Opinion – I Hate Fake News Reports

An early NFC North discussion took place this morning here in the offices at 1520 the Ticket. One of my colleagues stated that the Vikings would repeat as NFC North champs, and I said, "hold on a second, the Packers will be back to top form this year and they will take the title."

My colleague then told me that Clay Matthews was being investigated for a banned substance and sent me this report to prove what he had seen over the weekend.

I, of course clicked the link, freaking out about what this could mean for the defense but, of course, skeptical of the report. I started reading the story, but as I continued to read I realized that it was turning into an ad for another one of those guaranteed muscle-building supplements.

I investigated further because the site LOOKED like ESPN so I clicked multiple "links" and each one brought me to the website to buy this product.

So this brings me to the title. I hate fake news reports.

I can understand how this could be an effective click-bait type advertisement for a company. However, it is the worst kind of advertisement, and reminds us to be wary of what we see and read.

This company did a great job in making this ad look like an official ESPN story. From the format of the page, to having an author with a title and head shot like every other ESPN writer.

As media users, we have to be wary of said posts and be media literate to avoid them and realize they aren't true while we are reading them.

Journalism is important to American culture and has been since the inception of this nation. Advertising is important to the economy, as it fuels the sales of almost every product on the market. As consumers we need to be wary of these types of stories and hold the media to higher standards than the generations before us.