So I decided to make my final blog post cover yet another recent fake news story. Recently a story entitled "Clinton Foundation Cargo Ship Raided At Port Of Baltimore Reveals Sick Secret," was posted on a site called DailyUsaUpdate, a site already well know for trafficking in fake stories. This latest article claimed that a raid on a Clinton foundation owned cargo ship found at the Port of Baltimore found around 460 illegal refugees in shiping contains on board the ship. The odd part about this story is that if you do a little digging you’ll find that the no such ship appears on the cargo manifest for the Port of Baltimore. You most likely will also find that the Clinton Foundation does not own any cargo ships to begin with.
Luckily, it seems that this story is having trouble getting off the ground. From all the places I checked, no one seems to be buying into this story. Perhaps this is a sign that people are wising up to fake news or perhaps it was just to farfetched to believe this time but I found that nobody's even talking about this latest story. Though it might be a tad optimistic of me, I would like to see this as a sign that if this is not a sign of people wising up, to see it as a sign that some of the new means of combating fake news are working. Though I only saw this mentioned in one of the articles I read in researching this story, article titled Fake news: Clinton Foundation has no ships, didn’t smuggle refugees posted on politifact mentions how “The article was flagged by Facebook users, as part of the social media site’s efforts to cut down on fake posts being shared in news feeds.” Though it might be a tad early to say this, I am glad that it seems that some of the new ways social networks are implementing to fight fake news are working. Politifact, and Internet Rumors Bloggers. "Clinton Foundation Has No Ships, Didn't Smuggle Refugees." @politifact. N.p., 12 May 2017. Web. 13 May 2017.
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Today is a dark day for the truth. When trying to find an article about propaganda and fake news I stumbled across an article called BBC - Future - Lies, propaganda and fake news: A challenge for our age. The article itself said nothing that has not been said before save for one tidbit. The author opens the article by asking who the first black president was, and then asks the reader to google the answer. Doing so proved to be incredibly disheartening. The third articles when googling “first black president” was an article titled The Seven Black Presidents Before Barack Obama. I did not even bothering reading the article. My disappointment comes not only from the fact that this article existed but that it was the third google search result. I was expecting to just see an article about Barack Obama to be the highest result but instead we get a joke video being the highest result, followed by an article refuting claims that there was a black president before Obama and then an article spouting utter nonsense. After that google includes a list of “similar” questions all of which point to a man named John Hanson being the first black president. Doing a tiny bit of research on the matter here is what I learned about John Hanson:
Gevinson, Alan. "Teaching History.org, Home of the National History Education Clearinghouse." Was There an African American President Before Barack Obama? | Teachinghistory.org. Teachinghistory.org, n.d. Web. 05 May 2017. Gray, Richard. "BBC - Future - Lies, Propaganda and Fake News: A Challenge for Our Age." BBC News. BBC, 01 Mar. 2017. Web. 05 May 2017. |
AuthorIan Kindall a CD major emphasizing in Game Design Archives
May 2017
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