Blog #2

For my term paper I think I want to continue in the direction that I created already and use the piece from my previous blog post. I think this piece would be beneficial for my argument to speak how in this day and age we live so many individuals rely on news and social media to understand or get a sense of what is going on in society. Unfortunately many of our reporters have exploited the fact that people rely on their stories and have sold society false propaganda and news to get their status as a reporter up or to be known as the one to discover a story. I want to show how that has been the scenario and use some of the information we learned in class about how society has attach onto false. I also want to show the ideas of Aristotle and others to show how these reporters or journalist gets our society to leach onto their reporting and make them believe that there reporting are the truth. I also want to show how social media over the last decade or two has influence the mass uprising of fake news with these platforms being so accessible has made society accept their false reporting without checking for themselves or doing any background research because they believe that these social media outlets would not lie to them about their current events going on because of how much many people today rely on their social media.  I want to highlight how social media is one huge symbolic convergence with so many people have created or joined an social media outlet because they felt press by society, their peers, etc to be apart of the "in crowd". Many of these individuals don't want to feel alienated from society therefore they go against maybe their own will and join these social platforms to feel as though they are apart of today society. If possible I want to speak on a personal experience of how I fell to the pressure of joining social media because I didn’t want to feel left out or alienated from my peers because I did not join the same social platforms that they were apart. I will use the example of the 2 assumptions: communication creates reality and individual meaning will converge community consciousness to further my argument. My piece of evidence of fake news will come from Amy Lange from the Detroit Fox department who publish a story in January. Journalist Amy Lange reports that a local business owner flew to Iraq to get his mom who was very ill. When he went to get her he tried to fly her back to the United States so she could be with him and receive the help she needed she was denied because of the new ban that Donald Trump put for certain Iran Countries. This story cause much controversy being retweeted by over 3,000 times and shared on Facebook over 123,000 times. This will be my main piece of evidence to show how our society accepts any story and go along with it without knowing if it’s true or not.

Lange, A. (2017, January 31). Detroit family caught in Iraq travel ban, says mom died waiting to come home. Retrieved April 14, 2017, from http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/232856168-story

Fake News

The recent election of the United States Presidential has caused much controversy. With many people true hatred for the New President Donald Trump their has been an increase in the amount of fake news that has been published. Many of these writers and authors have expressed their disliking for Donald Trump with their writing. With theses stories being published the public image of Donald Trump has been under heavy scrutiny. This happens because these writers are giving information about Donald Trump making him seem as a negative image or as Satan. Now I do not believe that all things publish or written about Donald Trump are false but I do believe that some of this information that is shared with us from these writers are false. Former President Barack Obama presidential residency came with heavy scrutiny but it is shown that the new president has been under the media microscope at all time high with most of the attention or writing being on negative aspect. Journalist Daniel Payne says “Despite Trump’s constant railing against the American press, there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves. We are in the midst of an epidemic of fake news.” Daniel as well does always agree with everything that Donald Trump says or his actions but he believes that some of the articles publish about Donald Trump are, in the words Kellyanne Conway, alternative facts. Payne talks about 16 articles that were released after Trump election that were not true and were subsequently taken down after the truth that these articles were incorrect. One example that Payne brings up is that journalist Amy Lange From Detroit Fox reports that a local business owner flew to Iraq to get his mom who was very ill. When he went to get her he tried to fly her back to the United States so she could be with him and receive the help she needed she was denied because of the new ban that Donald Trump put for certain Iran Countries. This story cause much controversy being retweeted by over 3,000 times and shared on Facebook over 123,000 times. This story made many believe that Donald Trump was this evil guy who does not like Muslims or any outsiders per say. With the story being shared so much by many people including certain celebrities it made some people do some research. It turns out that this story was not all the way correct. It turns out that the local Detroit man story did not add up. While he did fly over to Iraq to get his mom, he did not tell the truth about his mother dying. She was still alive and although she was suffering from some form of illness she wasn’t in the stage of dying because this illness. In fact she had no signs of dying anytime soon. Now this contradicts what Amy Lange wrote because without any background information or any facts she took the story that she was giving and publish it without making sure that it was correct. Payne gives fifteen more examples of journalist have taken stories that aren’t completely true and publish them negatively portraying Donald Trump as dictator of the United States. Stories like this make you wonder how many more examples of fake news or stories have been published, not only about Donald Trump, but in general.