About

Fake News refers to a conservative talking point that media by professional journalists which shows liberal bias or shady reporting is not real. It initially became a talking point after President-elect Donald Trump's claim that CNN was "fake news" at his first press conference as President-elect.

Origin

On January 11th, 2017, Donald Trump held his first press conference since being elected the President in November. During the Q&A portion of the event, several journalists asked Trump to address the allegations of his presidential campaign's ties to the Russian government, which had been building up for weeks since the U.S. intelligence officials confirmed Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In response, Trump deflected the questions by railing against CNN and BuzzFeed for publishing unverified information as news, to which CNN journalist Jim Acosta repeatedly tried to follow-up with a question on whether his staff had any contact with Russia in leading up to and during the presidential campaign. Trump flat out refused to answer by telling Acosta, "You don't get a question… your organization is terrible… your organization is fake news" (shown below).

Background

The shouting match between CNN's Jim Acosta and Donald Trump came on the heels of an ongoing FBI investigation about Russian interference in the election, which Trump had been vehemently denying until the day of the conference, as well as CNN^[1] and BuzzFeed^[2]'s reports on a 35-page dossier of unsubstantiated allegations that Trump may have been compromised by Russian spies, which were published on the day before the conference. The release of the dossier instantly prompted a political scandal that became known as PissGate on the social media.

Spread

The video footage of the heated exchange between Trump and Acosta instantly drew buzz on the web, with many journalists and viewers noting how Trump's accusations of "fake news" seemed to only apply to news reports that could portray him in a negative light. In its summary of the event, The Verge^[3] wrote "Even as the idea of 'fake news' becomes more difficult to define, when it’s wielded as a tool by the president-elect to sidestep criticism, its rhetorical strength grows and any of its definitions start to seem applicable." Meanwhile on Twitter, people began to joke about the moment by imagining scenarios where anyone slighting their character could be dismissed with "fake news." On January 12th, Twitter highlighted the social media satires of Trump labeling any criticisms about him as "fake news" in a Moment^[4] listicle.

Fake News Generator

On March 12th, 2018, the website thefakenewsgenerator.com was registers.^[5] The following month, the website launched, allowing users to upload images and ad headlines, descriptions and website names, as a means of creating humorous "Fake News."^[6]

On September 19th, the creator of the site spoke to The Daily Dot. ^[7] The founder, Justin Hook, said, "My thought was as long as fake news is easy to make, let’s make as much of it as possible, and make it as silly as possible and make sure that what’s going viral is harmless fun that draws attention to the real fake news that could be damaging and hurt people."

He also responded to criticism of the site, and the generated news stories' ability to fool people (examples below). He said, "All I can do is to make the website be a public service, not a public menace. There’s no grand design behind it. It’s a very simple thing, but I’m doing my best with making it for good, not for evil. But ultimately fake news is an evil thing that is perpetuated by people and I don’t think evil people will want to use this generator because it’s so transparent."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References