By Mark Bialczak
LPL Communications Specialist
Anybody can write just about anything on social medial and make it look real.
Believe it.
That’s why the issue of fake news is such a hot-button topic. You’ve heard the phrase coming from the man who’s now in the White House, have you not?
From 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, Tom Boll will preside over the session “Is It Real or Is It Fake? News in Our World Today” in the Liverpool Public Library’s Carman Community Room. Boll was a longtime editor in the newsroom of The Post-Standard and Syracuse.com before becoming a professor teaching classes in news literacy at Onondaga Community College and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
He’ll discuss how you can determine what sources to trust.
In February, The Associated Press ran a story about this very topic, and reporter Carolyn Thompson went to Boll as a source.
“Teachers from elementary school through college are telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there’s a difference,” she wrote as her lead.
Indeed, Boll said in the story:
“‘To me, it’s the new civics course,’ said Tom Boll, after wrapping up his own course at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. With everyone now able to post and share, gone are the days of network news and newspaper editors serving as the primary gatekeepers of information, Boll, an adjunct professor, said. ‘The gates are wide open,’ he said, and it’s up to us to figure out what to believe.’“
Boll said he started getting asked to take this lesson on the road, so to speak, after that real story found the masses. He was glad to take on that responsibility.
“The bottom line is that we, as citizens of this country, need to know how to figure out what the sources for reliable, actionable information are so we can make informed decisions to keep our democracy working,” Boll told me. “So I’m eager to spread the news literacy ‘gospel’ to all who want to hear it.”
He’s a good choice for that duty. I worked with Boll at the paper/website for a quarter-century. In fact, he was the sports editor who hired me as his assistant in the 1980s, and impressed me in that department daily with his even-handed news sense as reporters worked their beats.
At the session, he’ll tell patrons how to consider what they come across in much the same manner.
“They’ll get some tools to help them detect misinformation packaged as news, and I hope they’ll be inspired to use them every time they hear, see or read information. And while we’ll examine fake news — I hate that term — I hope to also touch on news in general,” Boll said.
If you plan to attend, he said, “Keep up with the news and come with an open mind. And be prepared to ask questions.”
