Fakenews from HuffPo

[Dill]

(12-21-2016, 12:52 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: The first usage that I agree with is how SSF used it in this thread. A story deliberately misled and, arguably, outright lied to the readers. 

The second usage is actual fake news. Just made up stories, often times originating on fake websites, sometimes picked up by more "legitimate" sites. 

Maybe we need a harsher term for the first usage because, in my opinion, it is worse when someone generally accepted to be a journalist at something considered to be a news organization lies or fabricates stories. At least fake news sites can be clearly identified as fake news (by someone looking with an objective eye). 

One problem I have with SSF's extension of the term to what he calls "editorializing" in hard news is that it replicates the general Fox-right wing effort to assert that all left/mainstream news sources are fake news. This was in response to the discovery that fake news gets special traction among their audience. By expanding the definition, they can claim all those "leftists" are consuming fake news just as much.

Also, it is not always easy to distinguish between editorializing and providing necessary context. Next thing you know, something is "fake news" just because someone doesn't like  information added for context. The original sense of news hoax totally disappears.

There are already terms for misleading, slanted news--propaganda, and for serial exaggeration and sensationalism to sell papers--yellow journalism.

If accuracy is what we want, I don't see the advantage of calling misleading news fake news. I reserve the latter term for news hoaxes.
And I don't apply it to news satire, like The Onion.