Thankfully no one was injured, but this incident gives rise to the question, in a situation like this who is responsible? Welch is now facing federal charges but should the person who wrote the fake news article be held accountable? Authorities reported that Welch’s actions were in response to a fake news article claiming a child sex-trafficking ring led by Hillary Clinton was hidden in the pizzeria. The dangerous reality of fake news became apparent on Decemwhen Edgar Maddison Welch shot a AR-15 assault rifle multiple times in Comet Ping Pong, a Washington D.C. “The fake news is itself fake,” said Ryan Daniels, professor at UH Maui College, “but when legitimate individuals who we look to for knowledge or information are quoting it, that gives legitimacy to the fake news so more and more people are going to believe it.” The CSP data has since been discredited but the impact the statement made cannot be erased from the large audience that it reached. During a statement calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, Trump referenced data from The Center for Security Policy (CSP) which stated “25 percent of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad.” Trump described CSP as “a very highly respected group of people who I know.” The CSP has been widely criticized and has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. However, students are not the only culprits of accepting information online at face value and sharing it with others, President-elect Donald Trump himself has quoted statistics from a unreliable news source. The data was so alarming that researches stated, “At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish.” “But in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation,” said researchers. The results were in their words “bleak.” The researchers had hoped middle school students would be able to distinguish an advertisement from a news story, high school students would be able to recognize articles presented by a bias source and college students would look at sources of articles which present only one side of an argument. Recently, Stanford researchers conducted an 18 month study which evaluated middle school, high school and college students from 12 states and their ability to assess the information they see online. ![]() One of the reasons fake news is so dangerous is it often hides under the appearance of a legitimate news organization. One of these dangers is the rise of fake news. While this can seem like a great advantage, there are also dangers that arise with the shift to online platforms. Information online is easy to post, instant to view and can be shared quickly to a wide audience. Today, we live in a word where information is readily at our fingertips and often behind a screen. Research shows that readers have difficulty distinguishing between real and fake news sources.
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