FAKE NEWS: With Purpose!
Fake news. Everyone has become accustomed to that phrase since Donald Trump became President of the United States. Of course, its actual definition is false statements or information being released to the public to trick others into believing something that may not be true to the rest of us (LeBlanc, n.d.). To Trump, however, fake news is essentially any factual information about himself that he doesn’t want to admit. Although fake news is something we have to be careful of, we must consider everything that we see, fake news or not, and determine if it is worth the message it may hold. In the case of John Moore and the infamous picture he captured, the photo’s message spoke more than words could ever do.
In June of 2018, John Moore captured the striking image of a distraught, crying, two-year-old Honduran child beside her mother and a United States border agent (Lauricella, 2018). Moore’s picture ended up on the cover of Time Magazine to represent Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy towards undocumented immigrants (Lauricella, 2018). Time Magazine took the issue one step further and edited the child’s picture to be facing Trump, who is staring down at her with the caption “Welcome to America” (Lauricella, 2018). It caused a major uproar within the community as thousands of parents, children, and family members have been separated at the U.S. border (Lauricella, 2018). Moore did not know if the child and the mother were separated after this picture was taken, only to find out later that they were detained together and were not separated (Lauricella, 2018). Obviously, Trump and his administration retaliated and labelled it as fake news (like he does with the million other scandals about himself), putting Time’s reputation on the line. Time Magazine did correct their mistake and clarified that the child and the mother were not separated but stood by their reasoning as to why they decided to publish the cover (Lauricella, 2018).
In my opinion, Time Magazine was in the right to publish that striking June 2018 cover. Even though Trump and his administration criticized them for publishing the cover and stating that the child was separated from her mother, the image represents more than just a minor publishing error. Moore’s picture represents thousands of immigrant children that have been separated from their parents beforehand (Lauricella, 2018), and the time for others to take note of this issue was long overdue. Time Magazine sparked real change in the way people receive the information they see and hear because every child — especially those who have been separated from their parent or guardian — has the right to be humanized.
References
Lauricella, S. (2018). Does the photo fit the news? The ethics of powerful images in the immigration debate. Media Ethics, 30(1). https://www.mediaethicsmagazine.com/index.php/browse-back-issues/210-fall-2018-vol/3999232-does-the-photo-fit-the-news
LeBlanc, C. (n.d.). What is “fake news”? In Fake news and what to do about it. Pressbooks. https://fakenews.pressbooks.com/chapter/what-is-fake-news/
