SPEAKING for myself, I am not really comfortable with the term “fake news”, but if there is anything that I could consider as “fake news”, it would be the advertorials that are presented as if these are news, thus misleading the readers.
Of course, I acknowledge that the news business is also a business that also has to make money, but there are rules to follow. In fairness, Facebook also publishes advertorials, but they have the decency to contain disclaimers that these are “sponsored”.
Also in the old days, publishers are not supposed to dictate what the editors could publish, and neither could the editors dictate what the reporters could write.
Of course, the editors of that era could decide whether to print a story or not, but the editors are not supposed to dictate what the reporters could write or not.
I say “supposed”, because there might have been many publishers and editors who broke these rules even then. The point I am making here is that the mass media, there are rules to follow and there is a hierarchy that sees to it that these rules are followed. This is a formality that the social media does not have, and perhaps it is for that reason that the truthfulness of social media “news” could be questionable.
It is said that bloggers are not responsible to anyone except to themselves, but that does not mean that they could not possibly become responsible.
It seems to me, however, that the real issue here is more about credibility rather than responsibility. It does not matter whether someone writes in mass media or social media; the real bottom line is the credibility of the writer or the blogger.
In other words, the writer or the blogger could lose or gain his or her credibility depending on how truthful his or her content is, over a period of time. What this means is that the more his or her content goes far from the truth, the more he or she will go far from a credible reputation.
Going back to the basics, it should be well understood that bloggers are not journalists, but rather they are more of columnists or commentators. Under the rules, they are simply supposed to express their opinions, and they do not necessarily have to back these up with facts.
They could express their own opinions no matter how controversial these may sound, but the more they could not back up what they write with facts, the less credible they would become.
To state the obvious, bloggers are not supposed to cover the news, because they are only supposed to express their opinions, a right that is covered by their freedom of expression. Some people may be hurt by what they say, but that happens in mass media too./PN
