DAVISON (DTV) – (03/4/2026) – Every click, scroll, like, and comment could be leading you farther and farther down the rabbit hole of fake news.
“It’s vitally important that I double check every fact that is in a story.” says Marie Osborne, the director of community affairs and news at WJR in Detroit. She has been in broadcasting for forty years. “ How we get our news, how we disseminate our news, and how the audience consumes the news, that’s completely different from when I started,” says Osborne
Fake news is a broad term that defines any piece of news with misinformation (the spreading of false information), disinformation (the spreading of intentionally fake information), malinformation (True information that is twisted to show one side of the story and manipulate feelings), or satire (fake news that is heavily edited but somewhat believable; it is old to entertain) . Even though they all mean different things, all forms of fake news are extremely dangerous. “It shapes our opinion. It shapes our views on our world around us. I think that we have to be more discerning about how we get our news.” Osborne explains.
Davison High School sophomore, Hailey McMillan, gets most of her news from social media and sometimes struggles to know what’s real and what’s not. “ You could hear something that is like, definitely not true. But then, like, you got other people who can believe it and start spreading rumors.” says McMillan
Algorithms are mostly responsible for the type of content that you are served online. This can often lead to the spreading of biased information, only letting viewers get one side of the story that aligns with their views. “This is supremely dangerous because these are dangerous times that we are living in and very charged times,” says Osborne
So how do we know what is true and what isn’t? There are some easy ways to verify the news you are consuming. The first is to check it against other sources.
“Sometimes i’ll read a story and something will catch my eye or my ear that doesn’t sound right and i’ll say let me double check that. 9 times out of 10 you sometimes find out that maybe your source wasn’t reporting it how they should be.” explains Osborne.
Get in the habit of reading beyond the headlines. Headlines and thumbnails are often designed to evoke emotion from the audience to get clicks and views. Once on the article, sometimes it will not support the headline’s claim. You want to make sure you don’t get all of your news from one source. The more you diversify your news, the more likely you are to get both sides of a story.
“I just urge people, when they look down at their phone or they get a news alert to really think about what they’re reading and not respond emotionally” says Osborne.
Resources to help you identify fake news:
https://guides.library.cornell.edu/evaluate_news/infographic
https://library.csi.cuny.edu/misinformation
https://utopia.ut.edu/FakeNews/factcheck