Fake news is a term that symbolizes all news articles intentionally released to change people’s perspectives about facts and events. Fake news is inaccurate information presented in the form of news by the promoter. Fake news can include events, statements, or occurrences that never happened. Fake news can also be described as fabricated information mimicking news media content but lacks processes that ensure that the information being released is accurate and credible. In most cases, fake news is meant to damage a person’s reputation or entity. Fake news is also used as a source of revenue through paid advertisements. However, there are ethical issues that revolve around fake news. Ethics means the moral principles used to guide and dictate individual behavior. In the same way, there are ethical principles that guide the propagation of news. In other words, there is a relationship between fake news and ethics. This paper will therefore discuss the ethical issues relating to fake news and state ethical theories that relate to fake news.
Fake news occurs in three types. First misinformation; misinformation is the spread of false information without the intention of spreading harm. Secondly, disinformation; is the spread of incorrect information to cause damage and manipulate other people. Thirdly, mal-information; is the spread of accurate information with malicious intentions. Propagation of fake news has been on the rise for the past few years. The propagation of fake news has been on the rise because digital technology has become easy and convenient. However, the ease of propagation of fake news has led to many ethical challenges affecting all technology users and other platforms. Fake news is widely and quickly spread through social media platforms. Misinformation is known to spread faster and more efficiently by using social media platforms.
Conceptual ethics is a concept drawn from the normative theory that puts into question what people need to and need not use when thinking and sharing what they believe with other people. The concept argues that fake news is deficient in three significant areas. First, it is faulty in the use of language because it has no stable meaning. Second, the term fake news is unnecessarily used because so many words can be used to describe the dysfunction of democracies. Third, the term fake news is only used to serve propagandistic purposes. It is, therefore, crucial that people should rely on something other than the term fake news because of the deficiencies mentioned above. Even though fake news is related to lying, distortion of facts, and propaganda, there is a philosophical value (Etienne 144).
The first argument about fake news is that it is not linguistically sufficient because it has an unstable meaning. Many people, including lay people, use it when expressing their disapproval of specific stories and news. Academic people also are not satisfied with specific definitions of ambiguous term. Meanings assigned to terms are determined by the community or by using agreement from experts. This is according to influential philosophical theories. However, fake news is a term that is always contested, and this proves it to be problematic (Etienne 144). Some philosophers think that fake news has the property of being misleading, while others think that news should be circulated and, when they mislead people, should then be considered fake. The lack of agreement on the meaning of fake news also explains why philosophers contest over its extension. For example, people who think that the intention to deceive people lies behind fake news will always edit errors while reporting such instances. On the other hand, people who think fake news to be produced accidentally will not edit while reporting.
However, even without an agreed meaning about fake news, the discussions around it raise some interesting questions. For example, if some philosophers are right in saying that mimicking is the primary gesture behind fake news, would it be wrong to design and diffuse fake news articles or would it amount to lying cases? In addition, who is to be held accountable when fake news trend on social media? Can fake news be legally prohibited since they amount to misrepresentations? The use of fake news should not be a problem provided it is used within the context of a discussion aiming to fix the concept’s meaning or question our moral and legal practices (Rubin & Victoria 1). Even though philosophers are used to doing so, journalists and news reporters should not engage in such practices. However, journalists have always expressed their interests in trying to understand fake news and discuss all the challenges associated with the phenomenon. Therefore, journalists can be cautious as philosophers when giving readers the meaning of the concept because not all news is fake. Journalists should also not take positions that command the readers to bank their trust on specific sources.
The second argument about fake news is that it is an unnecessary concept. At this point, there are so many concepts that can be used in diagnosing lies, false assertions and propaganda. This is because fake news cannot be used to mean epistemic democracy dysfunction because it cannot be enumerated from the above concepts (Rubin & Victoria 1). However, there is at least one feature of fake news that has not been captured in the aforementioned concepts. Some philosophers argue that fake news signifies an intellectual imposture that mimics traditional stories with an attempt to inform the public. If fake news can then be reduced to propaganda, it will be more interesting to know how it relates to classic instances such as those of wartime propaganda. But if fake news cannot be justified, explaining how it is not lying would prove to be of great value. The claim that fake news is an unnecessary concept means that we should have its true meaning so that we can then compare it with the meaning of concepts such as propaganda and the rest of the concepts of epistemic dysfunctions of democracy (Rubin & Victoria 1). It is from this point that we can conclude that the concept of fake news is redundant. However, since fake news has no stable meaning, we are not in a position to compare its meaning to other concepts.
Therefore, people should stop using terms such as propaganda and stop using fake news. This is because propaganda has a stable meaning compared to fake news. To start with, the definition of propaganda has been greatly disputed by philosophers. Secondly, the definition contradicts other definitions available on contemporary literature. Thirdly, the meaning of propaganda is always contested by the public to the extent that partisan affiliations use the concept to advance to frustrate their adversaries. However, fake news has in many times been used to propagandistic agendas. Fake news has been so much weaponized such that it is used as an epistemic slur. For the last few years, fake news has been used by politicians to discredit all the news that criticize their opinions. Even though journalists and academicians use fake news with sober intentions, there is always a danger of spreading bad ideologies (Jaster, Romy & Lanius 1). For example, the use of fake news can help disseminate a media manipulation narrative that is parallel to the idea of media bias.
Application of fake news to a story issues a command to people to disbelieve the news. It does not advise people to avoid the claims contained in it. Making fake news discussions do not contain a heading saying that an article is made of fake news. This leaves a gap of so many questions of whether specific news articles can be classified under fake news. Therefore, there is so much controversy surrounding fake news (Jaster, Romy & Lanius 1). The many questions raised are whether philosophers are free to engage in terms that are central to public attention, even if the meaning of the used terms is ambiguous. However, failure to do so can limit philosophical creativity and create a great barrier between the work of scholars and public reflection. There are several dangers associated with fake news. A lot of fake news can be extremely malicious and dangerous. For example, publishing the private address of an individual puts them at the risk of attack.
In conclusion, Fake news is about inaccurate information presented in the form of news the promoter. Fake news can include events, statements or occurrences that verifiably never happened. However, there are ethical issues that revolve around fake news. Ethics means the moral principles used to guide and dictate individual behavior. In the same way, there are ethical principles that guide the propagation of news. Conceptual ethics is a concept drawn from normative theory that puts into question what people need to and need not to use when thinking and sharing what they think with other people. The concept argues that the term fake news is deficient in three major areas. First, it is faulty in the use of language because it has no stable meaning. Second, the term fake news is unnecessarily used because there are so many terms that can be used to describe the dysfunction of democracies. Third, the term fake use is only used to serve propagandistic purposes. The first argument about fake news is that it is not linguistically sufficient because it has an unstable meaning. Many people including lay people use it when expressing their disapproval of specific stories and news. Academic people also are not satisfied with specific definitions of the ambiguous term.
However, even without an agreed meaning about fake news, the discussions around it raise some interesting questions. The second argument about fake news is that it is an unnecessary concept. At this point, there are so many concepts that can be used in diagnosing lies, false assertions and propaganda. This is because fake news cannot be used to mean epistemic democracy dysfunction because it cannot be enumerated from the above concepts. However, there is at least one feature of fake news that has not been captured in the aforementioned concepts. Some philosophers argue that fake news signifies an intellectual imposture that mimics traditional stories with an attempt to inform the public. Application of fake news to a story issues a command to people to disbelieve the news. It does not advise people to avoid the claims contained in it. Making fake news discussions do not contain a heading saying that an article is made of fake news. This leaves a gap of so many questions of whether specific news articles can be classified under fake news. Therefore, there is so much controversy surrounding fake news.
Works Cited
Brown, Étienne. “Fake News and Conceptual Ethics.” J. Ethics & Soc. Phil. 16 (2019): 144.
Jaster, Romy, and David Lanius. “Speaking of Fake News.” The Epistemology of Fake News 19 (2021).
Rubin, Victoria L. “Disinformation and misinformation triangle: A conceptual model for “fake news” epidemic, causal factors and interventions.” Journal of documentation (2019).
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