“Is this ‘fake’ news?” is a common question one may ask when it comes to the authenticity and accuracy of a news story. The term ‘fake news’ has become associated with governments’ and corporation’s pre-packaged news that has been released as news outlets. A majority of these corporations and governments release these pre-packaged news pieces through something called VNR's (visual news releases) [1]. VNR’s are essentially designed to look like an authentic news report. Through the VNR’s, people are more willing to believe that what is being displayed is truthful because it is portrayed as ‘news’. As a result, the government and corporations are finding new innovative ways to make their commercials and advertisements more news-like in order for them to be viewed as something that they may often not be; something truthful, something called news.
I personally do not think that corporately funded news is positive for our society. In essence, it seems that if you have money you have the ability to make society think, see or believe what you want them to. This means that money can be the cause or allowance of the transfer of misleading information in the media. With the booming public relations industry, dreams are becoming realities. "The fact that corporations and governments feel compelled to spend billions of dollars every year manipulating the public is a perverse tribute to human nature and our own moral values. The public relations industry has stolen our dreams, and returned them to us packaged as illusions. It must be our duty to dream more deeply, and to participate in the process of transforming those dreams into reality [2]."News should focus on the main idea of a story and abstain from all unnecessary corporate influences within them. Therefore the truth is that where ever there is money, there will always be false or ‘fake’ news.
A couple of days ago, I watched a movie called "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt". The movie was about a high profile lawyer, named Hunter who had an amazing record of putting criminals behind bars and was a shoo-in for governor in an upcoming election. But when an investigative journalist, C.J., who was known for one of his award winning news reports, begins to investigate this lawyer he comes to realize that he is tampering with evidence to secure his convictions. C.J essentially frames himself as a murder suspect to catch Martin in the act, and he does this with the help of his girlfriend causing a ‘mistrial’. But what C.J’s girlfriend later on comes to discover is that C.J hired the murdered victim from the previous case to act in his new report and later on actually murdered her because she was threatening to expose him.
It is evident that the government and corporations are implicating fake news into our world, but in relation to the film, we can see that this is happening with journalists as well. They only do this primarily for self benefit and profit. They effectively exhibit this ‘news’ to touch viewers on an emotional level and once that is accomplished, then you pretty much have the viewers in ‘the palm of your hand’. On that note, I would like all readers to keep this in mind: "Only a select few are aware that most of what's in a newspaper is either fact-plus-fiction or truth-minus-fact, which evens out to be just about the same thing.-Chuck Klosterman
Work Cited
[1] "Fake News".
[2]Klosterman, Chuck. "Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs" New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
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