These were the words that changed how America looks at the news media. In 2017, Time listed fake news as word of the year. The definition of “Fake News” is false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually to influence political views(Cambridge University Definition). Fake news was one of the biggest topics in 2017 and it still is today. These words tore the US in half. One side would claim that their news site wasn’t fake and the other side claiming that their news is fake and needs to go away. All it was, where big media companies bickering with each other about certain topics such as Russian probe and the economic issues with China. With those 3 words… can we really trust the news?

  With fake news, came a bombardment of things. In the beginning, Trump started tweeting about the fake news when he first started his campaign for the presidency in 2016. He started calling out CNN for being fake and feeding lies to the American society about how bad he is. Then later he started getting onto other news sites in his other tweet. Then he said, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People(Feb 7,2017/Trump’s Twitter Account).” Trump is saying that all of these media sites are fake and spilling out fake news for the people to listen and watch. It’s not just CNN this time, it’s the other mass media news sites. At this time this when people started to ask themselves whether they can trust their news.

   One of the major things is spotting fake news. Now, spotting fake news is going to be harder than you realize. Yes, the headline may be a big giveaway that its fake news but it’s what you read which makes it hard. There are 8 ways to spot fake news. One of them considering the source is it a news site that you can really trust and does it have a track record of having trustworthy information. Read beyond, read beyond the first sentence. Make sure the article checks out and the story seems legit.  Check the author, is he/she a reliable author that can report the story and get the information right. Supporting sources, are there links that go beyond the article. Check the date, is the story relevant, is it old? Ss it a joke, is there no research and is the story too outlandish. Check your biases, don’t let your own personal beliefs get in the way. Even ask the experts, consult others with this information to help tell you if it's right or not(IFLA). With these 8 ways, you’ll be able to spot fake news.

 There are 2 sides of the news that being the left and right side. The major ones being CNN and Fox News. CNN leans towards the side of the left and Fox leans towards the side of the right. The right sees ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN as fake news site doing anything they can to make Trump look bad. The right side also says that they’re not telling the news anymore and they’re just there to bash Trump for his presidency. The left sees Fox news as the same, except trying to make the president look good for the American people. On the 13 of July, Trump went to the UK and met the British Prime Minister Theresa May. CNN was there to get coverage of the conference, reporter Jim Acosta was there and started asking a question when Trump said “CNN is fake news. I don’t take questions from CNN(July 13, 2018/POLITICO).” He then proceeded to move on John Roberts from Fox News. Later, CNN aired the story by making it sound like Trump has a grudge against CNN and Fox News aired it as Trump didn’t want to take questions from Jim Acosta because of him being a report from CNN. There are many more cases of this type of incident all over the internet. Now, what it comes down to… is can we really trust the news?

 What it comes down to is, you really can’t trust the US news media. There is one side that claims this and there is the other side that claims that. In all, our news sources are biased. They give us the information that we want to hear, not the information we need. To get news that is truthful and what we need to know, we need to go outside sources such as news broadcasters from other countries and other sites that will report about stories that will happen in the US. We as American citizens hope that the news will become news and actually report news that is beneficial to us and not fake. For now, all we can do is go to other sites and get true information that we need to know.