Fake news

"Fake news" refers to the recent false accusation, by managers of the Mainstream Media and of the most prominent social networks in the United States, that alternative news sources are "deliberately lying" to their readers, listeners, and viewers, and that these "lies" helped elect Donald Trump President of the United States. The liberal-pushed "fake news" accusations are a form of conspiracy theory.

The widespread use of the phrase in the area of media factionalism probably originated on November 14, 2016 in an announcement by Google. They said their advertising service was being pulled from sites whose purpose was to present as news what was solely designed to attract attention rather than conducted in a factual manner by a responsible party.

One attempt at broadening the meaning of the term as well as professing the likelihood of the use of what the term describes appeared on November 23 in the Washington Post:

In the wake of Donald Trump’s shock November 2016 electoral victory, attention fell on the extent to which voter opinions could have been shaped by an epidemic of "fake news" websites that masqueraded as legitimate media outlets...Many fake stories proved more viral on social media than important articles from real sources.

Ishaan Tharoor, the author who wrote the piece, lets the reader know that he assumes Trump's election win is so surprising (although it wasn't) that any explanation deserves to be looked at if the event has not been fully explained already. This would allow the subject which follows—his allegations of "fake news" being epidemic as well as his suggestions that they were isolated to media outlets that weren't "real sources" (by some unstated body's estimation)—to be plausible or even to be considered an especially good candidate as an explanation (to the uninformed), despite being unfounded or at least founded on exaggeration.

The election results prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who represents a centre-right political party, to caution against "Fake News" circulated in Social media:

“

Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren’t formed the way they were 25 years ago ... Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms, and we have to learn to deal with them. I believe we should not underestimate what is happening in the context of the Internet and with digitalization; this is part of our reality ... We have regulations that allow for our press freedom, including the requirement for due diligence from journalists. Today we have many that experience a media that is based on very different foundations and is much less regulated.

”

"Undoubtedly the new main psyop against independent media is flooding the web with fake news, and mainstream media putting out fake news, and setting themselves up like a super-Snopes, to be the arbiter of what’s real and what’s not," countered Alex Jones from Infowars in the wake of criticism of the Alternative Media on the part of Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supporters following Trump's win.

Melissa Zimdars, a far-Left professor had compiled a list of "fake and misleading" news websites, including Breitbart, Infowars, Twitchy, The Blaze, Bizpac Review, that was heavily promoted in the Mainstream Media.

Zimdars later removed her "Fake News" list, claiming she had been "harassed" and "doxed".

While liberals frequently accuse conservative or alternate media sites of being dishonest, they typically gloss over the massive failings of the mainstream media to accurately and fairly cover the news, as well as its own propensity to post and report fake news itself (such as the polls they released which falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton was "well ahead" of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election campaign, despite the attendance figures of the Trump campaign rallies vs. the Hillary campaign rallies, which the mainstream media chose to ignore, proving otherwise). In fact, within days after Trump's victory in the election, Wikipedia's liberal editors followed the lead of the mainstream media and echoed their opinions in putting up and propagating a far from neutral and heavily liberal-biased "Fake news website" article.