Source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/130220/the-rise-of-hoax-news

Reporter Luke O'Neil writes that 2013 was journalism's year of bungles: the New Jersey waitress who received a homophobic comment on the receipt from a party she had served; Samsung paying Apple $1 billion in nickels; former NSA chief Michael Hayden's assassination; #CutForBieber; Nelson Mandela's death pic; that eagle snatching a child off the ground on YouTube; Jimmy Kimmel's 'twerk fail' video; and Sarah Palin taking a job with Al-Jazeera America (an obviously satirical story that even suckered in The Washington Post). All these stories had one thing in common: They seemed too tidily packaged, too neat, 'too good to check,' as they used to say, to actually be true. 'Any number of reporters or editors at any of the hundreds of sites that posted these Platonic ideals of shareability could've told you that they smelled, but in the ongoing decimation of the publishing industry, fact-checking has been outsourced to the readers,' writes O'Neil. 'This is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. Readers are gullible, the media is feckless, garbage is circulated around, and everyone goes to bed happy and fed.' O'Neil says that the stories he's written this year that took the least amount of time and effort usually did the most traffic while his more in-depth, reported pieces didn't stand a chance against riffs on things predestined to go viral. That's the secret that Upworthy, BuzzFeed, MailOnline, Viral Nova, and their dozens of knockoffs have figured out: You don't need to write anymore—just write a good headline and point. 'As Big Viral gets bigger, traditional media organizations are scrambling to keep pace,' concludes O'Neil. 'We the media have betrayed your trust, and the general public has taken our self-sanctioned lowering of standards as tacit permission to lower their own.'

原文大概係指出2013年有好多假新聞，例如Samsung以大量硬幣支付Apple一億美金罰款、曼德拉逝世圖片等等。原文作者指出報導呢類新聞嘅編輯都感到有問題，但係最後決定繼續發佈有關資訊，原因係現今傳媒已經將查證工作"外判"畀讀者。結果就係社會上、網絡上都流傳呢類垃圾假資訊，讀者就信晒、入晒腦又唔覺得有問題。原文作者又話佢呢年花最少時間寫嘅文章引黎大量讀者，反而深入查證過嘅文章就好少人睇。

Slashdot上有部份Comments我幾同意:

Too true. People tune in to news not really for the purpose of getting information but to hear someone confirm that their world view is right. That's a cultural problem. I hate to say it, but the news itself isn't the problem.

(的確如此。好多人去睇新聞唔係為獲取資訊，而係為確認佢地自己嘅觀點係無錯。新聞報導本身唔係問題，有問題嘅係社會文化。)

Perhaps we don't want objective news.

(可能我地根本唔想見到根據客觀事實而寫嘅新聞報導。)

見到Slashdot呢篇報導，我又諗起早前睇過一本書入面有關言論自由嘅問題:
https://hkgalden.com/view/72755/highlight/2042

...有些人甚至表示言論自由是絕對的。一但開始訂出例外規定... 就等於倒退到新聞檢查制度時代。... 我們必須像伏泰爾所說的，誓死保衛人們說出我們強烈反對的話的權利。

這種觀點的優點在於簡潔一貫，但同時也相當幼稚。... 不需害怕人們說出錯誤或辱罵的字眼。然而，這絕非事實。... 無端的聲稱可以奪走性命，而到處造謠... 則會毀了當事人的生活，當事人必須忍受屈辱。

...但同樣地，真正的言論自由也不是肆無忌憚地在任何時間、任何地點地大放厥詞。那麼，到底什麼是言論自由?...

真係好Sad (唔係Sosad，而係真係好可悲)。就算唔係睇新聞，睇下網民留言都唔難發現部份香港人會喺網上(於不適當時候、於不適當嘅地方)以誇張形式去描述一件事、滲入錯誤資訊 (有意或無意)、甚至將主觀感受與客觀事實混為一談。

早幾日見到有傳聞HKGalden管理層有變動，又傳HKGalden會關站云云。喺高登有人話HKGalden同高登本身差唔多，只不過將同一討論模式搬去另一個Server、由另一班人管理新Forum。如果想HKGalden從根本上同高登唔同，網站外觀、功能係其次，我反而建議除咗唔主動發報錯誤資訊、假新聞外，如果見到有人喺HKGalden post錯誤資訊，不妨指出。