One Monday morning in 2016, Britain woke to a corrupted news story which stated the Prime Minister, David Cameron had committed an “obscene act with a dead pig’s head”, according to the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail reported, “A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig”. The authors of the story claimed they got the source from an MP, who had seen photographic evidence. It was a great opportunity to humiliate a distinguished Prime Minister as many felt it was true for the former member of the notorious Bullingdon Club. Within some time, #Piggate and #Hameron was trending on Twitter and many politicians joined the campaign for fun. It became entertaining to the whole country. Later, the BBC though refused to mention the allegations as it would not dignify the story but soon was forced to issue a denial. And thus, a powerful man was sexually shamed for something that was not even surely taking place.
We will know more about what happened but before we do so, get our GotoAssignmentHelp services from the top experts of our company to learn more on your subjects. Just after a full day of enjoyment on social media, the journalist of Daily Mail who had made the statement went on TV and admitted that she did not know whether the act was even true. When she was asked to provide evidence for the sensational claim, she admitted that she had none. A report like this which has no evidence circulated in the world and many people presumably still believe it to be true today.
But just after 9 months, the country woke up one fine morning to the real sight of the Prime Minister standing outside Downing Street at 8 AM, announcing his own resignation. He mentioned in his speech that there was no doubt of him resigning then. In the article “How Technology Disrupted the Truth” in The Guardian, Katherine Viner shows how a piece of cascade information plays an important role in changing the practice of journalism. The main goal of an online-based news portal is to maximize the revenue from their ads and interesting news. Therefore, fake news, misleading facts were at their peak at the time. The different news portal wants to draw the attention of the clickers to click their articles.
When the users click on those misleading facts and fake news, they share them in the social media through different messaging apps and slowly it spreads around the world. Ways of writing and creative titles is a good way of promoting the ad only if it does not deviate from the responsibility of informing the truth. But we have a situation where one cannot differentiate between the quality content and misleading content. When you think of a fact in a way you feel it becomes difficult to tell the difference between the facts that are true and that are not. The results can be devastating when people don’t trust the media and everyone believes in their own truth.
We are caught in a transition battle between truth and falsehood, fact and rumor, kindness and cruelty but what is common to all these struggles is that we are diminishing the status of truth. If the misleading news spreads around the world on social media and turns up in the trusted news sources then the consequences are enormous. In the digital age, it became easier to publish false news as it is quickly shared. I believe that we are privileged to live in an era which is technologically developed and technology and media plays a vital role in our world. So, we should take responsibility to understand the fake news and be responsible enough to create the kind of world where we want to live in.
I hope you have understood the topic and will be able to distinguish falsehood from truth. Keeping in mind the truth, if you are interested in more facts, reach us at our webpage and do not forget to take C++ assignment help for your career!
Author Bio
Isla Rose completed her Bachelors in Journalism from RMIT University, Australia. Presently, she works as a content writer at GotoAssignmentHelp and assists students with their academics. Event management and sound engineering have always been two of her interest areas.
