If You Could Believe Your Eyes: Images and Fake News

With the information age expending at such an unprecedented rate over the last decade, the distribution of news and images across numerous media sources has also increased to meet the public's insatiable demand for more and more news. Indeed, the amount of words and images flooding across the globe has generated an anxiety which has caused many to wonder if what they are reading or viewing is real or contrived. The fact is, most of the world cannot define for themselves what appears in the media is factual or not. Due to the power and easy accessibility of software programs designed for the creation and correction of images, anyone with a modicum of training can generate a picture which can be hurled around the world in only moments of time and viewed by anyone with access to the internet, television, or a newspaper. The dilemma of having too much available to us to read or see has been seized upon by numerous news sources and exploited to their full advantage for their profits or political agendas.