By Asmita Sarkar:
One of the first principles of journalism, also known as the 4th pillar of democracy, is honesty and credibility. With the power to change mind-sets, the media is then bestowed with a great responsibility. Now, imagine that Wikipedia says that the Earth is flat and this misinformation was republished by other publications, and these publications are then used as a citation in Wikipedia to confirm the false information they published to begin with. This is[envoke_twitter_link]how circular reporting works[/envoke_twitter_link].
Various media outlets that aggregate news from various sources like Reuters, AP might end up publishing the same false information and blame each other for it. A 1998 pseudo-science journal, discredited by the scientific community, claimed that routine vaccinations cause autism and led to an anti-vaccination movement in the US. The horrific result being that children fell sick, sometimes even died, of diseases easily avoidable.
Watch this video to know how, inspite of such disastrous repercussions, false news is still spread.
Video Courtesy: TED-Ed