But even today, we deal correctly with it. Fakes and real photos are mingled together in 9Gag/LatestNews reports about Ukraine. Under the fakes (and the real), people ask for confirmation. Someone says it’s true, no-one believes him, until a link to a newspaper is dropped. And 9Gag isn’t the highest IQ community around, so yes, general population does distrusts photos by default until proven.
They are laughed at anyway if they tell a story coming from a forged photo.
Sure, newspapers could forge stories, display pictures with, I don’t know, Biden’s son with a crackpipe, and make the populace believe untrue stories. But guess what, they already do it anyway, newspapers already “spin” (as they say, i.e. forge, suggest without literally saying) stories all the time.
I have a quite different perception of 9gag.
Yes, some ask for confirmation but it depends very much on the topic.
Wrong topic and facts get downvoted and the fake news prevail.
And not all links to newspaper are considered valid, especially if it's about "woke culture".
Then you have to search the reasonable needle in the haystack of transphobia, homophobia and misogyny.
The problem comes from the early adult newsroom interns responsible for sourcing content. They don’t know it’s fake, it sounds like a good click-baity article to them, so they run it. It happens.
I wouldn’t shift responsibility on the shoulders of the last newcomer. The top of the management has had ample time to diagnose this. If it remains like this, it’s by design.
