Where Do You Get Your Fake News?
We’ve all heard about fake news. It is getting harder and harder to tell what is real news and what is fake. Pew Research Center has found some surprising news about where people get their “news,” fake or otherwise.
What is news is subjective: One person’s news is another’s fake news. What it is surprising is that more than 60% of Americans get news from social media. In other words, many are still getting news from traditional sources, but a majority of US adults are getting news from social media.
Most people get news on just one site, only 26% get news on 2 sites and 10% get news on 3 sites or more. The research also shows that 20% of social media news users also get news nightly via network news television shows. Some 30% turn to local TV news. Facebook makes up the largest audience universe, and nearly 40% of Facebook users access local TV news, 25% check cable news, 23% watch network nightly news, 23% listen to news on the radio and 15% check print newspapers. More than 60% say they get news on Facebook.
What can we learn? It’s simple – from a public relations perspective, you now have access to a medium—social media—that many look to for news coverage. The best sources for news placement are Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. From a news reader perspective, watch out for fake news. Facebook says it will try to review news, but it is an aggregator, not an editor.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.