Fake News

"Fake news" is a modern word for "propaganda", a term which was itself more or less replaced by "public relations". It was launched by the commercially-controlled media in late 2016, in an effort to try to tackle the decreasing confidence in the US public in corporate media. Originally, the phrase was "fake news website", an attempt to tarnish websites with an air of unreliability. As of 2018, the campaign seems have have backfired, with fewer people than ever trusting corporate media, and more US citizens than ever aware that the deep state manipulates the news headlines to suit its deeper purposes.

"Fake News" File:Glossary.png link (propaganda technique, polarising perspective, plastic phrase)
File:Fake News.jpg An anti-"Fake News" graphic inspired by the Reefer Madness, the 1936 propaganda film produced to try to demonize marijuana use and smooth the path of anti-cannabis legislation.
"Fake news website" is a meme started after the 2016 US election, to disparage websites that dissent from the opinions expressed by commercially-controlled media.

"Fake news", like the phrase "conspiracy theory", is a modern label of disdain, more or less equivalent to what used to be called "propaganda". It was introduced in November 2016, in the phrase "fake news website", and subsequently linked to discussion of internet censorship. However, the shorter phrase "fake news" caught on, becoming Macquarie Dictionary's "word[sic.] of the year" for 2016.

What is it?

"Fake News" is something the speaker either knows is untrue, believes is untrue or wishes were untrue and hopes to encourage other people to ignore. Toby Young, reporting in May 2020 on Facebook's COVID-19 censorship of the Swedish chief epidemiologist Johan Giesecke defending Sweden's response to the pandemic "what counts as “fake news”? Any newsy content that’s gone viral, apparently." Commercially-controlled media have been using increasingly as a cover for internet censorship of unwelcome ideas, most clearly during the COVID-19/Panic. Their official narrative is that people must not be allowed exposed to "radicalising" material, so nominally unbiased "fact checkers" should vet material and leave only the safe information.

"Fact checking"

Full article: Fact checking

Who will fact check the fact checkers?... The establishment's self-styled "fact checkers" have sought to portray corporate media as more reliable than sources who express dissenting opinions. Global Research, targeted as a "fake news" outlet, made the counterclaim that the New York Times was the "world leader in proliferating fake news".

Watch on YouTube

James Corbett, who was accused by the Washington Post of being a Russian Propagandist. / "A Brief History of Fake News" (archived)

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Fake News |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Robert Parry|+sep=, |Has text=“In the article, the [Washington] Post blurred the lines between “fake news” – stories that are simply made up – and what was deemed “propaganda,” in effect, information that didn’t jibe with what the U.S. State Department was saying.” |Is about=Fake News,Fake news, Washington post, Propaganda|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=February 28, 2017 |Sourced from=ConsortiumNews.com |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=ConsortiumNews.com |Has sourceURL=https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/28/mainstream-medias-victimhood/

}}

“In the article, the [Washington] Post blurred the lines between “fake news” – stories that are simply made up – and what was deemed “propaganda,” in effect, information that didn’t jibe with what the U.S. State Department was saying.”
Robert Parry (February 28, 2017) 

On December 29, 2016, Glen Greenwald accused The Guardian of "recklessly attribut[ing] to Assange comments that he did not make" that "those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it."

Usage by corporate media

"Fake news" is "a poorly-defined, amorphous concept that the public has been trained to fear without really understanding."

File:Freddie starr are my hamster.jpg

A famous piece of "Fake News" from the UK, thought up by publicist Max Clifford in 1986 to boost the career of Freddie Starr

While the BBC admits that "fake news" includes war propaganda created by MI7 a century ago, it continues to report as if the problem is a recent one, or at least, one that recently became acute. In January 2017, for example, an article asserted that "deliberate lies [have] been energised by the viral power of social media". Facebook and Google announced in November 2016 that they would take steps to address the issue.

Usage about corporate media

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Fake News |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Mike Adams|+sep=, |Has text=“CNN is the ultimate "fake news" network. There isn't a day that goes by where CNN doesn't deliberately fake a news story, distort a significant event for political purposes, or censor an important piece of news they don't want their viewers to discover.” |Is about=Fake News,CNN, Fake News|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=November 19, 2016 |Sourced from=Natural news |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=Natural news |Has sourceURL=http://www.naturalnews.com/056077_CNN_boycott_corporate_sponsors_fake_news.html

}}

“CNN is the ultimate "fake news" network. There isn't a day that goes by where CNN doesn't deliberately fake a news story, distort a significant event for political purposes, or censor an important piece of news they don't want their viewers to discover.”
Mike Adams (November 19, 2016) 
Natural News on "Fake News", announcing an "economic boycott of CNN corporate sponsors"

When the Venezuelan government banned CNN from their country in 2017, they charged CNN with "fake news" production.

Research

Research is ongoing into strategies to "vaccinate" people against "Fake News".

Limited individual attention and online virality of low-quality information

The June 2017 first issue of the Journal of Human Behavior contained a study of "Fake News" which was widely cited to explain its tendency to "go viral" on social media. After being covered by dozens of news outlets the paper was retracted on 7 January 2019 after an error was discovered which invalidated their conclusion.

Artificial Intelligence

Sites such as Facebook have been introducing software to "fact check" information posted in 2017. Their mechanisms are unknown, but they may be presumed to involve keyword matching and data mining rather than a proper semantic analysis. Some computer scientists reportedly hoped that AI would be able to detect and automatically flag up "Fake News", although the problem is proving harder than initially suspected.

Legal citation

Many laws have been proposed to tackle "fake news", but often hit trouble because of freedom of speech traditions and/or the difficulty of agreeing what is and is not "fake". In 2020, Viktor Orbán‎‎ passed a "coronavirus law" to allow sentences of up to 5 years in prison for spreading of "fake news".

Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor in Wuhan was disciplined by the Chinese authorities for 'spreading fake news' because he drew attention to COVID-19.

Eric Schmidt

Sharyl Attkisson ties the first usage of the the words "fake news", in the way they are used in the modern context (ie since 2016), back to Google's funding of the non-profit First Draft. By that she also ties it to Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and later Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc, since he was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in her 2016 presidential bid with his personal involvement as campaign adviser.

Responses

File:1-BANNER-Fake-News-Week.jpg

Alternative media have welcomed the focus on "fake news". Some have launched "fake news awards" to highlight the lies of corporate media. Project Censored commented in 2017 that "in a year when pundits and politicians of all stripes as well as members of the public and the establishment press crowed over “fake news,” the US corporate media completely ignored the story of how one of the most powerful US government institutions, the Department of Defense, secretly used taxpayer money to create fake news of its own."

21st Century Wire

File:Fake news invasion.jpg

Watch on YouTube

Title: "Media Fakery and the Distortion of History" (archived)

On February 14, 2017, 21st Century Wire, a website targeted as a "fake news website", launched "Fake News Week" to try to highlight the deliberate lies pushed by commercially-controlled media. In March 2017, the site launched the 2017 Horace Greeley Award for Best Fake News Journalist, nominating Jon Snow ahead of Brian Williams, Chris Cuomo, Craig Timberg, Michael Weiss, Rachel Maddow, Brian Stelter, Nicholas Kristof, Ian Pannell and Jake Tapper who were also on the short list.

Corbett Report

In February 2018, the Corbett Report announced "The First Annual REAL Fake News Awards".

Suspending April Fools Day

Swedish and Norwegian newspapers announced that they would refrain from the tradition of publishing April Fools' Day jokes in 2017 out of fear that it might spread "fake news".

References