VALDOSTA — Amanda Faircloth of Tifton once watched a documentary on the Science Channel about an amazing, new discovery.

“They’d found a mermaid that had washed ashore,” Faircloth said. “I was blown away and amazed.”

However, when she went online to learn more about the mermaid, she discovered it was made up, in other words, fake.

Fake stories such as a mermaid washing ashore are nothing new. Mermaids themselves are creatures invented for stories. They pop up in the “Arabian Nights,” sailors’ tales and even classic Disney movies. But distinguishing between a story and a fact can be difficult, especially when a story is posing as fact. 

Anyone with a computer can pass off a mermaid as a fact. It is often left up to the reader to distinguish between the two.

The SunLight Project team asked residents across the project’s coverage area – Dalton, Milledgeville, Moultrie, Thomasville, Tifton and Valdosta, Ga., and Live Oak, Fla., – how they get their news and how they protect themselves from fake news. 

Fake news, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, is any false story “that appears to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.”

Some of the people interviewed said they don’t take any news — regardless of where they get it — seriously. And, if they do, they double check the information either through other news organizations or word of mouth.

Carol Jones of Thomasville said she gets her news from all kinds of sources.

“I think my trusted sources are traditional news sources — publications that have a track record,” she said.

Jones said she prefers respected newspapers and other print sources that use more than one source to substantiate information.

“I trust they are using time-honored methods of reporting news,” said Jones, a retired educator, who today is executive director of the South Georgia Low-Cost Spay and Neuter Clinic and holds positions in other animal-welfare organizations.

Fellow Thomasville resident Sharon Edwards researches some news she hears to determine if it is true and how it will affect her “ecosystem” from Albany to Tallahassee, Fla.

For Edwards, the pastor at Kingdom Faith Global Ministries Church in Albany and head of the Thomasville-Thomas County Homeless Coalition, news sources must prove their trustworthiness and present facts, not opinions.

She considers social media and Twitter as tools for entertainment purposes only.

Craig Lambert of Brandon, Fla., believes news has become more about entertainment than about spreading information. He gets his news mostly from apps on his phone and said he doesn’t trust anything at first glance.

“I think everything is suspect,” Lambert said. “I’ll trust something if it comes from multiple sources or if I can verify it myself. I like to go to the original source.”

As an example, Lambert said when he heard CNN talking about what President Donald Trump said during a speech regarding Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s supreme leader, he didn’t believe it was completely accurate.

“The stuff they were saying just didn’t seem right, like it was out of context,” Lambert said. “So, I went online and watched the speech, and it wasn’t anything like what they said.”

Lambert said he thinks media outlets have agendas, which can be difficult to avoid. The best way to avoid them, he said, is to get a mix of news and trust those in the news who give the other side a voice.

“It doesn’t matter if they’re liberal or conservative. They’re both trying to drive an agenda,” Lambert said. “I think (Sean) Hannity (a Fox News host) is probably the closest thing to unbiased. Although, liberals will argue otherwise, but at least he gives the liberal side a shot.”

Regardless of whether it’s a national TV network as large as Fox News or a much smaller local news outlet, all media organizations are finding a large part of the audience on digital sites, especially younger people on the go. 

In Valdosta, 20-year-old Kelly Childers said she consumes her news “exclusively” online. 

She said her local trusted news source is WALB, and for national news she checks both Fox and CNN.

When looking at both news sites, she said it’s always good to look at views that differ from her own. She believes each news provider has its own biases, which is why she looks at two sides for a broader picture, she said.

“You can’t just go by one site,” Childers said, about determining if news is true or false.

Childers said one of the keys to a trustworthy news organization or website is whether it has trusted sources in the articles. She said a red flag indicating a story isn’t trustworthy is when the story has a name without a title or a source that, when researched, only leads to dead ends.

She looks at news on a weekly basis rather than a daily basis, and reading local news is her preference rather than national news, she said.

Childers said she prefers local news because “it feels closer to home.” Because Childers knows more about the area and the people, she said it can be easier to determine if local news is trustworthy. 

Knowing where to get trustworthy news is important, but local information isn’t always the most reliable, several people said. Facebook makes it possible for anyone, from grandma to a distant cousin’s ex-girlfriend now living in Europe, to “report the news.” According to the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation, more than 40 percent of American adults in 2016 got their news on Facebook.

Dalton resident Jeff Salley said he gets most of his news from Facebook. He said he doesn’t watch the TV news networks at all.

“And the TV news channels just seem to be mostly talk,” Salley said. “I watch a little bit of the local news. I read the paper. But I guess I get my news mostly from what my friends share on Facebook.”

Salley said he is usually pretty good at not getting fooled by fake stories that his friends post. He even points out when some stories don’t seem right.

“I’ve got friends … God bless them. I don’t know where they get this stuff,” Salley said. “One gentleman is a friend of my mother. I’ve pointed out a couple of things he’s posted that were just wrong, and I recall another time somebody else pointed out something that was wrong and told him he should do a little research before he shared things. He said, ‘Well, if I see something that’s interesting I share it, and I figure if something’s wrong with it somebody will point it out.'”

To Salley, fake news is just that – fake. He said they’re stories that are deliberately wrong and not by mistake.

Tara Cadden Pinkowski of Tifton said Facebook is a huge part of sharing fake news through click-bait links with catchy headlines.

“Do your own research after reading news,” Pinkowski said. “It’s time consuming but worth it so you aren’t spreading stories to fit someone’s agenda.”

Fake news is not new, but President Trump has brought it to the forefront, Carol Jones said.

If a news story is biased, unsubstantiated and offers no opposing view, Jones is not likely “to buy into it.”

Jones said she might have been duped by a fake news report and passed along a message that was a hoax without realizing it was not true.

She is more skeptical of news coverage today than in the past.

Baldwin County residents consume news from a wide variety of sources. Georgia College student Caleb Scoggins said if he finds a story that seems unusual, he would probably do a Google search to look up some other sources and see what they say about it.

“I do know of people that have believed a fake news story before,” Scoggins said. “But If I found a story that seemed unusual, I’d … do my research if I didn’t know it was fake.”

Mena Wade of Millidgeville said she doesn’t know of anyone that’s ever been tricked by a fake news story. She said she did see something in the paper years ago she knew was not what had happened, though.

“I don’t necessarily believe everything I read, but I don’t go searching out what I don’t know unless it’s important to me,” Wade said.

For Nick Carroll of Valdosta, many people call things they disagree with fake news. He said he believes most news organizations are fair. A proclaimed “news freak,” Carroll and his wife, Hanna, go to the Starbucks on St. Augustine Road in Valdosta every morning for breakfast and to read the New York Times.

He doesn’t read every story because it would take too long, but he said he trusts the NYT because of its long and illustrious history. His news isn’t limited to one paper, however. At the end of the day, he tunes into CBS at 6:30 p.m. followed by the BBC 7 p.m. news. He is also a subscriber to The Valdosta Daily Times.

He said he likes to get quotes from a lot of news sources to get an idea of what’s going on.

“I read and watch as much as I can,” Carroll said. “Then digest it and form my own opinion. You have to start somewhere.”

No one is perfect. 

Mistakes happen. 

Newspaper leaders are quick to point out there is a big difference between making a mistake and knowingly publishing false or misleading information. 

For example, PolitiFact maintains a database of imposter news sites. 

PolitiFact describes itself as “a nonpartisan fact-checking website to sort out the truth in American politics. It is a project of the Tampa Bay Times, a publishing company based in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Tampa Bay Times is owned by The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists.”

PolitiFact reports, “At first look, BostonTribune.com certainly seems a trustworthy source. So does KMT11.com. And ABCNews.com.co. Even 24wpn.com has an official ring to it. But all of these websites peddle bogus stories, either by making up fake news or sharing it from other sources. And it’s not always apparent to readers that’s the case.”

PolitiFact partnered with Facebook in an effort to identify false reporting through a fact-checking process and by identifying imposter sites. 

Some of the faux news sites in the PolitiFact list include:

— ABCNews.com.co

— ConservativeFlashNews.com

— Fox-News24.com 

— NBC.com.co

— NYDailyNews-TV.com

— Politicono.com

— TheNewYorkEvening.com

— TheUSANews.com

The complete list can be found online at: http://bit.ly/2mz5sMj

These faux news sites and numerous social media posts have been exposed for the publication of articles proven to be false or completely made up. 

Noticeably absent on the sites are any corrections of errors or false information.

 Legitimate news organizations have a standard practice of acknowledging and correcting errors of fact, no matter how small. 

Correcting the Record

When a name is spelled wrong, a date is incorrect or a fact is misinterpreted, a legitimate organization will inform its readers of the mistake and tell them the correct information.

Every newspaper included in the SunLight Project – the Tifton Gazette, the Moultrie Observer, the Valdosta Daily Times, the Thomasville Times-Enterprise, the Dalton Daily Citizen, the Milledgeville Union-Recorder, the Live Oak Suwannee Democrat, the Jasper News and the Mayo Free Press – publishes corrections.

The Valdosta Daily Times made about 20 corrections for 2017. During the year, the paper published more than 4,500 stories — a number that includes byline reports and press releases from verified sources, but not sports stories. Most of the corrections the paper made were what most would regard as small errors. 

For example, a story published Oct. 22 on early voting in Lowndes County contained the wrong hours for the week. Early voting was 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Oct. 23-27, and 7 a.m.-7 p.m., Oct. 30 through Nov. 3, at Lowndes County Board of Elections, 2808 N. Oak St. The Times originally reported the early voting times from 7 a.m.-7 p.m., Oct. 23-27.

The mistake was corrected in print and online. 

Other mistakes might seem negligible, but can affect people’s livelihood, making a correction even more important. 

In a story on Elite Gaming, published in the Aug. 17 edition, The Times incorrectly stated an unrelated company was no longer in business. The error came from a simple misunderstanding and, after a phone call from the owners, a correction was published.

The correction said the company is still in business and has been in business since 1974. There is a business license registered with Lowndes County.

Newspapers are not embarrassed by their corrections. On the contrary, it proves that newspapers put truth on a higher pedestal than pride.

When looking at the other papers in the SunLight Project coverage area – Dalton, Milledgeville, Moultrie, Thomasville, Tifton and Valdosta, Ga., and Live Oak, Fla., – each paper has made mistakes, but they will never hide the mistakes and will always strive to correct them.

The Moultrie Observer published 14 corrections and six clarifications in 2017. Including sports, the Moultrie newspaper published more than 800 byline stories in 2017, and a multitude more submitted stories and standalone photos. Not counting sports, the byline count is about 550.

For the Observer, a correction occurs when the newspaper reporter or editor has incorrectly stated a fact; a clarification is when the reporter has correctly reported what a source said but the source was in error.

For examples of a correction, in July, an advertising representative forwarded the newsroom a photo of a shopping-spree winner. The email named the winner but didn’t name the store representative. The ad rep said she thought it was a certain person, and the paper went with that. It wasn’t him.

In October, the Observer listed the complainant as a man named Andrew in an assault as a person who lived on a small road outside of Moultrie. 

The newspaper received complaints from the person’s family because as far as they knew, he was in California. Upon further research, the Observer learned it had copied the name down wrong from the police report. The complainant was a man named Andre who had the same last name as Andrew — only one letter difference, but he lived on the same street as the unrelated Andrew had lived when he was a Moultrie resident.

An example of a clarification for the Observer is, in October, a local woman submitted a photo of her grandfather, who she believed to be the oldest veteran in the county. 

When the Observer published the photo, the newspaper stated the woman said she believed her grandfather to be the oldest veteran in the county, but another family contacted the paper saying its relative was older. The Observer ran a clarification. 

Then a third family contacted the newspaper saying their relative was older than either of the others. 

Again, the paper ran a clarification, along with a note asking if anyone knew a veteran who was older than the three already listed. The Observer never actually determined who the oldest veteran was before one of the contenders passed away, and the matter was dropped.

In Live Oak, The Suwannee Democrat, Mayo Free Press and Jasper News had a combined seven corrections in the three papers for 2017, four in the Suwannee Democrat and three in the Mayo Free Press. Also, combined they had about 1,400 byline stories in the three newspapers.

The corrections were:

— four people misidentified, two in graduation sections, one in a photo from homecoming and one in a story.

— one came after misreporting the amount Suwannee County paid its attorney.

— one covered three different miscues in one edition with a wrong date in a headline, the wrong headline on a story and a mugshot photograph with the wrong story.

— one correction involved a story about North Florida Community College offering a new program that was no longer being offered.

The Union-Recorder published seven corrections in 2017. While most of the errors pertained to attributing information to the wrong source, the newspaper did incorrectly report the minimum monthly water bill for Baldwin County water customers in its May 27-29 edition. 

The seven Union-Recorder corrections were spread across an estimated 1,000 articles.

The Tifton Gazette ran 16 corrections in 2017.

Most corrected dates or times of events, titles of individuals cited in stories or other minor information. There were also corrections to Associated Press stories written by the AP.

If any reader has come across an error in any story published in any SunLight Project paper, feel free to contact the newsroom.

Telling the Difference 

The Transparency Project of Georgia recently published a report headlined “Newspaper credibility depends on transparency,” saying, “The expression ‘fake news’ is unfortunate and the term itself inaccurate. If it’s fake, it’s not news, and if it’s real news, it’s not fake.” The Transparency Project’s director is Jim Zachary who is also the editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and vice-president of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. 

The Transparency Project offers differences between spurious reports on social media or faux “news” sites and legitimate news sources: 

— Credible news coverage includes verifiable news sources, names readers will recognize or that they can easily verify.

— Credible articles contain multiple sources, not just a single source with an agenda.

— Credible coverage is not agenda driven, and reliable websites are not isolated to single issues, serving as mere partisan mouthpieces.

— Credible news sites have legitimate URLs, ending in .com, .net, .org, etc.

— Credible articles are published with bylines and datelines, specifying the names of reporters and editors who can be easily identified and verified.

— Credible news sources correct mistakes in an open and transparent way.

This is part two of a two-part series. The first part was published in the Sunday, Jan. 14, edition of The Valdosta Daily Times.

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Charles Oliver, Eve Guevara, Patti Dozier, Alan Mauldin, Thomas Lynn and Will Woolever. Editors are Jim Zachary and Dean Poling. To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256