While the concept of digital media is great in a lot of ways, there are inherently many problems with it. Some of these problems are why this series exists – proper journalism requires self-regulation, and the “Check Yourself: Facts” series was created for the specific purpose of contributing to that discourse.
The sheer speed of digital news can be claimed as the cause of many of these issues. Honest mistakes grow more and more common, even within the most trusted news sources, but the sad reality is that sometimes the error isn’t a mistake – and that is becoming increasingly more frequent.
Journalists of all types and functions share an intrinsic fear: being “scooped.” Being scooped means, in essence, that a competitor published their version of a news story first. For example, if BTS drops a stealth album and Site A publishes its story about it before Site B, Site B has been scooped.
Everyone wants to get their article out first – they want to be able to say that they got the details on a juicy story first and present their narrative to the rest of the world before anyone else gets a chance to do so. Nobody wants to be in second place - whoever gets the story published first has a sort of de facto control of the direction of the narrative.
Taking the time to make sure you’ve gotten everything right means that there are possibly ten other sites that have published a story about the same topic, increasing the likelihood that people won’t even see your story in the shuffle, perhaps missing the good information you’re providing.
The trade-off here should be obvious – to avoid being scooped, you must throw caution to the wind and publish things without necessarily verifying the truth of the material you’re writing about.
Thus starts a slippery, terrifying slide down a black diamond ski slope. As we’ve seen many times, once a story gets put out into the universe, it’s almost impossible to reel it back in and hide it away; things spread like wildfire on social media, and it only takes seconds for something to spiral out of control.
A recent example in the BTS universe is the so-called “scandal” revolving around Jungkook visiting a restaurant/bar in Itaewon, South Korea on Apr. 25, 2020, directly before a new wave of Coronavirus cases was reported in the city in early May. Big Hit felt obligated to make a statement about Jungkook’s trip to Itaewon to clear up the matter, but before they had a chance to do so, the Twitter rumor mill was churning, spewing out snippets of “information” for all the world to see.
The use of quotations around the word “information” was intentional – at the time the conversation was happening, the “information” being spread around was unconfirmed. None of it was fact.
Let us take a quick moment to delve into the definition of fact. At its base, fact is equivalent to truth. However, there’s more to it – in order for something to be fact, it has to be proven to be true. Most dictionaries agree on this point. Fact is not gossip, rumor, or interpretation – fact is an objective reality.
In the world of social media and digital news, however, it’s all too common to see a post circulating attached to a clickbait headline and then to see discussion of the story behaving as though the information is fact.
Publishing with only partial information is sometimes necessary – in “breaking news” stories about crime coverage, for example, you will often see partial details because not much is known when the incident is first reported. The danger here arises once again from speed: breaking stories involve partial information, but in the rush to get the story out there, many sites publish that partial information as fact.
There is an easy fix: stating plainly in the article that, since the story is breaking news, there are a lot of unconfirmed details and updates will be made as more information rolls out. However, many times this sort of disclaimer is not included – so audiences see clickbait headlines and subsequent stories with those pieces of information and believe they are the truth.
By publishing half-facts as complete facts, news sites create false information. Sometimes it is accidental, born of necessity and carelessness, but for more unscrupulous sites it isn’t accidental. Tabloid sites are well-known for this, taking one crumb of information or rumor and sensationalizing it. People then repost and discuss the story, about half of them realizing that it’s not factual and the other half of them completely buying into the narrative.
When engaging in the news or social media, it is crucial to verify your sources. Figure out which sites are reliable and which are gossip columns. In the K-pop world, there are several sources, both inside K-media and outside, which make it their business to publish rumor and gossip as fact. It’s an unfortunately successful business model since even the most seasoned K-pop fans can sometimes be drawn in by a shocking headline, getting those sites the views they need.
Additionally, viewers must be aware that news can be a double-edged sword at the best of times; even reliable sources make mistakes, and as stories develop more information comes to light that can change the story. Engaging with any article can require caution, and even more so if the story sounds sensationalized. If it sounds like gossip, it probably is, and continuing to discuss it can make things worse. The temptation to parody or satire is strong, but in some cases, joking about the situation can contribute to the spread of false information as well, if not handled properly.
If all this sounds worrisome, good. It should. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to verify all our sources or worry that we might be seeing something fake. However, we don’t live in that information utopia, so it is our responsibility as viewers to do our homework and make sure what we’re talking about is based on fact. When in doubt, it’s best to avoid speculation if something sounds suspicious and to wait for an official statement, encouraging others to do the same.
In this new world of digital media and social media, every action we take as news consumers have consequences, which means an increased level of accountability. Next week, we’ll be discussing the increasing tendency towards cancel culture, which is one of the consequences of “half facts” – something that is sometimes deserved and sometimes not, but something always to be wielded wisely.
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Written By: Anna Moon
Edit By: Ash
Checked By: Mheer