Social news

There’s is something I have been hearing more and more on a regular basis. It irks me a tad.

At least a few times a week, I’ll overhear someone say or see someone post, “I get all of my news from Facebook.”

Facebook does not generate news articles. People on Facebook share articles from other web sources.

But it is surprising how many people think they get their news from Facebook when what they are getting is news primarily repackaged from newspaper sources.

Alternative media websites often cite newspaper sources in their content. Even television cites newspaper sources frequently.

After I began writing this column for the week, I watched a segment of this week’s Last Week Tonight in which the show’s host, John Oliver, devotes a 20-minute segment to newspapers.

“The media is a food chain which would fall apart without local newspapers,” he said.

And it’s true, but sadly, younger folks don’t think they should have to pay for news. They’re so used to getting it for free.

But one place they shouldn’t be looking to get their news for free is Facebook. Sure, I follow a ton of news sources on Facebook. Everything from small community newspapers in Alabama and England, to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. I have stopped following most of the online only publishers that seem to have sought to create content in massive amounts only for the sake of the almighty click — Buzzfeed, Huff Post, etc.

But I wager that isn’t the norm for those who say, “I get all of my news from Facebook.”

The problem with only getting news from Facebook, or any social media, is in how insular it are. Profiles and the content aimed at users is tailor-made using elusive algorithms to keep their interest. If you scroll past something repeatedly and click on something else and visit the whole package, you become targeted with that type of content.
It’s a great business model — more engagement means more eyeballs taking part in your product longer, but it limits the type of content seen. Facebook isn’t in the news business. It doesn’t care if you’re informed, just that you’re engaged.

For example, say you’ve got a bunch of super conservative friends that share Alex Jones articles all the time. Well, if you click on those articles consistently, you will be fed those types of articles and suggested others. 

Pretty soon, you’ve got a Facebook feed that makes Fox News look downright communist.

You don’t get anything remotely “Fair and Balanced” and oftentimes not created using widely adopted journalistic practices. It’s all just stuff that reinforces whatever people already think without challenging them to come at and see issues from multiple perspectives.

With all of this, I have to say, you’re on your own determining the accuracy and legitimacy of most of what’s posted online. That’s no different than it’s ever been in reading the printed word. Somehow it seems folks are more likely to stand behind some third-rate, never-heard-of-them source because it’s online and it happens to be in-line with their own beliefs.

I have found many of these alternative online news sources don’t seem to list a location or even a phone number, as though they only exist in the ether of the information super highway.

That’s not true of newspapers. Behind the screen or the printed page are real people who are working, living, shopping, paying taxes and raising families in the communities they cover.