When is it comedy or fake news?
In this modern era, it is fairly common to come across ‘fake news’. Fake news being defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘False stories, that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.’
This definition describes the whole range of fake news from just jokes to, false stories. This difference is crucial in determining the divide between lying in articles for comedic purpose, or misinformation for the use of misinforming the reader usually for political reasons. I want to examine the difference between comedic misinformation for the purpose of amusing the reader and what is considered the main focus of fake news, the political misinformation.
Political fake news is considered the worst type of fake news; revolving around fear and gullibility people who write political fake news focus on how they can trick and mislead the reader into believing a half-truth or to believe and spread potentially harmful views and opinions. This was a huge problem during the early stages of COVID-19, especially since an underlying racist viewpoint could be spread. Chinese people were subject to alienation and Jewish people were yet again targeted in a mass spread of misinformation that attempted to link an early start on a vaccine, chemical warfare, and religious influence. This was clearly damaging and remains as a key factor into why fake news is dangerous to modern society and through the use of the internet, opinions travel fast.
Comedic fake news revolves, not around deliberate misleading content, instead around what could be said to be clearly fake. The Onion, Clickhole and Cracked being the most famous examples of satirical sites dedicated to amusing the reader through what is considered misinformation. By definition, these sites fall directly under the classification of ‘fake news’ however, the distinction stems heavily from the aim of the article in question.
The definition blurs the line between satire and purposeful misinformation. The definition in my opinion should be altered to better suit the wide range of fake news and to be more specific towards the differences.
