Fake news in the United States

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False information (known as "fake news") in the United States has been a subject of discussion and debate, especially since the increased reliance on the Internet and social media for information.

Contents

Terminology

According to the website of the Cambridge English Dictionary, the term fake news "is that something is believable no matter what¨ which is seen as damaging to an agency, entity, or person.[ better source needed ] However, is by no means restricted to politics, and seems to have currency in terms of general news." [1] False news has been defined as "political speech." [2]

Editorial from The Daily Democrat of Hamilton, Ohio, January 27, 1893, defining fake news Clipping from The Daily Democrat of Hamilton, Ohio , January 27, 1893, defining fake news.png
Editorial from The Daily Democrat of Hamilton, Ohio, January 27, 1893, defining fake news

Colonial America

1762 Virginia law

In 1762, the Grand Assembly of Virginia enacted the following law to punish "divulgers of false news."

Be it enacted, That what person or persons soever shall forge and divulge such false reports, tending to the trouble of the country, shall be, by next Justice of the Peace, sent for, and bound over to the next County Court, where, if he produce not the author, he shall be fined two thousand pounds of tobacco, (or less) if the Court thinks fit to lessen it [sic], and besides, give bond for his behavior, if it appears to the Court that he did maliciously publish and invent it. [3]

Pre-Civil War

1809: Insurrections likely

On December 6, 1809, U.S. Representative George W. Campbell of Tennessee, in a speech on the House floor, said that:

Your publick [sic] prints teemed with falsehoods, and misstatements on this subject; insurrections were announced in some quarters of the union as likely to take place, and dreadful stress stated to prevail every where. These groundless misrepresentations, circulated for party purposes alone, went abroad, and had, no doubt, considerable influence on the conduct of foreign nations. [4]

1830: Electioneering

The Argus of Western America, Frankfort, Kentucky, related on November 10, 1830, that:

The practice of giving false news for electioneering purposes, in this country, originated with the "National" Intelligencer. Its servile co-workers abroad, of the [Henry] Clay school of politics, have adopted it, and the confident tone in which they now utter falsehoods, proves that the opposition rest their hopes of success upon the gullibility of their readers. . . . Those Siamese twins, the "National" Journal and "National" Intelligencer, of this city [Washington], are constantly in the habit of playing into each others hands by giving false news to their readers. [All italics are in the original.] [5]

1840: Van Buren 'victory'

After the 1840 election, the New York Commercial Advertiser opined that

The Van Buren leaders of this city have much to answer for, in regard to the false news of success which they dispatched to the South on Friday. In Washington the office-holders were thrown into a delirium of joy, and fell into the most extravagant antics. Mr. Van Buren himself was heard to declare that he was now "Certain of success, for I now know," he added, That "New York is mine!" [Italics are in the original.] He awoke from his reverie, probably, at half past 11 o'clock yesterday morning." [6]

1848: Cuba negotiations

In December 1848, the Heraldo newspaper of Madrid, Spain, denied a report in the New York Herald that the United States was in negotiations with Spain to purchase the island of Cuba. The Heraldo chastised "Anglo-American" newspapers as being "famous, throughout the world, for the false news and dates which they delight to propagate, adorned with a thousand details, intended to give them an appearance of truth." [7]

Civil War through Gilded Age

1861: Telegraphers

An 1861 editorial in the Memphis Daily Avalanche of Tennessee recommended legislating "a penal offense to send false news over the telegraph line." The editorial noted, however, that it would be "unjust to reproach the telegraph company or agents, for the telegraph is a simple agent for the conveyance of news, and is no more responsible for what is sent over the wires than a horse which conveys false news in the mails. . . . The telegraphers are much annoyed when they are forced by their position to send or receive false news, known by them to be false." [8]

1863: Stock speculations on reported victory

Under a headline reading "Government Connivance at the Transmission of False News Reports," the Burlington (Vermont) Sentinel complained on May 22, 1863, that "disgraceful falsehoods" had been "telegraphed throughout the country regarding the state of affairs in the army and its movements" and that the reason for them "is pretty correctly hinted at by the N.Y. Evening Post, which claimed that cabinet stock speculations were at the bottom of this false information." [9]

The Independent of New York City stated: [9]

It is difficult to dismiss the suspicion that some pretty high parties have been attempted to operate in the gold market. [Italics in the original.] Correspondents here endeavored in vain yesterday to telegraph to their friends that there was not a word of truth in the wild stoies . . . but the government censor would not permit the denial! This is certainly very strange. [Italics in the original.]

The Springfield Republican was quoted as saying: "While the most ridiculous stories about the capture of Richmond were flying through the northern towns, no newspaper correspondent here was allowed the privilege of denying the false rumors." [Italics in the original]. [9]

1879: Jay Gould accused

Cartoon from Puck, 1882, depicting Wall Street as "Jay Gould's Private Bowling Alley" Jay Gould's Private Bowling Alley - Opper 1882.jpg
Cartoon from Puck , 1882, depicting Wall Street as "Jay Gould's Private Bowling Alley"

The New York Tribune was charged by The (Philadelphia) Times on November 26, 1879, with printing and editorially endorsing "false news" that brought about "the financial crisis of last week, which took several millions of dollars out of the pockets of men of moderate means to place this vast sum in the strong boxes of Mr. [Jay] Gould and his fellow conspirators on Wall Street." (Financier Gould was principal owner of the Tribune.) According to the Philadelphia Times, the New York Evening Post, however, did "the cause of honest journalism a good service in unearthing a statute which seems to fit the case of . . . Gould exactly." The law forbade anybody from circulating "false intelligence, with the intent of depreciating or advancing the market price" of stocks, bonds, merchandise or commodity. The penalty was set at a fine of "not exceeding five thousand dollars and imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years, or either." [10]

The Philadelphia Times continued:

It would be well for . . . Gould to paste this law in his hat. His enormous profits on his last speculation, through the dissemination of false news, would enable him to pay the fine without pain to his pocket, but the imprisonment would give him some discomfort and the country some satisfaction. [10]

1884: Presidential election results

Five years later, the New York Tribune was accused by The Journal of Commerce with "willful and deliberate forgery" in printing "false news" concerning New York State's results in the 1884 Presidential election. The New-York Times urged that the State legislature should "so amend the law as to bring within its provisions the most mischievous and flagitious of all the varieties of the offense of willfully publishing false news." [11]

Progressive Era

Reporters with various forms of "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper The fin de siecle newspaper proprietor (cropped).jpg
Reporters with various forms of "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper

1890s

False news was recognized as a problem in the United States in the 1890s. One editorialist wrote in 1896 that:

The American newspapers are fairly beating their own record at the present time in their success in getting up sensations and setting afloat fake news. . . . our people are in a frame of mind which accepts without question the most absurd statements the mind of man can conceive, and even try to invent excuses for their credulity. [12]

1900: Theodore Durrant innocence

An "alleged confession" by the pastor of San Francisco's Immanuel Baptist Church that it was he who had murdered Blanche Lamont and Minnie Williams in a well-publicized 1895 murder case was "going the rounds" in a "fake report." Theodore Durrant was hanged for the crimes in 1898. The San Francisco Examiner, responding to a query, denied the report and called it a "false rumor." [13] [14]

The Auburn (Nebraska) Granger editorialized that the fake "adds further proof, if further proof be needed, that newspaper reports are unreliable and not to be depended upon." [15] The Coffeyville (Kansas) Gaslight said: "The story was very cleverly concocted stating that the minister, on his deathbed, had made a full confession of the crime and that Durrant, who was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence, had been fully vindicated. It now turns out that the story is a fake from beginning to end." [16]

1900: Philippine Insurrection

During the Philippine Insurrection, it was reported that:

Hong Kong is the headquarters of fake news from the Philippines just as Shanghai is the source of most of the fake news about Pekin and Chinese massacres. There is a vicious and industrious Filipino junta at Hong Kong with a malicious Englishman at the head of it which manufactures the sensational news regarding American atrocities in Luzon and sends them out for the benefit of anti-expansionists and Democratic organs in this country [the United States]. [17]

1902: Treasury Secretary Shaw

A headline writer for the Washington (D.C.) Times , labeled a story about Secretary of the Treasury L.M. Shaw a "Good Example of Fake News" over a July 9, 1902, article reporting that Shaw had "specifically stated . . . on several occasions" his belief that all officers of the Treasury should be limited in their terms of office to "four or five years." [18] Two weeks later, a press release from Shaw said that inquiries "from all over the country" impelled him to deny the story, which he termed "made out of whole cloth." [19] The Evening Times-Republican of Marshalltown, Iowa, chided that "These hot-weather tales are liable to float out most any time. The public would do well to accept sensational stories conditionally, awaiting confirmation." [20]

Mid-20th century

1919: The law

The placement of false news stories, or the attempt, often as a joke, was so pervasive that The Evening Sun of Hanover, Pennsylvania, warned against the practice by noting that the Pennsylvania law provided for a $500 fine and a two-year jail term in case of conviction. [21]

1936: Lindbergh ransom

The New York Daily News published an editorial apologizing for an article from "a New England correspondent" that appeared in the newspaper on April 25, 1936, stating that "$20,000 in Lindbergh ransom bills had recently turned up in Albany and various Massachusetts towns." The editorial said: [22]

We are convinced now that the story was a fake, though the New England correspondent still thinks there may be something in it. We are sorry to have published the story. We think any newspaper that does fake news is foolish. It is so easy to expose a fake news story, and as soon as the public finds out about it the newspaper that published the fake loses some reader confidence. Repeat the process often enough, and the paper loses the confidence of all the readers except the natural born and incurable suckers.

Information Age

2016 presidential election

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, fake news was particularly prevalent and spread rapidly over social media by "bots", according to researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute. [23] [24] In a speech shortly after the election, former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton warned of the "real-world consequences" of fake news. [25] Google Trends shows that the term "fake news" gained traction in online searches in October 2016. [26]

Debate over the impact of fake news in the November 2016 United States presidential election, and whether or not it significantly impacted the election of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom the most shared fake stories favored, [27] [28] led researchers from Stanford to study the impact of fake news shared on social media, where 62% of U.S. adults get their news from. They assessed that 8% of readers of fake news recalled and believed in the content they were reading, though the same share of readers also recalled and believed in "placebos" — stories they did not actually read, but that were produced by the authors of the study. In comparison, over 50% of the participants recalled reading and believed in true news stories. The authors do not assess the final impact of these numbers on the election, but seek to "offer theoretical and empirical background" for the debate. [29]

Republican candidate Donald Trump tweeted or retweeted posts about "fake news" or "fake media" 176 times as of December 20, 2017, according to an online archive of all of Trump's tweets. [30] Governmental bodies in the U.S. and Europe started looking at contingencies and regulations to combat fake news specially when as part of a coordinated intelligence campaign by hostile foreign governments. [31] [32] Online tech giants Facebook and Google started putting in place means to combat fake news in 2016 as a result of the phenomenon becoming globally known. [33] [34]

Fraudulent stories during the 2016 U.S. presidential election included a viral post popularized on Facebook that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump, and another that actor Denzel Washington "backs Trump in the most epic way possible". [35] [36] Trump's son and campaign surrogate Eric Trump, top national security adviser Michael Flynn, and then-campaign managers Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski shared fake news stories during the campaign. [37] [38] [39] [40]

In December 2016, an armed North Carolina man, Edgar Maddison Welch, traveled to Washington, D.C., and opened fire at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, driven by a fake online news story known as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which accused the pizzeria of hosting a pedophile ring run by Democratic Party leaders. [41] These stories tended to go viral quickly. Social media systems, such as Facebook, played a large role in the broadcasting of fake news. These systems showed users content that reflected their interests and history, leading to fake and misleading news. Following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and a District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Welch was sentenced to four years in prison on June 22, 2017 and agreed to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. [42]

Presidency of Donald Trump

During a joint news conference, President Trump said he was "very proud" to hear Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro use the term "fake news". 19 03 2019 Declaracao a imprensa (47423243351).jpg
During a joint news conference, President Trump said he was "very proud" to hear Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro use the term "fake news".

In the early weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump frequently used the term "fake news" to refer to traditional news media, singling out CNN. [44] Linguist George Lakoff says this creates confusion about the phrase's meaning. [45] According to CBS 60 Minutes , President Trump might have used the term fake news to describe any news, however legitimate or responsible, with which he might have disagreed. [46]

After Republican Colorado state senator Ray Scott used the term in 2017 as a reference to a column in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel , the newspaper's publisher threatened a defamation lawsuit. [47] [48]

Starting in July 2017, Trump's 2020 presidential campaign launched Real News Update , an online news program posted on Facebook. The series reports on Trump's accomplishments as president of the United States and claims to highlight "real news" as opposed to alleged "fake news". Lara Trump introduced one video by saying "If you are tired of all the fake news out there...we are going to bring you nothing but the facts" and "I bet you haven't heard about all the accomplishments the president had this week, because there's so much fake news out there". [49] The show was labeled as "propaganda". [50]

In January 2018, it was reported that a Gallup-Knight Foundation survey found that 17% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans "consider accurate news stories that cast a politician or political group in a negative light to always be 'fake news.'" [51] A June 2018 poll by Axios and Survey Monkey found that 72% of Americans believe "traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes," with 92% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents and 53% of Democrats believing this. [52]

An investigation by The Michigan Daily in October 2019 into statewide networks of conservative-leaning, pseudo local news sites, published by Locality Labs and the Metric Media Foundation, revealed connections between the operation and Dan Proft, the Liberty Principles PAC, and the Nexstar Media Group. Metric Media was reportedly planning on creating more sites across the nation in what critics dubbed a disinformation campaign that might have been attempting to influence the 2020 elections. [53]

Republicans in Congress

As well as Trump, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have started using the fake news label to delegitimize established news media since 2016. [54] According to a 2020 study, [54] use of the fake news label strongly aligns with representatives' voting records in Congress, with more conservative members more likely to adopt the label.

Analysis

Professor Philip N. Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford studied web traffic in the United States prior to the election. He found that about one half of all news on Twitter directed at Michigan was junk or fake, and the other half came from actual professional news sources. [46] According to BuzzFeed, during the last three months of the presidential campaign, of the top twenty fake election-related articles on Facebook, seventeen were anti-Clinton or pro-Trump. Facebook users interacted with them more often than with stories from genuine news outlets. [55]

In 2019 Christine Michel Carter, a writer who has reported on Generation Alpha for Forbes stated that one-third of the generation can decipher false or misleading information in the media. [56]

A CNN investigation examined exactly how fake news can start to trend. [57] There are "bots" used by fake news publishers that make their articles appear more popular than they are. This makes it more likely for people to discover them. "Bots are fake social media accounts that are programmed to automatically 'like' or retweet a particular message." [58]

Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow estimated that the average US adult read and remembered between one and several fake news articles during the 2016 US presidential election period. Equating the impact of one such article to a television campaign ad, they suggested that the fake news articles they had studied would have only changed vote shares by hundredths of a percentage point, much smaller than Trump's margin in pivotal states. [29]

A situation study by The New York Times in 2017 showed how a tweet by a person with no more than 40 followers went viral and was shared 16,000 times on Twitter. [59] The tweet concluded that protesters were paid to be bussed to Trump demonstrations and protest. A Twitter user then posted a photograph of two buses outside a building, claiming that those were the anti-Trump protesters. The tweet immediately went viral on both Twitter and Facebook. Fake news can easily spread due to the speed and accessibility of modern communications technology.

In January of 2024, the World Economic Forum highlighted disinformation as a top global threat over the next few years, citing concerns around AI and the disruption of elections, including in the United States. [60]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Washington Examiner</i> American conservative news outlet

The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news outlet based in Washington, D.C., consisting of a website and a weekly printed magazine. It is owned by Philip Anschutz through MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group.

<i>Breitbart News</i> American far-right news and opinion website

Breitbart News Network is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Its content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by academics and journalists. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.

Paul Horner was an American writer, comedian and contributor to fake news websites. Horner has been described as a "hoax artist" by outlets such as The Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, PolitiFact and The Washington Post.

Social media and political communication in the United States refers to how political institutions, politicians, private entities, and the general public use social media platforms to communicate and interact in the United States.

Social media played an important role in shaping the course of events surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election. It facilitated greater voter interaction with the political climate; unlike traditional media, social media gave people the ability to create, comment on, and share content related to the election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Epshteyn</span> American political strategist (born 1982)

Boris Epshteyn is an American Republican political strategist, attorney, and investment banker. He was a strategic advisor on the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign and has remained a close advisor to Trump in his post-presidency. He was the chief political commentator at Sinclair Broadcast Group until December 2019. He was a senior advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for President of the United States, and previously worked on the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign. Following Trump's election, he was named director of communications for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and then assistant communications director for surrogate operations in the White House Office, until he resigned in March 2017. He was a member of a team of Trump lawyers who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. In April 2024, Epshteyn was indicted in Arizona for his alleged in role in the fake elector plot for the state.

Fake news websites are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, these websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain. Fake news websites monetize their content by exploiting the vulnerabilities of programmatic ad trading, which is a type of online advertising in which ads are traded through machine-to-machine auction in a real-time bidding system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pizzagate conspiracy theory</span> Debunked conspiracy theory about alleged child-sex ring

"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.

A troll farm or troll factory is an institutionalised group of internet trolls that seeks to interfere in political opinions and decision-making.

Fake news websites target United States audiences by using disinformation to create or inflame controversial topics such as the 2016 election. Most fake news websites target readers by impersonating or pretending to be real news organizations, which can lead to legitimate news organizations further spreading their message. Most notable in the media are the many websites that made completely false claims about political candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as part of a larger campaign to gain viewers and ad revenue or spread disinformation. Additionally, satire websites have received criticism for not properly notifying readers that they are publishing false or satirical content, since many readers have been duped by seemingly legitimate articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fake news</span> False or misleading information presented as real

Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.

The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.

Internet manipulation is the co-optation of online digital technologies, including algorithms, social bots, and automated scripts, for commercial, social, military, or political purposes. Internet and social media manipulation are the prime vehicles for spreading disinformation due to the importance of digital platforms for media consumption and everyday communication. When employed for political purposes, internet manipulation may be used to steer public opinion, polarise citizens, circulate conspiracy theories, and silence political dissidents. Internet manipulation can also be done for profit, for instance, to harm corporate or political adversaries and improve brand reputation. Internet manipulation is sometimes also used to describe the selective enforcement of Internet censorship or selective violations of net neutrality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign</span> American political campaign

Donald Trump, a member of the Republican Party, unsuccessfully sought reelection in the 2020 United States presidential election. He was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 2017, and filed for re-election with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on the same day.

<i>Palmer Report</i> American liberal fake news website

The Palmer Report is an American liberal fake news website, founded in 2016 by Bill Palmer. It is known for making unsubstantiated or false claims, producing hyperpartisan content, and publishing conspiracy theories, especially on matters relating to Donald Trump and Russia. Fact-checkers have debunked numerous Palmer Report stories, and organizations including the Columbia Journalism Review and the German Marshall Fund have listed the site among false content producers or biased websites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupy Democrats</span> American left-wing political Facebook page and website

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U.S. President Donald Trump created the Fake News Awards to highlight the news outlets that he said were responsible for misrepresenting him and/or producing false reports both before, and during, his presidency. A post to the blog of the Republican Party website announced the winners on January 17, 2018. They included reports ranging from comments by journalists on social media to news reports that later required corrections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections</span>

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Social media was used extensively in the 2020 United States presidential election. Both incumbent president Donald Trump and Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden's campaigns employed digital-first advertising strategies, prioritizing digital advertising over print advertising in the wake of the pandemic. Trump had previously utilized his Twitter account to reach his voters and make announcements, both during and after the 2016 election. The Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden also made use of social media networks to express his views and opinions on important events such as the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the protests following the murder of George Floyd, and the controversial appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

This is a timeline of major events in the second half of 2017 related to the investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, the post-election transition, and the first half of 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.

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