stories or target audiences with news that’s skewed toward one political viewpoint. With shorter news cycles, the fact-checking process used by many news outlets might be skimped on or skipped altogether in the rush to deliver news before competitors. Most people can agree on this: It will take a concerted effort by the public and the media to fix the problem of misinformation and slow the spread of fake news. And it appears that the effort is already working. Many sites with viral stories that have been proved false by fact- checkers have already shut down, like the Boston Tribune and Denver Guardian . But many more have popped up in their place. “Users on social media need to call out people who are sharing this stuff, and journalists need to continue to adhere to professional standards,” says Anthony Adornato, a media professor at Ithaca College in New York. “It’s a team effort.” —Carl Stoffers & Jennifer Hackett DO THE MATH ON THE NEXT PAGE
where most graphs start, to make a change seem more significant than it is. Alternatively, graphs that show data where small changes have a big impact might purposefully start at 0 to make significant changes look small. Statistics and graphs are powerful tools that can quickly communicate information, but they’re only as good as the people who create them. CRUMBLING STANDARDS Fake or highly distorted news is nothing new. The earliest American newspapers were often used by political parties to spread lies about opposing candidates. It wasn’t until the 20th century that objectivity and accuracy became the standard for professional news outlets. But those standards have weakened in recent years with the huge growth of the internet, social media, and cable news. All three make it easier to share made up
numbers as something other than human,” he says. “But numbers that we use in the everyday world are very much human and they’re created, manipulated, and presented by humans.” According to Seife, there are several common ways that people use numbers and graphs to mislead. You have already seen an example of the easiest and most frequently used one: simply making up numbers. Even when percentages are supported by polls, it’s important to determine what they represent. Ask who was polled and what specific questions were asked. You want to make sure you fully understand what’s being evaluated or measured. Graphs can also easily be used to mislead. By changing the scale on a graph, “we can make big effects look small and small effects look big,” says Seife. Graphs might also start at a point other than 0, which is
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