Looking at your Twitter timeline, how many of those tweets do we think are actually truthful? Every viral tweet that is sent out can’t be telling the truth of a funny story that happened to them. Looking at my own timeline I see a few tweets some of my friends made that aren’t 100 percent truthful and could be stretched to make the story funnier. So, if you’re going to Twitter to find a quick news story you have to be careful on what your reading. False stories travel much faster than true stories do according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even before President Trump made “fake news” a popular saying, the researchers were looking at over 100,000 tweets that were tweeted millions of times and found that false information travels faster and farther. This makes you question what your reading on Twitter and if whether or not you can trust everything that appears on your timeline.
To take a much smaller scale example, recently there was a report about Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers saying he was very upset with the way the organization was being run given recent incidences with personnel turnover. The quarterbacks coach, Aaron’s personalized coach, and wide receiver Jordy Nelson were both let go this NFL offseason which didn’t sit very well with Aaron Rodgers according to sources. The source also stated that this could have major implications on whether or not Aaron was going to re-sign a contract extension to stay with the Packers organization. This news reached all the way to the top, up to ESPN, Fox Sports and NFL Network because the source said it was linked closely to Aaron Rodgers. When we take a look at who or where the source came from we then see that it was a writer from the Chicago Tribune making the headline with his story. Now the question becomes, what Chicago based writer is “closely” linked to Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, rivals of the Chicago Bears? The answer is there isn’t one as now it has come about that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are trying to destroy the narrative of a poor relationship as an article of clickbait to get views and readers. So, if the source wasn’t closely linked then it appears as if the writer was speculating, possibly to cause a rift between the two parties, which you could argue was successful as it was heavily debated on major sports media companies on what Aaron Rodgers should do with the team.
As a reader I would try to check sources closely related to the subject of the story as just saying you are closely related in the article doesn’t automatically mean they are telling the truth. Look for where the story was published and do some research on what else the writer as published to see what most of his stories were on. I myself would not want to write a piece just for the views as a click-bait article. If you are not closely linked to the story and want to write about it you need to find someone who is and get your information that way before you write is how I feel otherwise the consequences could be something worse. Clearly the above example didn’t turn out this way, but other kinds of stories could have unintended results. Since social media is so prominent these days and we now know that false stories can travel much faster and farther through media than the truth we need to be careful of not only what we are reading, but those that have the opportunity have to watch what they are writing.
The Final Final 