Talk:Fake news websites in the United States/Archive 1

Attribution - Content from fake news website

Article was started with content copied from Fake news website. Sagecandor (talk) 19:34, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Can we get an actual {{copied}} template with diffs here, for clear attribution and ease of comparison for anyone wanting to check what was and wasn't copied across? --McGeddon (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Done. Sagecandor (talk) 20:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, that second diff doesn't look right, it's you trimming a quote. Was the first version of this article copypasted as whole, unchanged cloth by User:HelgaStick? --McGeddon (talk) 21:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Fixed it. Better? Sagecandor (talk) 21:03, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Cases of Fake News prior to the end of the Election (not related to the Election)

There have been cases of Fake News that took place prior to and during 2016, as covered by this article on Snopes, that isn't related to the election. There have also been cases where local news had to correct fake news that have affected local communities during Summer 2016, such as Brentwood, Tennessee, Chandler, Arizona, and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Is it alright if I add this information to the article? Yoshiman6464 (talk) 16:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Shows this article needs a better title to specify it is Internet-era-time-period. Sagecandor (talk) 19:58, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Yoshiman6464: I think that those other events which concern websites should be added to the article :D Seem very relevant HelgaStick (talk) 16:13, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

merge to Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election

Though generically titled, this article is essentially about Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election and should be merged into it. A large number of similarly named articles are being created at a rapid pace by an activist SPA - and several tightly coordinated, newly minted accounts - with the apparent objective of ensuring Wikipedia articles responsive to a variety of Google search terms exist and generating Google Knowledge Graph results. BlueSalix (talk) 10:34, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support as nom BlueSalix (talk) 10:34, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - this article clearly has a wider scope than just Russian influence. In fact, most of this article has nothing to do with Russia at all. There's only some mention of Russian in 3 out of the 7 sections. The others have none at all, including the lede. Stickee (talk) 10:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

The title has a wider scope; the functional content doesn't. It even starts "During the 2016 US presidential election ..." BlueSalix (talk) 10:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• "Oppose" I don't understand the rationale behind this suggestion. Fake news and Russian involvement are two different beasts. Russian involvement is real news (i.e. the DNC's actual e-mails, HRC's actual speeches,, etc. obtained illegally through foreign espionage to aid a political candidate friendly to that government. Fake news is made up stories, some of which perhaps were circulated by Russia (though I'm not aware this is the case; I thought this sort of thing came from the Alex Jones schizophrenia wing), such as 'The Pope endorsed Donald Trump", 'Hillary runs a child prostitution ring in a pizzeria', 'buses of protestors being sent in and paid $15 an hour! Look I took a picture of a bus! proof!', stories which have essentially zero connection to fact. The phenomena relate, and perhaps fake news was a tool used by Russia, but neither concept exhausts the other. If there was evidence that Russia was behind most of the fake news stories in this election, I might be inclined to agree with the merge, but I haven't read such evidence yet, and it would surprise me if the fake news wasn't just coming from American conspiracy theory nutjobs. 63.143.205.204 (talk) 11:27, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

* On second thought, why not just merge with Fake news website? Is this really such a distinctively American phenomenon?63.143.205.204 (talk) 11:31, 12 December 2016 (UTC)Strike sock edits--Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 22:17, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - Is the premise of the merge request supposed to be an example of fake news? Part of this article is about Russian influence of an election, but obviously not all of it. The scope and subject of the article is plainly different than the proposed target.- MrX 12:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose, and this highlighted by MrX (talk · contribs) shows serious bias on part of prior edit. Also the focusing on individual contributors in the original proposal statement instead of sticking to content shows some serious issues. Sagecandor (talk) 19:57, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose as per rationale given above. Also, I created the page and I am not a SPA, as you are heavily implying. Please don't. HelgaStick (talk) 01:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - not the same thing, per above. Not all fake news is related to Russian election interference, and not all (or even most) of Russian interference came in the form of fake news. Neutrality^talk 22:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Shooters name

I noticed the Pizzagate article doesn´t mention the shooters name, should it be removed here to? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Done. Sagecandor (talk) 09:25, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Quicker than Lucky Luke! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me, but why would you remove the shooter's name? ^Knowledge_Battle ^(Talk) | ^Godless_Infidel ︻╦╤── 06:31, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:BLP1E is presumably the reason, roughly speaking -- from an encyclopedic perspective, the name of the person does not really matter, and until and unless they are convicted of a crime, it is wiser for wikipedia to elide the information for legal reasons. Caution and decency go hand in hand here. But see also, Herostratus, whose name we still know. And looking at the pizzagate article as of today, not only does it list the name and city, it gives an embedded copy of the court documents. Sigh sigh sigh. Where is WP:NOTJUDGEJUDY when we need it? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:01, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

On a tangentially-related matter, I'm not sure we can refer to "the shooter" and get the meaning we are attempting to transmit to the readership precisely correct. My understanding is that 'the shooter" has to have actually shot someone, or attempted to do so, whereas in this case as I understand things there were three shots fired (some early reports said 'at least one shot fired'), but that it was into furniture. Not sure what phrase would capture the intended meaning, but I think the current language of "pizzeria attack" and also "the shooter" could be sensationalizing the actual incident, depending on if anybody else was still in the building when the shots were fired. I don't work on crime-related articles, so I don't know if there is any standard lingo here we can draw upon. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:01, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Useful charts but not deliberate hoax fraud

Charts here [1] are useful, but these are mostly "real" news, not fake, not intentional deliberate hoax fraud. Sagecandor (talk) 04:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Long discussion of whether to include material distinguishing 'fake news [website]' from the related concept of 'biased news [website]' ... and if so exactly how to include such ... can be found at Talk:fake news website#Useful charts but not deliberate hoax fraud. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:38, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

characterization of fake news website example#1

Hello HelgaStick, in this edit,[2] you modified some of my previous changes, and said they were POV as the reason for the change. This was the deleted portion --

ABCnews.com.co, a fake news website which (badly) spoofs legitimate journalistic organization ABC News, but was in reality completely unrelated, and published only fake stories: usually with a realistic, clickbait headline, but prose which gradually devolved into sheer nonsense.[3]

If you will read the Business Insider source, and also our article about the fake news website and the originator Paul Horner, perhaps you will see where I am coming from with the portions you removed. The intent of the site was not to spread falsehoods, but rather, to start out seemingly-realistically, but by the end of the story have become obviously false... but only to readers that actually pay attention, read the whole thing, et cetera (what Business Insider calls 'the discerning reader'). This is different from e.g. Denver Guardian, which was purely written 'in character' and was not ever altered in tone throughout, and also slightly different from RealTrueNews which although originally consistent at being 'in character' and taking a journalistic tone, towards the end of the site's lifetime put a big banner at the top saying 'everything in RealTrueNews was a lie'. So my point is, ABCnews.com.co actually did somewhat reveal itself to be a parody of the real thing, e.g. in the fake story about the fake jailbreak of a real-world criminal, towards the end the fake story is a quote from the fictional public-service-campaign-mascot, "Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin" (contrast with Smoky the Bear). This type of thing is what makes ABCnews.com.co somewhat of a corner-case; they implicitly reveal themselves to be fake, during the second half of their stories, despite their typosquatting. I don't really care what exact words we use to communicate that nuance, to the wikipedia readership, we can say 'sheer nonsense' and wikilink to parody or we can say something else, but I don't think we should leave it out that ABCnews.com.co is (quite intentionally) not a very serious impersonation of a legit news entity. The second half of their fake-news-stories are too silly for that. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:41, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I understand those criticisms. But using phrases such as "badly" and "sheer nonsense" in Wikipedia's voice is still POV. Perhaps you could use a quote from the article itself? HelgaStick (talk) 01:47, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, how about "crudely"[4] per Columbia Journalism Review, and the for the final clause say "but details which contained enough flaws that the 'discerning reader would likely notice'." So the full revised caption#1 would say this --

ABCnews.com.co, a fake news website which "crudely" spoofs legitimate journalistic organization ABC News, but was in reality completely unrelated. The site published only fake stories, usually with a realistic clickbait headline, albeit with story-details containing enough flaws that the "discerning reader would likely notice" it was false.

References

Does that sound okay? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good to me :D HelgaStick (talk) 23:51, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, fixed, please review and WP:BEBOLD if I messed anything up ;-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 13:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

and also example#3

In another edit, you modified the caption for the third example:

RealTrueNews.com, which was created as a hoax that the author believed would teach their alt-right friends about reader gullibility. (The subheading which revealed the hoax -- 'everything was a lie' -- got added only later.)

Because we are showing the post-election caption, in our imagefile, I think it is important to note that the 'eveything is a lie' bit which revealed the hoax was added months later. Most people that visited the site, while it was still a fake-news-website, did not see that subheading banner. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:41, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough, I can see why that's necessary to include in the caption. Feel free to revert my changes there. HelgaStick (talk) 01:47, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

 Done, thanks 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

"Media commentary" section

The "media commentary" section of this article looks like listcruft to me. Does this section really need to be here? I'm sure many journalists have their opinions on fake news, but how notable are they really? HelgaStick (talk) 14:32, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I've boldly deleted this section and moved it over to this talk page for discussion. I would advise that this be discussed before being re-added to the article. HelgaStick (talk) 14:38, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Deleted from article HelgaStick (talk) 19:34, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Gleb Pavlovsky, who helped form a Russian propaganda operation, told The New York Times in August 2016 that the Russian government saw international relations as special operations. Pavlovsky said he was certain there were many groups tied to the Russian government active in fabricating fake news. Peter Kreko of the Hungary-based Political Capital Institute spoke to International Business Times about his work studying Russian disinformation, and said the Obama Administration did not devote enough efforts to combating the propaganda campaign. He said U.S. government officials were frustrated at the lack of action against Russian information warfare. Swedish attorney Anders Lindberg explained a common pattern of fake news distribution. He said "The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context." After this, Lindberg observed fake news became fodder for reporting by far-right or far-left websites, and shared onwards. He pointed out the danger was fabricated news became prominent issues in governmental security policy. Deutsche Welle noted fake news was a threat to democratic societies in the U.S., Europe, and nations worldwide. U.S. News & World Report warned readers to be wary of fraudulent news composed of either outright hoaxes or propaganda, and recommended the website Fake News Watch for a listing of problematic sources. Critics contended fraudulent news on Facebook may have been responsible for Donald Trump winning the 2016 U.S. presidential election, because most of the fake news Facebook allowed to spread portrayed him in a positive light. Facebook is not liable for posting or publicizing fake content because, under the Communications Decency Act, interactive services cannot be held responsible for information provided by another Internet entity. Some legal scholars, like Keith Altman, think that Facebook's huge scale created such a large potential for fake news to spread that this law may need to be changed. Writing for The Washington Post, Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe co-director Eric Chenoweth wrote evidence suggested a great deal of fake news was fabricated by Russian intelligence. BuzzFeed News called the problem an epidemic. According to BuzzFeed's analysis, during the 2016 U.S. elections the 20 top-performing election stories from fraudulent sites generated more shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook than the 20 top-performing stories from 19 major news outlets. Fox News host of the meta journalism program Media Buzz, Howard Kurtz, acknowledged fraudulent news was a serious problem. Kurtz relied on BuzzFeed News research for his reporting. Kurtz wrote Facebook contaminated the news with junk sources. Citing the BuzzFeed investigation, Kurtz pointed out factual news reporting drew less comments, reactions, and shares, than fabricated falsehoods. Kurtz concluded Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg must admit the website is a media company, and get rid of charlatans, or face harm to the company's reputation. Slate magazine senior technology editor Will Oremus wrote prevalence of fake news sites obscured a wider discussion about filter bubbles. Oremus expounded on his views in a follow-up article, where he criticized journalists were applying the label of fake news too broadly. Abby Ohlheiser of The Washington Post echoed this view by Oremus, writing combating fake news backfired due to the difficulty over-defining it. BBC News interviewed a fraudulent news site writer who went by the pseudonym "Chief Reporter (CR)", who defended his actions and possible influence on elections. CR said increased gullibility of an electorate to believe anything they read online yields itself to increased power of fake news. He said consumers should be ready to face the impact of such gullibility. Ari Shapiro on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered interviewed The Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg, who explained a massive amount of botnets and financed Internet trolls increased the spread of fake news online. Timberg said thousands of Russian social media accounts functioned as a "massive online chorus". Timberg stated Russia had a vested interest in the 2016 U.S. election due to a dislike for Hillary Clinton over the 2011–13 Russian protests. On 5 December 2016 Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson spoke with Bill McMorris of The Washington Free Beacon, who downplayed the fake news problem and said it was being used by the media to censor conservatism in the United States. McMorris stated proponents of left-wing politics felt fake news should be defined as anything outside of their filter bubble, which was believed by adherents of right-wing politics. The Times of London wrote that fake news was exaggerated by the Clinton campaign passing blame for losing the election. The Times wrote that fake news flourished in the 2016 election due to an left-slanted ideological bias on the part of the mainstream media. References

UPDATE: Also moved comments from CNN's Brian Stelter from the Pizzagate section. Should probably be moved into Media commentary. HelgaStick (talk) 16:17, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Move into above if necessary, or leave out altogether. HelgaStick (talk) 16:17, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Following Michael G. Flynn's comments, CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter linked the conspiracy theory to the election of Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States, saying that Trump "is a conspiracy theorist" who "in a few different cases tweeted out links to clearly fake news stories". Steller pointed out that Trump promoted fake news about thousands of Muslims cheering on a rooftop in New Jersey on the day of the September 11 attacks and claimed that millions of illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election, which Trump won. References

The section was probably suffering from problems with WP:UNDUE weight, but the sourcing was mostly WP:RS from what I could see. Rather than deleting it, I would suggest paraphrasing the key points, and then integrating the summaries into the other portions of the body-prose where they make most sense. Lots of long quotations are not necessary, although some of the pundits (like Oremus) seem to have a good grasp on the evolving nature of the phenomenon. According to WP:NOTEWORTHY we don't need to worry about whether specific article-content is *itself* able to pass the notability guidelines -- notability applies to article-titles and article-topics, not to individual sentences within an article about a notable topic. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:53, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree; thanks for wording that much better than I could :D Although I'm not really sure on how to integrate into text. Hence why I brought the discussion to talk page. HelgaStick (talk) 23:50, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Integration will be difficult, but I am working on a draft-rewrite of the parent-article Fake news website over at this location. I think an altered section-structure will make it easier to slot the various media commentary, into places where it is directly relevant to the strict-n-narrow definition of 'fake news website' or alternatively into some subsection about a related concept where the sourced quote is more on-topic. If I achieve success upstream at the parent-article, my next stop would be to suggest something similar for this USA-specific WP:SPINOFF article, so if you want to help or suggest improvements I would be all ears  :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 13:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, and good luck :D HelgaStick (talk) 16:45, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Focus on "Fake News" is itself intended to be misleading.

A good clue that the recent publicity about "fake news" is intended to be misleading can be found by doing a Google Trends search for 'fake news', over the last 90 days. See https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=fake%20news Notice that prior to November 2016, 'fake news' has virtually no attention, but on or after November 9, 2016 the interest in this subject skyrockets. Note: I'm not saying that 'fake news' doesn't exist: Clearly it does exist. Rather, the interest in it as a "thing" was probably directed by the MSM (MainStream Media), and in fact almost entirely due to Hillary Clinton's loss in the recent election. Morever, the mirror-image of 'fake news' is true news that gets ignored by the media, mostly ignored by the MSM. 71.222.42.93 (talk) 01:48, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the sudden interest in "fake news" after the election was because if you asked Google who won the popular vote it would show you a blog post claiming that Donald Trump won the popular vote. Then Buzzfeed (an organization which I'm guessing is part of your MSM conspiracy) started looking into how fake news was spread on Facebook, and then other media outlets started jumping on and "fake news" became a buzzword. You're free to believe that the recent interest in "fake news" is part of a conspiracy cooked up by the Lamestream Media, but keep in mind that this page is for discussing ways to improve the article. ^Falling_Gravity 04:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

First, it isn't "my" "MSM conspiracy". And it may not be, strictly speaking, a "conspiracy": A bunch of old-line media organizations, staffed by the same kind of people, with common interests, reacting to the same set of events, may choose to engage in very similar behavior, without necessarily having some sort of direct coordination. And they are well aware what their competitors are doing, hour-by-hour. Why would you call this a "conspiracy" except to discredit the idea that this was the case? Second, you did a post-hoc-propter hoc error by saying, "the sudden interest in "fake news" after the election was because if you asked Google who won the popular vote it would show you a blog post claiming that Donald Trump won the popular vote." Just because that posting (I never saw it; can you cite it) occurred, perhaps, on November 9, doesn't mean that everything that occurred that day or later was caused by it. http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/mainstream-media-has-found-catchphrase-suppress-info-fake-news/ 71.222.42.93 (talk) 18:34, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi 71.222, you are correct that the use of 'fake news' terminology was relatively rare prior to November 9th, though non-zero. It is a real phenomena (though I believe 'fake news website' is a more central concept to actually understanding the topic... because 'fake news' is a bit of a linguistic mishmash right now). There was a lot of casting around for the reasons why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, among politicians such as Merkel and among media entities as well. Some of the reactions are merely already-existing trends, that are now crystallizing into a call for action around this not-really-new phenomena of 'fake news' which sprang to prominence when Trump won, partly because there was a fake-news-story associated with that win, but mostly as a way to retroactively explain that win. You are definitely correct, that the trump-wins-popvote 'fake news story' was not the *cause* of everything that followed it, nor obviously of everything that came before it; clearly though, some of the adjustments that search engine companies are making to their algorithms, can be seen as directly caused by that particular story, at least in part. Wikipedia doesn't have an article about the trump-wins-popvote article, but you can see a screenshot of the headline at File:70news_fake_news_headline.png which says "final election 2016 numbers: trump won both popular (62.9m-62.2m) and electoral college votes (306-232) hey change.org scrap your loony petition now" albeit the owner of the Wordpress.com blog in question used ALLCAPS for emphasis which I have refrained from imitating here  :-) There is more info about worldwide reactions in Fake news website which is the parent article of this Fake news websites in the United States article, and various people are working on trying to get rid of some of the WP:RECENTISM in both, if you would like to help please stick around. Please do read WP:OR and WP:V however, wikipedia is about reflecting what the sources say... and thus necessarily, wikipedia articles *will* reflect what the mainstream media believes, as being what wikipedia says in WP:WikiVoice, and individual wikipedian editors must stay neutral by simply summarizing what such sources say, and strictly refraining from injecting our own WP:OR / WP:SYNTH / etc. This is not an easy task, on complex controversial topics like 'fake news' / 'fake news websites' thus if you do decide to help, please stay omnidirectionally friendly to all your fellow wikipedians and be WP:BOLD but not reckless. Coming to the article-talkpage first, was an excellent way to begin. Best, 47.222.203.135 (talk) 01:48, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Here are some WP:RS talking about the 70news blog appearing high in the google-search-results-list: newspapers,[5][6][7] national television,[8] news aggregators,[9][10] fact checkers,[11][12] magazines,[13][14][15] and local stations,[16][17] in roughly the order of how wikipedia-approved™ those types of sources are. Peer-reviewed academic papers, and non-fiction books by major publishing houses, as well as tertiary sources like textbooks and britannica, are usually considered higher in the pecking order than internationally-famous-newspapers. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:18, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Merge with Fake news website

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Sorry I'm late to the party on this, but what is the basis for having a separate article from Fake news website? It seems we have a substantial duplication of effort, with some arbitrary forking of content. And much of the content that needs to be mentioned here isn't specific to U.S. websites. There's also the problem that many fake news websites are about the United States or directed at U.S. readers but use non-U.S. domains, are hosted on non-U.S. servers, and/or post fake stories written by foreigners; it's unclear whether these sites are intended to fall within the scope of this article. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:37, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

As I see it there are two issues here:

1. Much of the content here is WP:UNDUE for the article on Fake news websites and would have to be removed
2. Fake news is currently a hot topic in the United States, but is prevalent elsewhere with the advent of facebook's newsfeed — so any merge could result in the main article turning very anglocentric.

I'm not saying that these issues could not be overcome, or that they are reasons why we should keep the articles separate, just that they exist. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 20:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see these as arguments for keeping the articles separate. If the media attention has been disproportionately on the U.S., then Fake news websites can and should have a U.S.-focused emphasis, per WP:BALASPS (articles should "strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject"). I'm going to add merge tags since this discussion hasn't gotten much attention. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:50, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fake news as "dirty tricks"

This seems a relevant case [18], Cam Harris confessing he made a fake news website ChristianTimesNewspaper.com archive to smeer Hillary Clinton, being a republican himself, but claiming he only did it for the money. He's also discussed here [19] and fact-checked cases at [20] at snopes. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Philosophy 115 Commentary

 I do think that everything included in the article is relevant to the topic. The article touches on different aspects of fake news, such as what the definition of the term is, multiple specific instances where fake news has impacted society, and even its political implications. However, I think the article should include some more information about how fake news impacts aspects of society other than politics. Although there was nothing included that distracted me or felt irrelevant, I think the article would benefit from a more inclusive perspective of the impact fake news can have. Emilymorse22 (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Relevant Material

I would have liked you to expand more on definition/s of fake news websites and the role they have in influencing society and institutions in the United States, other than with the most recent presidential election. I thought the section on the U.S. response to Syria was distracting due to its short length and abrupt section; having a full paragraph dedicated to the subject would have been more helpful. The part on "Pizzagate" seemed quite random, taking away in its very detailed point from the main idea of the article broadly-speaking on how fake news in the U.S. is becoming more evident with the rise of outlets that use such sites to guide/direct thought and attitude on matters.

Camomileviolet (talk) 04:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC) February 13, 2017

Addition to article

I have written some additions in my sandbox which I will be adding soon so I would welcome any feedback or improvements. Thank you!

Camomileviolet (talk) 02:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

More additions to article

You claim Paul Horner felt his articles helped Trump.

That is taken out of context and in addition to that, in February 2017 Horner is quoted as saying, "I truly regret my comment about saying that I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me. I know all I did was attack him and his supporters and got people not to vote for him. When I said that comment it was because I was confused how this evil got elected President and I thought maybe instead of hurting his campaign, maybe I had helped it. My intention was to get his supporters NOT to vote for him and I know for a fact that I accomplished that goal. The far right, a lot of the Bible thumpers and Alt-Right were going to vote for him regardless, but I know I swayed so many that were on the fence."

See here: http://www.azfamily.com/story/34523534/fake-news-writer-regrets-taking-credit-for-trump-victory?autostart=true — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8800:4002:600:C8F3:8857:7A6A:1CAC (talk) 00:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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Technical issue

The edit window doesn’t seem to be working properly on the mobile site. FWIW, the list of fake news sites is not showing up on mobile site either, and there are two articles that point to each other for that information—which neither page has. I have no way to check the desktop site from this phone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerie voigt (talk • contribs) 16:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

If the issue persists I suggest asking at WP:VPT. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 22:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Fox News

Uhh... is it just me? ev (talk) 05:52, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I’m just talking here — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajahnbrahm1401 (talk • contribs) 06:06, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Not worth researching in your opinion? ev (talk) 06:30, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe this is better suited for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_media ev (talk) 06:31, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia as fake news website section badly needed

This article is terribly incomplete. A section outlining who Wikipedia operates as a fake, propaganda is badly needed for this article to have any semblance of credibility. 50.4.213.130 (talk) 07:59, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a news outlet. Since Wikipedia only reports what reliable sources state, Wikipedia can't possibly be "fake" either. You might find some fake news pop up from time to time, but all in all, you really should probably read the article and learn a thing or two about Wikipedia before whining here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Don't dismiss this so quickly. I remember when "global warming" was established fact. "The consensus of scientists" being the reason. Now just a few years later we have "the consensus of scientists" saying exactly the opposite. A consensus of two opposites must have a large overlap in individuals. Consensus may be a very short term opinion, particularly in subjects that are far from definitively settled - most science ( that's why we keep educating more of them) - if we know the answers to global warming, etc then educating more scientists on the subject seems a waste of money. Government ie Iraq War - don't you doubt that vial at the UN was fake news. Vietnam - attack on our ship, the dominoes, no torture, etc. 2601:181:8301:4510:7551:C900:908A:415C (talk) 17:48, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Now just a few years later we have "the consensus of scientists" saying exactly the opposite. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:44, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Reference #87 is a incorrect and admits this in the link #87

How can a source claim it's factual, when the source had to correct itself on the original investigation they performed? We have to assume the second time they investigated they got it accurate? Maybe, but curiously only right-wing sites were labled incorrectly. These numbers that are being used as factual are actually proven false by the link/reference provided. I beleive the information should be removed or a more accurate source be provided. Below are admissions from reference #87 that corrections had to be made due to inaccuracy.

Update: After reading this story, John Hawkins, the owner of Right Wing News, got in touch to dispute some of the mostly false ratings given to his page. As a result of his feedback, we altered four ratings, as detailed in a correction added to this story. Hawkins also published a blog post that outlines his objections and argues that the majority of our mostly false ratings for his page are incorrect.

CORRECTION: Right Wing News received a median of 91 shares on its mostly true posts, and its other posts had a median of 568 shares. We originally said it had a median of 87 shares on its mostly true posts, and its other posts had a median of 521 shares. The data for Right Wing News was recalculated after we realized we incorrectly rated three posts from that page. One post was rated mostly false that was in fact a mixture of true and false; one was rated mostly false that actually had no factual content; and one was rated mostly false that was in fact mostly true. We subsequently corrected a fourth post from mostly false to a mixture of true and false. The graphics in this story were also updated to reflect the corrected Right Wing News totals. WhowinsIwins (talk) 15:36, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposed List Of Disinformation Opinion Sites

There seems to be a proliferation of sites which accept a variety of disinformation, quoting freedom of speech protection, I will start a list here. if people wish, the list could be added to the page.

• brighteon.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Speculatrix (talk • contribs) 14:29, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Historical precedents

I would like to add a last section to put Fake news into U.S. history perspective. In reverse chronological order, we can describe Nixon. the use of censored news during WWII, Yellow journalism before that, and a mention of pamphlets published by pseudonymous authors at the time of the Revolution.

Trump isn't the only politician to publicly attack the mainstream media as fake. A fraught relation of the Executive with the press didn't start with Nixon. Thomas Jefferson said this : "Our newspapers, for the most part, present only the caricatures of disaffected minds. Indeed, the abuses of the freedom of the press here have been carried to a length never before known or borne by any civilized nation."

Avoid making lists. Also, you are not going back far enough. There are refs to "fake news" going back to the 19th Century. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:35, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Camomileviolet. Peer reviewers: Harperclouston, Mbrooke2997.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zmanforthewin. Peer reviewers: Zmanforthewin.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2022 (UTC)