A sold-out crowd gathered to hear moderator Greg Dobbs question Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson and Sam Gill of the Knight Foundation about the rise of fake news and what can be done about it.
Certainly vigilance is the first step, which also means awareness of our own confirmation bias. That is an intractable problem. Sam Gill shared stunning graphics revealing the extent to which political affiliation predicts judgement as to media credibility. Predictably, those on the right judge outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart as accurate and non-biase, and The New York Times and CNN as inaccurate and biased. The situation is reversed on the other side of the political spectrum. David Mikkelson admitted that presenting sourced facts is often not sufficient, as some people believe what they want to believe.
Because the truth is important, both continue to work unmasking fake news. We can do our part by questioning our biases and not putting all our faith in one source.
