This week my media literacy class is working on the concept of fake news. I’m having them take a look at the history of how both the concept and term have been used over the last several centuries.
Aside from the belief that respected news organizations routinely publishing false stories, I believed that the biggest problem we have with fake news is when our news media report on issues where someone is being deceptive, but the news outlet propagates the lie in the headline or lede of the story.
Take this tweet as an example from the fact-checking site Snopes.
The items shown in the photographs were not ballots, were not from 2020, and were not illegally discarded. https://t.co/Iyc1HvLJHR
— snopes.com (@snopes) September 29, 2020
The tweet is sharing an article from Snopes that debunks a photo and story circulating on Twitter that falsely claims that current mail-in ballots are being tossed into a California land-fill.
The tweet is actually quite good, stating:
“The items shown in the photographs were not ballots, were not from 2020, and were not illegally discarded.”
That’s how you should do it – give the debunking, then show the lie.
But the actual story on Snopes is not as good. Instead, it goes with a clickbaity headline that perpetuates the falsehood with a question rather than dismissing it with a statement:
Were These Mail-In Ballots Discovered in a California Landfill?
People who only see the headline and don’t followup with the story could view this as evidence that mail-in ballots actually are being thrown out in California.
They are not. The photo actually shows empty envelopes from the 2018 election being properly disposed of after the election.
See what I did here?
I just built a truth sandwich – Truth on top, the deception in the middle, and the truth repeated at the end.
Journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen has been pushing hard on the truth sandwich concept:
- State what is true.
- Report that a false or dubious claim has been made. (But only if it’s newsworthy, meaning important for the public to know it happened. Otherwise use silence.)
- Repeat what the actual truth is.
Here’s the extended Twitter thread from May of this year by Dr. Rosen on the topic:
Click on this tweet to read Dr. Rosen’s full thread on the truth sandwich.
So, the lesson from this for you, my dear readers, is to always use the truth sandwich in your own social media feeds:
- Tell the truth
- Explain the deception
- Repeat the truth.