How 'Fake News' Damages Your Company and What You Can Do About It

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - March 6, 2017 - PRLog -- Since the election, the idea of "fake news" has been prominently debated. Whether from willful blindness or a general sense of gullibility, stories that appear real have spread throughout social media…but this is not a new phenomenon.

200 years ago it was reported that after cutting down a cherry tree, a six year old George Washington guiltily told his father, "I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet." Similarly, Paul Revere didn't ride through the streets of Concord, Massachusetts yelling, "The British are coming" and Isaac Newton did not discover gravity when an apple fell on his head.

While these stories are technically fake news, they are distinguished from today's fake news in their intent. When Mason Locke Weems penned the cherry tree tale in 1806, he was trying to illustrate Washington's virtue so as to inspire young Americans to emulate him. Elias Phinney relayed Revere's ride as an act of patriotism. And John Conduitt used Newton's apple story as a metaphor so the less educated could understand the concept of gravity.

The fake news in our current political climate is more in the vein of Marie Antoinette's, "Let them eat cake." This quote was inaccurately attributed to Antoinette when a French Revolutionary anti-establishment pamphlet distributed it as a cartoon. In publishing such an untruth, the author was not trying to generate a metaphorical narrative; rather he was seeking to fuel the insurrection and overthrow of the French government.

As Antoinette can attest, fake news is inherently destructive in nature. Whether it's from protesters or government leaders, these stories have no purpose but to...

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