After last weeks reading, the idea of what ‘fake news’ really is has still been on my mind. Another form of media, which I wonder if could be considered ‘fake news’, is documentary films and TV series. The recent 8 episode Netflix documentary series The Disappearance of Madeline McCann has become unavoidable. I haven’t even watched it yet it feels like I have with their being countless memes about Madeline McCann and her parents appearing all over social media. Yet is the documentary telling the whole truth? Could it be possibly bias or have a particular agenda like certain newspaper and news television shows do? A friend of mine who has seen the documentary series spoke to me about how a lot of documentary creators as well as viewers try and create their own story and view the documentary in a particular way that suits their theory on what happened, in this case to Madeline McCann. From the mass of memes on Facebook it seems the general consensus is that McCann’s parents are guilty of playing a role in their disappearance. But are these viewers and meme creators further contributing to the perhaps bias views of the documentary maker and sharing what could possibly be ‘fake news’. Werner Herzog, who created the 2005 documentary film Grizzly Man has said himself that ‘Besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means ‘feature film’ in disguise’. After taking a class purely focused on the lies documentary films tell the audience, I don’t believe any documentary can be unbiased or completely truthful. I also believe that documentary can therefore be considered ‘fake news’. No the information being presented to might not be completely current or breaking news but documentaries often cover the same subject matters that we see on the news e.g. murders and environmental and humanitarian issues. Whether it is intentional or not, documentaries don’t always tell the entire truth of the subject matter which makes me see no issue with labeling documentary as ‘fake news’.

This week’s reading Defining ‘Fake News’ by Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim and Richard Ling, detailed the basics of ‘fake news’ with this including what can be considered as ‘fake news’. It surprised me to read that there can be advertising and public relations related ‘fake news’. The example of advertising as ‘fake news’ we watched in class featured a cheap flights segment on a morning breakfast show which was largely an advertisement for Jetstar. Prior to this class I never would have considered this to be ‘fake news’, I would have just consumed the segment and gone onto the Jetstar website as if it were on my own accord. Yet realistically this was a shameless advertisement that the morning show was highly likely paid to include, and is most likely false information as there are definitely cheaper airlines than Jetstar. ‘News is also a unique commodity, for while it is sold to audiences, news audiences are subsequently sold to advertisers, making it vulnerable to market forces. (McManus, 1992.) Even newspapers can provide advertisements that appear to be news. Television show reviews appear like news but are in actuality paid posts, with banners at the top of the article and disclaimers stating no news or editorial staff were involved in the creation of the article (Deziel 2014).

Something else I had never considered that would go under the umbrella of ‘fake news’ is click bait. Previously I had only ever considered click bait to be a phenomenon on YouTube within the lifestyle, fashion and beauty channel community. Many YouTubers often title their videos with exciting lies in order to get views yet I wasn’t overly aware click bait flooded into more political content. Misleading articles on Facebook and edited YouTube videos are becoming increasingly more common and they often create a lot of anger and frustration amongst readers due to the alleged news never actually occurring or being far less dramatic than what the article/video headline suggests (Tandoc, Lim and Ling 2017 p. 146.)

References

Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim and Richard Ling 2017, ‘Defining ‘Fake News’’, Digital Journalism, vol. 6, no. 2, pp.137-155

In week 1 we had our first Friday class in the TV studios, which was an interesting and slightly overwhelming experience. One of the major reasons I picked this studio was due to its usage of the TV studios. I have never used the space or any of the equipment and as this is the last year of my degree and therefore my last studio, I really wanted to familiarise myself with a film and television studio space before I graduate. There are multiple roles within the studio I want to experiment with throughout the semester, particularly camera operator, vision switcher and producer/writer. I definitely see myself in the future working within the film and television industry so this is an ideal opportunity to experiment and learn about the varying roles you can undertake in the industry. Not only do I want to familiarise myself with the equipment but the manner in which a studio runs during filming. There are obviously a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs within a studio and they need to all come together to work as a team. Learning how to effectively communicate with co-workers, work efficiently and utilise organisational tools like a run sheet within the studio is definitely experience I would like to have before entering the professional media workforce.

Throughout the semester as we become more familiar with the roles and safety practices I think using the studio will become a lot more fun and less stressful as everything won’t seem so foreign. As it is early in the semester my group is still unsure of the style we want to present our fact check in but I think as we all start to grow in experience within the studio we will grow in confidence in experimenting with filming and editing.

For the rest of the semester I will be working in a group with Oscar, Alex, Roie and Lochie. From the list of fact check options provided we decided to focus on the question “Have women become better educated whilst the gender pay gap hasn’t budged?” I did find a majority of both the climate change and gender related questions interesting however as a woman the question we chose is something I’m genuinely passionate about and wanting to research and I think my groups passion for the subject matter will show in our effort and work.

As we are still in the early stages of creating our final fact check work, it’s important to utilise this time for research and creating a plan of direction. In terms of individual research the first place I went was YouTube where I searched ‘gender pay gap 2019’ and had a browse through the results in hopes of finding news segments and political discussions. The top result was from a really interesting channel, PragerU, which posts a lot of political content, specifically interviewing people on the street about certain topics. A video they posted in February of 2019 is asking women at California State University if they still believe the wage gap is real. I think featuring vox pops and interviews from a variety of people is vital and I definitely want to include in our work as it indicates we are coming from a non-bias perspective and something.

Notably I came across other videos discussing gender pay from The Economist channel and Liberal Democrats (Australia). The Economist video ‘Why are women paid less than men?’ was a really good simple explanation whereas the video from Liberal Democrats (Australia) featured Senator David Leyonhjelm questioning the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

As our question is very current I think YouTube is a great place for basic research as content about gender pay is regularly being uploaded but I would definitely still like to utilise the RMIT library for articles and facts.