Kerby Anderson

Fake news is still in the news. In fact, PolitiFact designated “Fake News” as the “2016 Lie of the Year.” Some of the examples they cited are: “Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop” and “Thousands of people at a Donald Trump rally chanted: We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back.” None of these or other stories are true.

Robert Knight in a recent column laments the “Fake War on Fake News.” He welcomes the interest that the media now has in exposing fake news. The problem, he says, is that they’re looking in the wrong places. “They need to head to the nearest mirror.” He gives a number of examples of media malpractice and incompetence.

Last month, Facebook announced that it would rely on fact-checkers in order to reduce the amount of fake news on their website. Unfortunately, some of the fact-checkers they planned to use raise concerns. Katrina Trinko, writing in The Daily Signal, explained that Facebook will be using many liberal fact-checkers that have had a history of flagging content that was actually true or labeling certain social statistics as meaningless.

So how should Christians respond to all of this discussion about fake news? Karl Vaters believes that “Christians Must Stop Taking the Fake News Bait.” He provides a 4-step checklist to help us stop passing fake news along.  First, find out if it is true. You can do that using your digital device. If you don’t find corroborating evidence of it being truthful, then step 2: don’t post it.

Third, if you are unable to find out if it is true, do not post it. This should be obvious, but apparently isn’t common practice. Finally, if it is true and helpful, then post it. He says we should make sure it is helpful as well as truthful.

This year, there will be more fake news stories. We should do our best as Christians, not to take the bait.