TOW #22 - Chinese Mistake Satire on Trump for Real News

Chinese Mistake Satire on Trump for Real News, written by Javier Hernández, was a very entertaining read. Being a serious post about satire, the piece almost seemed a satire itself. According to Hernández, various news outlets in China have been mistakenly interpreting satirical American news stories as true. For example, it was published in China that Donald Trump had all the telephones in the White House. On another occasion, Chinese reports claimed that Trump was becoming paranoid over the fact that Barack Obama, including the quote, "I know he's still in here!" While his immediate purpose was seemingly to make fun of satire's effect, Hernández wrote his piece in an attempt to raise concern over a larger issue: the spreading of fake news.

Hernández writes about absurd examples such as the Obama's hiding in the White House, and these examples are quite clearly false. It is concerning, though, because if international news outlets are believing straight-up untrue stories, then imagine how susceptible they are to purely biased stories posted by different American media sources. It would be interesting to hear what Hernández thinks about bias in the media. Of course, fake news stories and purely fake, but what about exaggerated stories, and ones that present the writer's bias as true? It's lucky that the false stories the Chinese intercepted were minor, because writing has the power to heavily influence people. It's not something that should be manipulated or taken advantage of.

I don't know what the right answer is. Should we stop publishing satire? No. Then how can we prevent occurrences like this from taking place? These are questions which come to mind when reading the text. Hernández writes a very thought-provoking piece and effectively brings light to the dangers of fake news, although he does not offer his insight on how exactly to solve the issue.