A mass communication student goes to school with so much anticipation, to learn and get the necessary training to become the best in his/her field. In every profession there are professional ethics that one ought to follow. The system has changed and now fake news has taken toll over the media industry. In the society today, everyone can write news but it begs the question where does the truth really lie?
Fake news has affected communication in a number of ways one of them being, you can never distinguish between what is right and what is not. When seeking information, you have the right to get facts. Not getting the correct information can be damaging because it influences certain beliefs and attitudes. An example of such a scenario is where an article had been written claiming that the famous comedian Daniel Ndambuki was dead. Such news caused such uproar in the internet and it is until he himself wrote on his Facebook wall that he was very much alive that it all stopped.
Most fake news comes from bloggers whose main aim is to generate traffic when many people click to read the story that most often has a catchy headline. Such incidents have greatly affected the credibility of most bloggers as it is hard to know which ones are genuine. Journalists ought to be guided by ethics and since fake news has taken toll, it makes it hard for a professional journalist to break a story and it gets received since people have now lost their confidence in the media.
The reporting of fake news is not only a local problem but an international one at that. I remember reading a post on Facebook that an internationally known gospel artist Donnie Mclurkin had died. Later on I read a tweet from him confirming that it was just a lie that he wasn’t dead. There were also a series of fake news before the elections in the U.S where lies were being spread all over the internet. This is just a few of a series of incident where fake news has affected communication and getting to the truth of the story.
Communication plays a very vital role in our society since we cannot live without information. Fake news can bring up serious implications and change the attitudes and behavior of people.
