Fake vs. Real News

As the Jones article depicts, most young adults are either not informed about political information or they are informed by late night satirical shows. For me, I am fairly apathetic and am one of the people who are not informed. I am not proud of this fact, but I am admitting it. I try to understand political happenings as the occur, but with so much going on all the time, I am overwhelmed, especially now with shows such as The Daily Show. Fake and real news is everywhere. It is our lives. If I were to choose to make an effort, whether ending up overwhelmed or not, I would rather go the funny way first. Jon Stewart, or Steven Colbert provide an easy outlet for teenagers like myself to say they are involved and be “cool” because they watch the show. I could participate in some discussions, maybe just adding small comments, not actually getting involved, but from the outside it would appear as though I am up to date with my political understandings. At the same time however, I do no get politics, I just don’t, so as much as I would pretend to be getting it, I would have no idea what I was talking about. Like it was discussed in class, I truly believe that you cannot get all the information from one source. This is the same for anything not just political understandings. You have to get it from different angles. Make your own decisions using the information they provide for you. This may seem hypocritical, but its really the only option, especially for young adults. Realistically, I am not going to go investigate whatever Bush says and cross-reference it to a journalist, I am just going to take what I am given and listen. But being aware that this information is either there to “inform” me or to make me laugh about some information, at least I can see where the two cross paths and make some deductions on my own.
Honestly, once I get some time, I am going to start watching more and more “fake” news, just to start the ball rolling on getting informed specifically about politics. If that’s what fake news can do for me, then at least something from that industry is grabbing my attention.

Jeffrey P. Jones, "'Fake' News versus 'Real' News as Sources of Political Information: The Daily Show and Postmodern Political Reality" <http://www.odu.edu/al/jpjones/fake%20news.pdf>