Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Without Sources, Fake News Appears

On the opinion page of the Catholic Times, a one time newspaper editor, reminds us  how to discern fake news from the real thing. Among poor articles and fake news you have sentences with the passive ending: has been known, has been communicated and the like. Why is this so?
 

In press coverage, it is of high priority, in press ethics, to disclose the sources. In Korean, in the passive tense, the subject of the action is not known. The reporter did not make an accurate account of what transpired. This can happen when the reporter uses conjecture or prejudice or words like it is said that.... We have a lack of accuracy, objectivity, and fairness in journalism.
 

There are also other methods that do not use the passive voice to hide the subject of an action:  criticized, evaluated, pointed out, all these expressions can hide the source.
 

▲The evaluation of the company showed various favorable positions.
 

▲ It is pointed out that it is against the law to raise that kind of money during the election year.

▲ Criticism was made that it was somewhat behind the times.

In the above sentences, there is no indication of who has evaluated, pointed out or criticized. In other words, an unidentified third person seems to be the subject of the action, and one can easily have doubts about the objectivity of the report.

At first glance, it seems to represent public opinion. In fact, the journalist's own evaluation, knowledge,  and criticism are often irresponsibly transferred to an unidentified third party.

If you want to correct this sentence to conform to the press ethics principles, you should put a source for information.
 

▲ The evaluation of the company which has various achievements is in a favorable position according to Mr. So and So etc. and similarly with the other statements.
 

"It is known" is not the way reports should be made but  nonetheless, not only general reporters but also famous anchor journalists and newspaper columnists use it without hesitation. One has little difficulty in understanding how this is part of the internet news world in which we live.

In cyberspace, many individuals using SNS have little knowledge on how to cover news stories and write sentences tailored to press ethics. There are many cases in which the text of a large medium is modified with violation of serious ethics—plagiarism.

A few years ago, the slang for reporter, used sarcastically, was the word (ki-re-gi) made up from garbage and reporter. Some reporters were reporting the news in an unethical way instead of accurately, objectively and fairly as the writer mentioned in the above article.