The claim that Donald Trump pushed fake news to aid his election to the White House has put the nefarious practice front and center,All the Fake News Unfit to Print,The claim that Donald Trump pushed fake news to aid his election to the White House has put the nefarious practice front and center
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While in recent months many political pundits have latched on to the concept of fake news to delegitimize opposing viewpoints in essence what fake news means is “reporting” that intentionally misleads or very often completely fabricates events quotes and statistics for partisan reasons.
Americans’ increasing disillusionment with the mainstream press coupled with their growing tendency to get their news on social networks means that alternate news outlets are gaining market share at an alarming rate. Most people do not read articles fully before sharing and we are by nature more credulous of material shared by friends and family. Certainly living in social media “echo chambers” in which our views are constantly reinforced coupled with historically high levels of political partisanship hasn’t helped things.
Nobody knows just how big a role fake news played but it certainly helped to create an atmosphere that was not conducive to an open political dialogue exacerbating existing rifts and radicalizing people on both sides of the spectrum. According to a recent study undertaken by Ipsos on behalf of BuzzFeed News 75% of Americans believe fake news stories while hyper-partisan web pages such as Occupy Democrats and Right Wing News consistently outperformed credible media outlets during the election season.
Not always unfortunately. The New York Times recently reported on several instances of members of the Trump transition team sharing or believing fake news stories. Team members such as Monica Crowley have accused Hillary Clinton of murdering a former party staffer while both incoming National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and his son who was fired from team Trump have both shared information about PizzaGate on social networks. Trump himself has shared false statistics about millions of illegal aliens voting.
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