When Fact-Checking and ‘BBC Standards’ Are Helpless: ‘Fake Newsworthy Event’ Manipulation and the Reaction of the ‘High-Quality Media’ on It

Artem Zakharchenko, Tomáš Peráček, Solomiia Fedushko, Yuriy Syerov and Olha Trach
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Artem Zakharchenko: Institute of Journalism, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 02000 Kyiv, Ukraine
Tomáš Peráček: Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, 820 05 Bratislava, Slovakia
Solomiia Fedushko: Department of Social Communication and Information Activities, Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 79007 Lviv, Ukraine
Yuriy Syerov: Department of Social Communication and Information Activities, Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 79007 Lviv, Ukraine
Olha Trach: Department of Social Communication and Information Activities, Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 79007 Lviv, Ukraine

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: Fact-checking and journalists professional standards usually are considered to be the best fail-safe against manipulations in media. However, we found that newsmakers are able to manipulate even the audience of so-called ‘high-quality media’ who practice all mentioned approaches. To prove this we have refined the concept of ‘pseudo-event’, introduced by D.J. Boorstin, by defining the term ‘fake newsworthy event’ as an event created by newsmakers, that is high-profile and attractive for media, but the only or particular aim of these actions is an agenda-setting, and this aim is not obvious from the origin of the action. Namely, the member of parliament may file some bill realizing that it cannot be adopted and trying just to shape the public opinion. Or some person may claim against a celebrity or businessman having no chance to win at trial. On the example of Ukrainian ‘high-quality media’ we showed that journalists usually do not take into account whether some topics are launched just for manipulating agenda-setting. To prove that we gathered the data about publications focused on such topics in Ukrainian ‘high-quality media’, we provided their discourse analysis, and compared the result with experts’ evaluations of ‘media quality’ and ‘artificiality rate’ of the topic. We have not found correlations between ‘artificiality’ of the topic and the number of publications. Recommendations were elaborated for the media workers if they want to avoid this type of manipulation.

Keywords: manipulations in media; fake news; agenda-setting; high-quality media; newsmakers; newsworthy events; Ukrainian media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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