Fake news in the United States

Fake news in the United States became a global subject and was widely introduced to billions as a prominent issue, especially due to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][9] Numerous political commentators and journalists wrote and stated in media that 2016 was the year of fake news and as a result nothing will ever be the same in politics and cyber security.[10] Donald Trump tweeted or retweeted posts about "fake news" or "fake media" 176 times as of Dec. 20, 2017, according to an online archive of all of Trump's tweets.[11] 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.[12][13] 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.[14][15] Google Trends shows that the term "fake news" gained traction in online searches in October 2016.[16]

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.[17]

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.[18]

Debate over the impact of fake news in the election, and whether or not it significantly impacted the election of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom the most shared fake stories favored,[19][20] 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.[21]

In the United States 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] Shortly thereafter, in the early weeks of his presidency, U.S. president Donald Trump frequently used the term "fake news" to refer to traditional news media, singling out CNN.[26] Linguist George Lakoff says this creates confusion about the phrase's meaning.[27] According to CBS 60 Minutes, President Trump may use the term fake news to describe any news, however legitimate or responsible, with which he may disagree.[17]

After Republican Colorado state senator Ray Scott used the term as a reference to a column in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the newspaper's publisher threatened a defamation lawsuit.[28][29]

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.[30] These stories tend to go viral quickly. Social media systems, such as Facebook, play a large role in the broadcasting of fake news. These systems show users content that reflects 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.[31]

A situation study by The New York Times shows how a tweet by a person with no more than 40 followers went viral and was shared 16,000 times on Twitter.[32] 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.

During a joint news conference, Trump said he was "very proud" to hear Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro use the term "fake news".[33]

A CNN investigation examined exactly how fake news can start to trend.[34] 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."[35]

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 is reportedly planning on creating more sites across the nation in what critics have dubbed a disinformation campaign that may be attempting to influence 2020 elections.[36]

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".[37][38] 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.[39][40][41][42]

Starting in July 2017, President 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".[43] The show has been labelled as "propaganda".[44]

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.'"[45] 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.[46]

A series of fabricated stories in Europe’s largest weekly magazine, Der Spiegel, prompted U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to call for an independent investigation.[47][48] Grenell wrote that "These fake news stories largely focus on U.S. policies and certain segments of the American people."[49]