Dear News Consumer ….

When it comes to news consumption, 2020 has been a year in which the country has been more divided than ever when it comes to the work of journalists. With a President who has battled the media and accusing it as “the enemy of the people” unfortunately people have lost confidence and questioned if the news they are reading is still reliable. As a news consumer you should feel confident that the news you’re reading is nothing but the truth. For the younger generations like Gen Z. social media has changed the way younger news consumers stay informed. Social media websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are a few sites where Gen Z. users are finding their news as they grew up in a time where the internet and social media was just being introduced and has now flourished into what it is today. That doesn’t mean social media is the perfect place to find and consume news, far from it as we have learned, anyone is capable of posting fabricated info that is intended to deceive a news consumer and it’s important to fact check. For example let’s look at the claims by President Trump that there were more votes than people in swing states in the election . As we have learned so far this semester, there are some factors we need to consider during the fact checking process. We can confer on fact checking websites like Politifact who provide factual data that includes links to where they found the info to debunk the claims. We can also use a technique known as lateral reading in which we do multiple searches on what reliable sources are saying on the same topic. In this example we will look at two news sources, Forbes and NBC with both sites providing info from election officials that prove that was not the case. Over the course of the semester, I have learned how to feel more confident in my ability to find reliable news sources as well as fact check claims that may raise questions and as social media and the internet become more important to news consumption, users need to consider where they find their news and how reliable it is.