the segment on The View, was Goldberg’s intention to get legislation started in order to prevent the spread of fake news. As time passes, the need for legislation to dissuade people from committing the same injustices, which have proven to have real life consequences. In order to prevent more incidents like the DC shooting from happening in the future, people need to be held accountable for their actions. If not, moving forward history is destined to repeat itself over and over, until such change is put into place.