通过崔西Cothran
So a man reads a story about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop, and he decides to take action—taking a rifle into the restaurant and firing it before he is stopped, fortunately without harming anyone. This really happened, but the problem is the child sex ring story wasn’t true, and thus “Pizzagate” was born.
I have a lot of questions about this incident, but the underlying issue is the proliferation of fake news and our willingness to believe anything we see on the internet and in our social media feeds. Anyone can create a story, grab an image and post it—that’s not news, it’s fiction. I recall reading one quote on Facebook attributed to the presidential candidate I did not support. I laughed—it was funny—and it reinforced my feelings about this candidate, so I almost didn’t question it. But it seemed a little too good to be true so I went onfactcheck.org(a nonpartisan vetter of political discourse) and discovered that the quote was not verified in the magazine cited—it was fake news. But what if I hadn’t checked, believed it was true, and even fostered further misinformation by sharing it? Then not only would my opinion have been shaped by this erroneous info, but others’ would have been, too.
图书馆员和教师也意识到了这个问题。虽然互联网已经冲开的信息给大家的门，与事实混合是不实之词，但两人经常具有相同的外观。除非我们进行批判性思考，并采取验证了我们正在阅读和观看的准确性时，这些变戏法式的故事不胫而走，并塑造人们的思想和行为，甚至造成危险的后果，与Pizzagate。
Perhaps now more than ever, the role of the librarian is indispensable in helping students discern reputable sources of information from those that aren’t. Gale is proud to be a partner in this effort, and we continue to work every day to provide authoritative, fact-based information stated without bias or agenda. It seems there will always be people who deny the moon landing, the Holocaust, and now even the Sandy Hook tragedy, but you can be confident that our resources—databases, archives, and eBooks—are factual, and students and adults everywhere can use them with confidence (no fact-checking needed!).