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Fake News Article Analysis

Part 1

When fake news go viral, they have the adverse effect of destroying someone’s reputation, especially if the image painted on the subject is negative. The fact that something bad said a person may not be right after all may lead to overall negative comments especially on the online sites on which the news spread faster. Such people whose reputation is tarnished may thus even end up traumatized or may end up losing their job is the news are taken seriously.

In order to verify news stories, I have to first check the media house from which the story came from. Even such, I have to look for evidence used in the stories such as quotes and compare with several other news stories to see if they tally and represent the same information therein. Additionally, looking for primary sources such as videos of addresses of the subject of interest to contextualize the new stories.

Part 2: Fake News Article

The fake news article that I will analyze in this case is Peter Weber’s news article that he posted on The Week’s website on January 18, 2017. In the article titled, “Betsy DeVos tells Senate hearing she supports guns in schools because of grizzly bears,” Weber points out authoritatively that the nominee for education senator DeVos supported that guns should be allowed in schools because students face the danger from potential bears. The article is aimed at all Americans and apparently seems to justify that President Trump made a wrong choice to nominate DeVos as an education secretary. The article thus misleads that the nominee actually supports guns in schools.

Part 3

Ethos

Weber understands that credibility is important in any news stories and therefore tries to ensure that his article is credible by using direct quotes from the education secretary nominee DeVos. For instance, he quotes DeVos writing “DeVos said she would support "what the president-elect does.’” As such, he is more likely to convince the audience that the words he is using in the article are not actually his. This is an effective way since the audience would shift blame from him and towards DeVos. Additionally, the method he uses makes him maintain the neutrality required while reporting in a news article.

Pathos

In his article, Weber quotes DeVos who comments about people who have lost their loved ones due to gun violence. Weber quotes, “‘My heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to gun violence.’” This statement is enough to change the audience’s perception at once, and ironically, Weber uses the quote and fails to acknowledge why DeVos said so. While he succeeds in taking the audience through the sad effect of gun violence, Weber seems focused on other quotes that could lead one to imagine that DeVos supports that guns should be allowed in schools.

Logos

Although ethically Weber picks quotes from DeVos, he does so biasedly. Weber only focuses on the quotes that might lead that audience to understand that DeVos actually supports guns in schools. From the video embedded on the article, DeVos is at some point heard saying that, “That [allowing guns in school] is best left to locales and states to decide.” Clearly, DeVos is exempting herself from the responsibility of deciding when guns should be allowed in school. Weber fails to quote this important quote in his article. He thus seems to take a stand based on unimportant comments and leaves out important ones, which makes his article somewhat illogical.

References

Weber, P. (2017). Betsy DeVos tells Senate hearing she supports guns in schools because of grizzly bears. The Week. Retrieved April 13, 2017 from http://theweek.com/speedreads/673808/betsy-devos-tells-senate-hearing-supports-guns-schools-because-grizzly-bears