How Can You Tell Satire from Misinformation?

Some satire websites go to great lengths to label themselves as satirical. Others don’t. So what happens when people mistake satire for real information? In this episode, we look at how satire gets labeled - and mislabeled - online. Daniel Funke from Politifact and satirists Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh join.

Politifact: https://www.politifact.com/

Resources
How a disinformation network exploited satire to become a popular source of false news on Facebook: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/jan/21/one-most-popular-false-news-sites-facebook-part-pa/
Amanpour & Company parody: https://twitter.com/jeremylevick/status/1245174763808608256

Don’t forget to Like & Subscribe: https://bit.ly/3dziPoH

Take on Fake debunks claims you’ve seen or shared online to show you how to stay informed. Host Hari Sreenivasan follows the Internet rabbit hole of misinformation, reading beyond a single headline to find credible sources to uncover the truth.

#TakeOnFake

Interesting. Okay, so as far
as going outside,

I think there's a lot of confusion
that people have about going outside -

what're some things we should
be looking out for there?

It's funny, I've never been parodied
in all my time in journalism,

so it's kind of fun, right?

It was poking fun at another show
I worked for, called Amanpour & Company.

Since we were already researching
satire and misinformation,

I decided to corner these two guys,

and ask them to explain the joke to me.

Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh

are comedians and satirists
living in Brooklyn.

If you're a comedian
or a satirist, which is like,

I guess somewhat pretentious sounding
word that I'm not going to use.

RS: But we're pretentious.
JL: No. We are.

RS: Yeah.

You guys recently spoofed
Amanpour & Company.

What gave you that idea?

We were like, sort of consuming
a lot of that type of video, and ...

Was it basically like, "Hey, there's
a brown guy on there. I know a brown guy."

(Laughing) No, it was a much
smarter approach than just that.

It was like it's really
funny for us to just like,

say a Jeff Foxworthy joke
and be really serious about it.

I saw a man driving on the
highway, and he hit a deer,

and he called it "fast food".
RS: Right.

So we're seeing how satire is being used

to actively disinform people.

Did you ever think it
would be used this way?

That's always a risk with satire.

It helps if you have like a big name

that's behind your content,
like The Onion or SNL.

When you're doing stuff
and releasing it yourself,

over the internet especially,

there aren't those sort of labels
that perceive the content,

so there is a risk of spreading
misinformation and disinformation.

Satire getting mistaken for real news -

you see this everywhere online.

Take this for example,

an attention grabbing headline
tweeted out by the New Yorker,

"Trump optimistic about winning
Nobel Prize in medicine."

Several commenters responded, appearing
to believe the information was true.

Some hoped it was from The Onion.

It wasn't.

But it was satire, how can we tell?

Well, click through to the article,

and you will see

that the New Yorker has gone
to great lengths to label it as satire.

They do this with everything
from The Borowitz Report,

which is a satire column.

Even the thumbnail on Twitter
has a clue in the column's tagline -

quote "Not the news."

This is an example of a well labeled
article from a known satire website,

and still, people were fooled.

So, what happens when a piece
of satire has no context?

Worse yet, what happens when that
context has been deliberately removed?

That's what one reporter found
in a network of websites

that takes pieces of satire
from their original context,

strips them of any labels or disclaimers,

then republishes them
as genuine looking "news" articles.

So we have seen hundreds of these sites
proliferate since around December,

and they're getting a lot
of shares on Facebook.

One site that we were monitoring

was regularly one of the most popular
sources of false news on Facebook.

It was getting hundreds
of thousands of engagements

on each of the articles that posted.

While copying satire
sounds like, on its face,

a pretty basic way to spread
misinformation or disinformation,

these sites are run by people
that really do know what they're doing.

Why do they do it?

PolitiFact has investigated
hundreds of these websites,

and on almost all of them,
there are Google AdSense trackers,

so that means that any
click on that website

will go towards that website's
Google ad impressions.

So essentially, the more
people see that article,

the more the owner
of the website gets paid.

How do you tell
when something is a joke

versus something is real news?

So you always want to do as much
research on a website as possible

before sharing something.

So always go to that website,
and find their About page.

If there's not a lot of information there,

or there are spelling errors,
or it seems kind of generic,

that might be a signal to you
that the website's not reliable.

And when in doubt, if you can't find
anything out about the website,

Just don't share it.

It's totally fine to not share
something on social media.

It's better to be safe than sorry.

Satire is meant to provoke,
to get an emotional reaction,

to catch your attention, maybe
get a laugh or change your mind,

but satire is not meant
to spread misinformation.

So don't get fooled online.

Read beyond the headlines.

If something seems so absurd
that it might have been written

by guys like our friends Rajat
and Jeremy - maybe it was.

Until next time.
Don't spread fake news.

Keep it real.

I'm Hari Sreenivasan.
This was Take on Fake.

My mom really wanted
to explain to every single replier

who didn't get it. (Laughing)

So the answer to your question
is to get the mom that would ...

I would say yeah.

Here's the " Wow, he had have
his mom explain the joke."

Right, I think I should give my mom,
like, a burner account or something,

so it can't be traced to me. (Laughing)