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Brainstorm: Who is creating fake stories and why?

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Brainstorm: Who is creating fake stories and why?

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Brainstorm: What are the dangers of fake news? 

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Brainstorm: What are the dangers of fake news? 

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Media watch – Japanese scientists, fries and baldness  

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Media watch – Japanese scientists, fries and baldness  

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What have you learnt about fake news from this clip?

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AMELIA ADAMS: Well if you're lacking in the hair department you won't have 'tou-pee' much for this potential cure for baldness ...

DEBORAH KNIGHT: I like what you did there.

AMELIA ADAMS: ... Thank you. Japanese scientists say eating McDonald's could help hair to regrow after seeing some promising results in lab tests. Apparently, the chemical used in Macca's fries is ...

DAVID CAMPBELL: They are pretty good fries.

AMELIA ADAMS: ... behind this hair-brained idea, although it may well be a bald-faced lie.

- Channel Nine, Today Extra, 5 February, 2018

Hello, I'm Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch. And can you believe it, great news for bald people, perhaps including a couple of former hosts of this program?

Yes, as Nine told us on its website:

Japanese Scientists say eating McDonalds fries could cure baldness.

- Nine.com.au, 5 February, 2018

And the network was so excited by this news that it ran the story twice: on Today and Today Extra with two teams of presenters chortling at the very same lame puns:

SYLVIA JEFFRIES: ... Well, you won't have tou-pee much for this potential cure for baldness.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Toupee!

SYLVIA JEFFRIES: Get it? Japanese scientists say eating McDonald's could help hair to regrow after seeing promising results in lab tests.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Ha ha.

- Channel Nine, Today, 5 February, 2018

And it wasn't just Nine that was getting excited about this Maccas miracle. Soon, Marie Claire was also chipping in:

Science-Yes, Science-Finds That McDonald's Fries Can Cure Your Hair Loss

- Marie Claire, 7 February, 2018

And News.com.au was also thrilled by the revelation that eating fries can make your hair grow back:

Chemical in McDonald's fries may be the cure for baldness, study finds.

Consuming McDonald's may be the answer to preventing baldness, according to Japanese researchers ...

- News.com.au, 6 February, 2018

But is that right? Well, no. We went looking for mentions of medicinal Maccas in that Japanese study - with this less-than-catchy title - and found not one.

So, then we contacted lead author, Professor Junji Fukuda, to ask if he had claimed that eating fries could cure baldness. And he told Media Watch:

No. Never.

- Professor Junji Fukuda, 6 February, 2018

So how did the Maccas myth get into the media?

Well, the Japanese study focused on using a chemical called polydimethylsiloxane in hair transplants. And if you look it up Wikipedia - as someone obviously did - you'll see McDonald's use it as an antifoaming agent when cooking chicken nuggets and French fries.

'Bingo', shouted Britain's Sun newspaper, and before long the story was sizzling across the world.

So how many fries would you need to eat to get your hair back?

Professor Fukuda told us his study tested the effects of using 100 grams of the chemical. But Maccas told Media Watch:

In one serving of medium fries, there would be less than one-tenth of a milligram - specifically 0.00004 grams.

- Julia Buckland, Media Relations Manager, McDonald's, 7 February, 2018

Right, so, a mere 2.5 million servings of medium fries should do the trick. In which case you might get your hair back, but you'd be very fat.

And the bad news is it wouldn't work even then. Because the Japanese study was about using the chemical to aid hair transplants. And as Professor Fukuda explained:

You still need to surgically transplant cell aggregates.

- Professor Junji Fukuda, 6 February, 2018

All in all, a spectacular fail, with Channel Nine scoring the worst of all.

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AMELIA ADAMS: Well if you're lacking in the hair department you won't have 'tou-pee' much for this potential cure for baldness ... DEBORAH KNIGHT: I like what you did there. AMELIA ADAMS: ... Thank you. Japanese scientists say eating McDonald's could help hair to regrow after seeing some promising results in lab tests.

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What have you learnt about fake news from this clip?

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What have you learnt about fake news from this clip?

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Hi I'm Del Irani. When a major breaking news event is unfolding, journalists like me face the same challenging and important questions that you do. What's truthful? What pictures or facts from my news feed can I trust?

Information comes in thick and fast. And more often than not, there are mixed, at times conflicting, accounts of what's happening. In fact, sometimes the first images that come through to a newsroom can be from an eyewitness with a smartphone.

So how do you know whether you can trust your source or that information? For example, how can you tell whether this meteor in Victoria is a fake? Or can you tell that this bit of information is a lie, that an eagle did not pick up a baby or bird did not poop on Putin?

Well, here are a few tips on how you can separate facts from fiction. Firstly, keep your eyes peeled for unusual web site URLs. If they end with LO or .com.co, chances are they're not legitimate news sites.

Secondly, scan the layout. Are there some bold claims here without sources? Look out for grammatical errors, no dates, and sensationalist images. Then ask those critical questions-- who wrote the article? Who supports the site? If the information doesn't exist or you need to register to get it, well, you may well have a problem on your hands.

Finally, cross check and recheck your source. Are other credible news outlets reporting similar issues? Are there any clues about where this information or image originated? You can use fact checking sites to confirm information and get more context about issues. Finding the original source of content is so important for ethical, legal, and verification reasons.

We've got plenty more ABC media literacy help for younger audiences at ABC Education. And if you want to check out more sophisticated verification tools, well, you can check out the resources at First Draft News, the ABC's international partner in trusting the news.

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Hi I'm Del Irani. When a major breaking news event is unfolding, journalists like me face the same challenging and important questions that you do. What's truthful? What pictures or facts from my news feed can I trust? Information comes in thick and fast.

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Add one checklist of your checklist items below

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Add one checklist of your checklist items below

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How much time do you spend on social media? 

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How much time do you spend on social media? 

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a. What is the purpose of this advertisement? (What are they trying to achieve?)
b. Do you trust them? Why/why not?

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Who do you think might be interested in what you think, believe and consume? Justify your responses.

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Who do you think might be interested in what you think, believe and consume? Justify your responses.

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"Facebook has 1.2 billion users per month. So half the Earth's Internet population is using Facebook... the result is that we have behavioral, preference, demographic data for hundreds of millions of people...as a computer scientist, what this means is that I've been able to build models that can predict all sorts of attributes for all of you that you don't even know you're sharing information." (TedX  "Your social media 'likes' expose more than you think")