Blog Post #4: Authoritative Sources of Information

While reading chapter 3 of The Bedford Book of Genres, I stumbled across something typically considered controversial in today’s society. That is, the places in which information is received. According to the book, social media is not typically considered a form of authoritative source of information.

It seems that ever since the 2016 presidential race began, there has been an enormous increase in the production of “fake news,” which contains information that is either wrong, or so twisted and reworded, that it’s STILL wrong. Once people began discovering all these sources of incorrect information, word broke out, and now there’s even more fake news.

For me, I don’t even see the point in creating such an article. Why on Earth would anyone want to misinform mass numbers of people, which could eventually cause chaos? It’s come to a point where it’s affecting my life and other student’s lives due to the constant worrying of this fake news. In terms of researching for research papers, now the student can’t trust an article, they must now go into deeper research and ensure that the information they’re receiving is 100% truthful.

The chapter also included information on author bias in sources of information. This has also been a troubling issue, especially between major news companies such as CNN and FOX News. These companies can discuss the same topic, mainly politics, but give radically different viewpoints that make it nearly impossible to know which one is telling the most unbiased truth.