“Press Tweets Spread Lies”

When U.S. President Trump makes comments based on poor perception on Twitter, it spreads all over the world in no time. According to a survey by the nonprofit Media Matters for America, 30% of reports from major news providers about President Trump’s tweets contained false information. In addition, with a 65% chance, the media said they could not correct it or explain why it happened.

This can be a problem in SNS, where many users only see the title and react reflexively. This is the result of analyzing more than 2,000 tweets from 32 major media companies in the United States between January 26th and February 15th. In just three weeks, the media reported that the misinformation announced by Trump spread 19 times per day and 400 times over three weeks.

The problem is that news sites spread with well-readable titles. The title pays attention only to the specific content of the article, rather than whether it is worth reporting. Of course, this trend is not limited to President Trump. But the news about President Trump is one in five quotes from President Trump. If the remarks themselves are wrong, the impact can be great. According to the Washington Post, President Trump has made falsely confused or misleading claims more than 10,000 times so far.

The agency that conducted the investigation emphasized that the role of the media is not to encourage the president to mislead the people, saying that various media companies trying to convey all of President Trump’s comments in near real time have spread many false comments.

In 2017, Twitter increased the number of characters per tweet to 280 outside Korea, Japan, and China. The reason for this may be that English needs more than twice the length to convey the same content than Korean. But even with 240 characters, it may be difficult to tell the news on Twitter without errors. Related information can be found here .

Hey, @MattGertz has a new study up over at @mmfa showing how mainstream news outlets are helping Trump spread misinformation by not adding enough context to their tweets or headlines. You should check that out. https://t.co/pSNqdzEcfK

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) May 3, 2019

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