Fake News: Fact & Fiction - Episode 1: The meaning of ‘fake news’
BBC Learning English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X5B93C6OKI

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:06 Hello, I'm Hugo. And I'm Sam. Welcome to Fake News: Fact and Fiction from BBC
0:11 Learning English. In this series we're looking at a topic that's on the tip of
0:15 everyone's tongues: fake news. Yes fake news - we'll find out what it is and what it
0:20 isn't. We'll look at where it comes from and how it can be dangerous and we'll
0:24 also show you how you can become a fake news
0:27 detective with tips and suggestions for developing your critical thinking skills.
0:31 We're starting today with the look at the word fake itself - what does it actually
0:34 mean and how do we use it? Over to you, Sam. Okay, well actually, thank you Hugo,
0:40 I want to show you something I prepared earlier so it's really over to me, Sam
0:49 So what do we know about the word fake? The word fake is first recorded in
0:54 the late 18th century. It's slang used by criminals in
0:58 London with meanings connected to their illegal activities. Today it can be an
1:04 adjective, a noun or a verb and is used when talking about things that are not
1:11 real, not genuine but are designed to make people think that they are real or are
1:17 genuine. So where do we see this word? The news is full of stories of fakes - fake
1:23 works of art, fake concert tickets, fake documents and fake qualifications to
1:29 name only a few. In some places you can buy fake designer goods even knowingly
1:36 or unknowingly. However those looking for a bargain could end up with
1:40 dangerous fake goods or even fake medicines. All these kinds
1:46 of fakes can be called counterfeit. Being fake isn't always for criminal
1:54 reasons, though. People and how they act can be called fake too, like smiling,
2:01 laughing being injured and even, even, even, yes, not confident but want to ace
2:07 that job interview - fake it till you make it. And sometimes what is fake
2:14 is more ethical. For example, if you wear fur is it real or fake? Fake fur is
2:20 regarded to be more ethical so much so that real fur is sometimes labelled as
2:28 fake. So knowing what is real and what is fake and what is fake fake can be tricky.
2:35 How do we choose what to buy, where to go, even where to stay? Many of us look
2:40 at reviews online but even then we have to watch out for fakes. The digital world
2:46 of social media and the internet are places where it can be very difficult to tell
2:51 what is fake and what is real and that brings us to perhaps the most common
2:56 phrase associated with the word fake these days - fake news
3:02 Fake news - do you hear what I am saying?
3:08 Something different here...Yes, so obviously those were fake ears.
3:13 And that's a fake laugh but it's a comedy classic fake ears really just to
3:17 demonstrate that not everything fake is bad. And can I say that laugh was a
3:23 counterfeit laugh? That's a really good question actually but no. So we use the
3:27 word counterfeit to describe real objects, real things that are fakes or
3:32 for example documents money, paintings, jewellery, they can all be counterfeit but
3:38 a laugh no matter how fake or false is not counterfeit no. And you, have you had
3:42 any experience with fake things? So I did have a friend who was setting up his own
3:48 business and he did ask me to write him a fake review online. What happened?
3:53 Ah no comment. What about you? I haven't bought anything fake or
3:58 counterfeit but I think we've seen you know fake t-shirts, fake shoes, bags
4:04 everywhere right. But now let's turn to fake news itself. Yes. So the words fake
4:09 and news as we know have existed separately for a very long time but as a
4:13 journalist Hugo, when did you start seeing them together being used as a thing. I
4:17 think we all became more familiar with it in the 2016 election campaign in the US
4:23 because Donald Trump was a big fan of it to essentially dismiss
4:27 anything he didn't like but you may be surprised to find out that he wasn't
4:31 actually the first one to use it. Earlier I was joined by Mike Wendling from BBC
4:36 Trending. He's written a piece called 'The almost complete history of fake news' and
4:41 he was here to explain more about the recent history of this term.
4:48 So people may be surprised that Donald Trump wasn't you know the first one to
4:51 use it back in the election in 2016. No actually it was his opponent Hillary
4:56 Clinton who was the first person to utter the words fake news and she was
5:01 describing a process by which people were inventing stories and they were
5:09 going viral on social media. These stories were fake, they were being written... there
5:14 was a famous example that was uncovered by BuzzFeed where these
5:18 stories were being written by people in Macedonia and those
5:22 people weren't necessarily interested in Trump or interested in bashing Hillary
5:27 Clinton. What they were interested in was money. Through Facebook they could
5:33 draw people into their websites and then make money off of advertising and
5:38 that's why they wrote these sensationalised completely made-up
5:44 stories that we now have come to know as fake news.
5:47 And misinformation you know fake news has existed for many many
5:52 years right but now the difference is social media and how easy it is to you
5:59 know spread this kind of disinformation. That's right - there's always been
6:04 mistakes, propaganda, spin, or just lies by political candidates, that has always
6:13 existed. This is a new type of information and a new type of how
6:20 information spreads online and what that means is that it can be spread faster
6:27 than ever before by people who might be anonymous or might be thousands of
6:34 kilometres away. So it's really a challenge for
6:40 media organisations, social media organisations and really all of us to
6:47 try and figure out how to separate the truth from the fiction. And you can find
6:53 out more about Mike's work on the BBC Trending blog on the BBC News website
6:57 and also on the BBC World Service. Mike thanks for joining us. Thank you.
7:03 So Sam, what did you make about what Mike was saying there? I thought it was
7:06 really really interesting and he mentioned words like spin and propaganda which we
7:11 are going to talk about more in a later programme but one word I wanted to pick up
7:15 today was the term 'viral' that he used. So viral is the adjective and it comes from
7:21 the noun virus which as you know is a medical term and as you also know a
7:26 virus can spread really, really quickly so when we use something viral when we
7:32 use the term viral, to go viral online, it basically means it spreads really really
7:36 quickly across the Internet. Yes we all know about it, very interesting. Now
7:40 before we wrap up for today, Sam, remind us about the word fake. OK, absolutely.
7:45 So fake means not real it is not genuine and grammatically the word fake can be a
7:51 verb. So you can fake a smile, you can fake a laugh, as Hugo did before, you
7:56 can also fake being confident. It can also be a noun so a picture is a fake,
8:02 the diamond ring my grandmother left me was a fake for example, and it is
8:07 commonly used as an adjective so I was talking earlier about the fake review
8:11 which I of course didn't write and also if you're unlucky you might buy fake
8:17 tickets for a concert or things like that. If we're talking about fake objects
8:21 like documents, money or copies of well-known brands for example you can
8:26 also use the word counterfeit. Thank you, Sam and that's all from us today. Do
8:30 join us again next time on Fake News: Fact and Fiction.
8:33 Thank you, bye-bye. Goodbye.