A Very Brief, But True History of "Fake News" and the Rise of Problematic Information by Nora DeFrancesco
By ndefran
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1439
15th Century
"Fake stories about ritual Jewish drinking of childrens’ blood that inspired Prince-Bishop Hinderbach in the 15th century" 1439: Invention of the Printing Press - Johannes Gutenberg
"There were plenty of news sources—from official publications by political and religious authorities, to eyewitness accounts from sailors and merchants—but no concept of journalistic ethics or objectivity" (Soll). -
1475
1475 Fake News and Antisemitism
An entire Jewish community were arrested and tortured. Fifteen of them were found guilty and burned at the stake, due to false allegations from Franciscan preacher, Bernardino da Feltre, stating the Jewish community had murdered a child of 21/2. "Today, historians have cataloged the fake stories of child-murdering, blood-drinking Jews, which have existed since the 12th century as part of the foundation of anti-Antisemitism" (Soll). -
Period: 1500 to
16-17th century
Relazioni - Venetian government correspondence gave way to fake relazioni
People seeking "verifiable" news
1610- Trial of Galileo - desire for scientific facts led to the
creation of scholarly news sources
1640s Partisan tones in broadsides and pamphlets published in England and colonial America (Mansky) -
Period: to
Enlightenment - Age of Reason?
Period of European politics, philosophy, science and communications and realignment of thinking (history.com). 1755 Earthquake - "divine retribution" & fake religious news
"“There has been more new error propagated by the press in the last ten years than in an hundred years before 1798”
Voltaire - Questioned religious beliefs of natural events
1761:Catholic activists spread stories of Protestant merchant killing son because he wanted to convert to Catholicism (Soll). -
Famous Politicians: Battle of Words
Benjamin Franklin: Fake news was widely circulated of Natives hired by the Brits to scalp soldiers and civilians, increasing public hostility toward Native Americans.
Thomas Hutchinson claimed the "freedom of the press" just as " libelous and slanderous”
He claimed that John Adams' journalism "infamously did not concern itself with facts" (Mansky) . -
Emergence of Political Parties and Partisan Newspapers
1792 --Democratic-Republicans - New source of partisan news:National Gazette
Federalists - news source: the Gazette of the United States
1790s-- "Philadelphia Aurora"-- Famous for attacks on John Adams-- The most influential Democratic-Republican paper in that time period (Manskey) Federalism born in 1787 (PBS.org) -
"The Great Moon Hoax"
1835: New York Sun reporter Richard Adams printed a fake news story on evidence of "fantastic" and "lush" life on the moon, with creatures such as: "unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats." Adams completely fabricated the story,intending it as satire, making fun of speculations of extraterrestrial life (History.com). -
Period: to
Jacksonian Era
1840--Invention of the Telegraph
1848 --Associated Press (news gathered from a variety of newspapers with varying political allegiances)
"Objective" press/Less editorial by late 1800s AP became the "ideal of journalism"
(McIntyre 99) -
Yellow Journalism
1890s - Yellow Journalism Period
"Salacious, over-the-top, scandal-driven journalism" (McIntyre 100)
Spark to the Spanish-American War - 1898 (Soll) Turn of century:
Objective news like the New York Times began to emerge right up until the web age -
News-Radio Spreads Panic
Orson Welles' broadcast of a dramatization of "War of the Worlds" allegedly caused wide-spread panic in Americans believing in imminent alien invasion (NEH). -
Nazi Propaganda--News That Kills
"The Nazis frequently used propaganda to disguise their political aims and deceive the German and international public. They depicted Germany as the victim of Allied and Jewish aggression to hide their true ideological goals and to justify war and violence against innocent civilians" (Holocaust Museum). -
American "Prestige Press"
Glory days for newspapers such as:
New York Times
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
Wall Street Journal
Circulation 53.8 million (123.6% of households)(Seelye) -
Period: to
"Golden Age" of News
Walter Cronkite - CBS "most trusted man in America" (Koppel)
1/2 hour news programming
Investigative reporting
Competition from TV networks for newspapers
"profitable" news (60 Minutes - 1968)
Late-night talk shows
Nightline- ABC
CNN- 1980
(McIntryre 63-67) -
Newspaper Circulation - Decline/ Rise of Television Broadcast
1970s indicated a decline in newspaper consumption.
43.4 million households = 36.7% (70% decrease since 1950)
Rise of competitive TV broadcasting
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite(1962-1981) considered "most trusted man in America" (McIntyre 64) -
Period: to
24/7 Cable-News Networks and Syndicated Talk Radio
1980: CNN --Criticized for "watered down" coverage (66). Rush Limbaugh- Talk radio with a conservative base: people who felt "alienated" from political bias of newspaper and TV (68) 1998--Fox News
1998--MSNBC Partisan Lanscapes
***CNN and MSNBC more left
Fox News more conservative --far-leaning right
(Kavanagh and Rich 46). -
1984
Peak circulation of newspapers in the U.S. (Seelye 31). -
Period: to
Web-Generated News/Fake News
Using social networking to strengthen news as an "aggregator" while further blurring the lines between news and opinion (McIntyre 93)
"trending" "sharing" "likes"
2004: Facebook created
2005: YouTube created
2006: Twitter created
It wasn't until the rise of web-generated news that our era's journalistic notions were seriously challenged, and fake news became a powerful force again" (Soll).
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535 -
#Pizzagate-- Hillary Scandel
pizzagate -Rumors falsely accused Clinton of being at the center of a
child trafficking ring, resulted in "deranged man" who discharged a rifle" in a DC pizzeria (McIntyre 109).
"Ballot stuffing" -Fake news on tens of thousands of Clinton votes found in warehouse. The New York Times article reports that "Harris seemed to regard his experience with a combination of guilt about having spread falsehoods and pride at doing it so skillfully" (Shane). -
2016 Power of Face Book in the Election
"During these critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook" (Silverman). -
"News Use Across Social Media Platforms"
According to a new survey by Pew Research Center, "A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often."
"Two-thirds of Face Book users (66%) get news on the site, nearly six-in-ten Twitter users (59%) get news on Twitter, and seven-in-ten Reddit users get news on that platform" (Gottfried & Shearer). -
2016 Pre-election Press
"A clear indicator of the breadth of negative coverage of Trump is the distribution of newspaper and magazine endorsements of both candidates.Hillary Clinton was endorsed by 229 dailies and 131 weeklies, including news organizations that historically have not been identified with either party and others clearly representing a conservative ideology normally linked to Republican candidates.By contrast,Trump received the endorsement of 9 dailies and 4 weeklies..." (BOCZKOWSKI ) -
Russian Interference 2016
Balkans - "Inside the Sausage Factory" ~ Beqa Latsabidze
A struggling university student created "fake news" in order to make money from Google.The pay off was big and contributed to the Hillary-bashing fake news reports. 2017
"1,000 Paid Russian Trolls Spread Fake News" -"A former FBI agent testified that President Donald Trump helped spread fake news by embracing the stories against his opponents" (Papenfus). -
Propaganda and Fake News: How They Relate
NPR Interview: Jason Stanley warns of authoritarian politics, stating that Trump uses techniques of propaganda by stirring up emotion, denigrating critics, seeking division, and fabricating (McIntyre 113). Propaganda is a "means to exploit and strengthen a flawed ideology" (Stanley).
Audiocast: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/02/15/how-propaganda-works-fake-news -
Fake News: Word of the Year
Collins Dictionary Words of the Year 2017 fake news (ˌfeɪk ˈnjuːz) noun: false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting "Deliberately False" and "Created for a purpose" (McIntyre 105). "Click bate": Each click on "provocative headlines" generates money from advertisers to the source. "Evolved from clickbait to disinformation" and "morphed into financial gain and political manipulation" (McIntyre 105). -
Fake News and the Media
"The difficulty in distinguishing fabricated fake news occurs when partisan organizations publish these stories, providing some
semblance of objectivity and balanced reporting" (Digital Journalism) -
Trump Takes "Ownership" of the "FN"- Phrase
Exploitation of "branding anything he does not want to believe as fake"
Trump refused to take questions from CNN touting they were "fake news" (McIntyre). -
"News Use Across Social Media Platforms" 2018
2018 Results from Pew Research Center survey
"About two-thirds of American adults (68%) say they at least occasionally get news on social media"
"(57%) say they expect the news they see on social media to be largely inaccurate"
"Republican social media news consumers, 72% say they expect the news they see there to be inaccurate, compared with 46% of Democrats and 52% of independents" (Matsa & Shearer). -
