Fake Articles In Modern Media
Headline/Claim
The headline of this article claims that a white supremacist commits suicide after hearing that he is 14% black connecting him to a Sub-Saharan ancestry back in 2013. He was on the Trisha Goddard Show when his DNA test results were revealed and initially opposed the the fact that he was part black. The article mentions that upon finding out, Cobb questions the audience whether he looks black to them and regards the outcome of the test as nonsense. When the host of the show Trisha Goddard holds out a fist bump for him, congratulating him, he suddenly feels embarrassed from the truth and lynches himself in front a of the audience. The article also reports that people look down on his actions and no one including his followers feel sympathy for his death. The article does bring up all the events on the title so it does correctly represent the title but there are not a lot information given on how the lynching happened. The original source, Daily Mail, is linked at the bottom of the article and it confirms that Craig Cobb is indeed 14% black and that he does not want to associate himself with it, but the source never states of Cobb killing himself on the talk show and instead focuses on what he says on the show. The article does go in depth on his plans to oppress the blacks by angering them into using violence on him so he can sue them. The article is not from one of the dailydot. com or snopes. com fake news sites. I was intrigued by this article because of its title.
After reading the title, I thought that a man committing suicide after learning he is part black is extremely foolish and I was curious on why he had to go to the extreme of killing himself. After reading the article, I see that the information does not piece together well and there were many unanswered questions and holes to the story so I do not fully believe everything that is said. What makes it more interesting was that there was an attached video in the original link that shows the show’s interview with Cobb and his reaction to the test results.
Other Sources
There are no websites confirming that this story is fake news but there are evidence that Cobb did not commit suicide. The video of Cobb’s interview that can be found on Youtube never showed any abrupt cuts or stops claimed in the article. There were a few other sources including USA Today and The Daily Telegraph with this story but none of the other sources acknowledged anything about Cobbs lynching himself after knowing his test results.
Another reason why this article might be fake is because Cobb has a page that is dedicated to him on wikipedia and it never mentioned him being dead or date of his death. One last reason why the story of Cobb killing himself is probably fake is because he is still active with his plans after the interview on the show. There are articles about him in 2015 trying to purchase property to take over a town in North Dakota and naming it after Donald Trump.
Conclusion/Lesson
Social media is widely used today so information that is posted on them are going to be seen by many people whether or not it is true. It is such a huge platform that it will almost be impossible to catch all the websites and posts that are giving out false news. Today, most people rely on different websites or apps for news information and that can be a problem if the website or story they are looking at is giving these untrue claims. I have never posted a story on my feed that I later found was fake but I have thought that the Sandy Hooks incident was a hoax after reading a few articles and watching a youtube video that pointed out some holes in the story. I realized this was fake after Snopes confirmed it to be fake. Something that I learn is that fake news can be everywhere and can able to influence many peoples’ thoughts and the decisions they make.
