When you are a "woke," feminist, climate-change-believing, liberal-leaning South Carolinian, pretty much every day of your life interacting with the people around you has you banging your head on the nearest desk, wall...you name it. You try your best not to engage in the childish name-calling and sludge-spewing that political arguments have turned into, but it's hard when certain issues seem so easy to acknowledge and comprehend, and others around you want to deny they even exist.

This morning I turned on the radio in my car and was understandably PO'd that all my favorite music stations were missing from my panel...AGAIN. In the process of trying to reset my presets, I stumbled across a conservative radio show. I was rolling my eyes and about to change the channel when I heard them talking about "white supremacy" and "fascism."

My ears perked up. A female voice was speaking those words, on a Southern conservative radio station. Could it be? Were they finally inviting someone with a different point of view to engage with them in an open conversation about the current political climate?

She continued talking about this hypothetical white supremacist--

"Lo and behold, he was wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' hat. These liberals are so desperate to push their socialist, communist, total-government-control agenda that they will pose themselves as 'white supremacists' to scare us with a movement that doesn't exist."

Mind you, I'm not recalling what she said word-for-word. There was more to it. But I do know I heard a female on a radio station trying to convince Southerners that the white supremacist movement is an artifice by white liberals. That it doesn't exist.

That events like the white supremacists' violence at Charlottesville and the University of Florida are nothing but "fake news."

I was outraged. Scared. Disturbed.

Then, as a Communication major, I became inquisitive.

I asked myself, "What the heck has happened to journalism in America?"

You have people on the right who are denying current events, even to the point of inventing obvious conspiracy theories like the one above. Then you have people on the left (as much as I hate to say this) who are using sensationalist headlines and making mountains out of molehills (calling a Moana Halloween costume "cultural appropriation," for instance) for the very same reasons. They are all out to get clicks, listens, and follows. Make no mistake: the goal of modern journalism is to stay relevant. Make a buck. Not to report actual news or, God forbid, inform the public, which is the sacred duty of any journalist.

Since the onset of online journalism, no one can fully trust what they read anymore. Peddlers of "fake news" are everywhere, but they are not limited to one political party or agenda. There are people on the left and right and everywhere in-between who are not bound to any journalistic standards and will go to any length to create panic and paranoia if it keeps people engaged.

This is the price of having a free press. And we are all paying it.

For the sake of the USA as a whole, we must learn to discern the difference between fake and real news. Ask yourself these questions before sharing an article online:

1. Is my source unbiased?

2. Does my source properly vet their articles before publishing them?

3. Can I verify this information via other sources I know are credible?

Peddlers of fake media know that dividing us puts money in their pockets. We can kill fake news by refusing to share it.