By Connor Haaf, Colby James,
Jake Steiner and Rahul Hassani
Photo courtesy of Alex Jones
When did the term fake news come about?
Fake news wasn’t a popular term until the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump yelled at a CNN reporter during a news conference, “you are fake news!”.
Fake news is a type of hoax or the deliberate spread of misinformation.
Whether it is spread via traditional news media or social media, if it has the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, it’s fake news. Fake news is a fairly new term, but fake news has been around for an extremely long time. It’s not that fake news was invented by Trump it is more that he coined the term through saying it and tweeting it -- when referring to publications, people, and articles.
Propaganda and fake news go hand in hand. Fake news is the evolution of propaganda
and Trump is sort of the father of the term, yet propaganda has been around for a long time. One of the earliest examples of propaganda took place in ancient Rome with Octavian and Mark Anthony. While battling for control of Rome Octavian used images of himself as a strong young man even after this was no longer the case. But the use of his image as a strong young man changed people's opinions and thoughts about him.
Another example of early propaganda would be the 1828 presidential election involving Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson’s supporters started rumors that John Quincy Adams had given a young american girl as a gift to the Tzar and people believed it. Propaganda/Fake news was also used during World War one and two.
It was in 2007 that propaganda shifted to fake news. “Fake News” really started with the dawn of the social media revolution. Before 2007 there were three main issues with your average person entering the media market and selling fake news.
1. Distribution cost: this was the idea that you effectively needed access to a printing press and the capital to distribute your news
2. Audience trust: the idea here was that there were few-enough players in the news industry that you built up an audience (readership) that would be loyal to your paper. You also might have a subscription further making it your only real outlet of news. Because of this, if you lied or made it a misleading piece you would lose the trust of your audience and therefore your readership.
3. Laws and regulations: because of the small number of news outlets it was possible to monitor the outlet sources and if they lied they would be sued and lose lots of money.
Around 2007, these bars to “fake news” were removed by the social media revolution.
1. Distribution costs: it’s free to post something on social media
2. Trust: because it is virtually free to post something, there are so many sources it’s impossible to keep track of the reputation of everyone.
3. Laws: because of the low cost, there are so many outlets it’s impossible to keep track of all of them and sue them if they publish fake news.
A lot of the political aspects of what is referred to as fake news have now been was popularized by Donald Trump during the election where he was promising to “make Washington honest again”. Because Trump threw a curveball in the status quo of Washington there was lots of mistrust in the air. This created a perfect environment for the growth of the fake news market.
There are multiple types of fake news, and they are grouped into five categories: Intentionally deceptive, jokes taken at face value, large-scale hoaxes, slanted reporting of real facts, and stories where the “Truth” is contentious. Intentionally deceptive news stories are just meant to deceive readers with things that are completely made up. Jokes taken at face value are sites like the Onion where they write blatantly fake stories, but some people believe them. Large scale hoaxes are typically reported by major news outlets, but are just fake. Slanted reporting of real facts takes things that are partially true, and try to make it sound like a big deal when it really is not. Stories where the “truth” is contentious are stories where one can not really find the truth because nobody really knows.
Fake news is a new term, but what fake news is and reporting fake news has been around for a very long time. It is 2017 so fake news is just easier to identify, publish, but it is getting easier to spot the more you educate yourself.
Fake news has been around an extremely long time.
Photo Courtesy of Justin Willow
t was in 2007 that propaganda shifted to fake news..
Photo Courtesy of BBC Newsbeat
What is fake news?
The Charger, May 2017
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