Why 'fake news' is now ensnaring liberals
Before the presidential election, when Hillary Clinton looked to be cruising to a victory, a cottage industry of fake and misleading news reports found an eager audience on many conservative Americans鈥� social media feeds.
Now, nearly three months after President Trump鈥檚 stunning victory, same kind of alarmist, click-bait headlines, along with their false news reports, are becoming increasingly prevalent on liberal Americans鈥� feeds.
There was the of Mr. Trump, purportedly showing him standing with his parents, both dressed in the white robes and symbols of the Ku Klux Klan. There was the misleading story of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who was said to have founded a group in high school called the There was the viral photo of a boy handcuffed at Dulles airport near Washington after the president鈥檚 immigration ban last week 鈥� it was , taken in 2015.
The term 鈥渇ake news鈥� has become one of the most charged political terms in the emerging rough-and-ready digital era of the Trump presidency. He uses the term almost daily, charging mainstream news outlets such as CNN and The New York Times with trafficking in 鈥渇iction鈥� and even outright lies. At the same time, he spreads falsehoods, like his claim Tuesday that 鈥渢he murder rate in our country is the highest it鈥檚 been in 47 years.鈥澛營n fact, the murder rate is near historic lows.
The confusion and misinformation creates an environment where it is increasingly normal to accept facts only if they conform to one's own worldview. But something else is at work, as well,聽many observers say. The penchant to believe fake news is often rooted in a deep-seated feeling of alarm and powerlessness.聽
鈥淥f course, when you feel disempowered, you want to strike back with everything you got, and you feel like the whole world is against you,鈥� says Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking website that has debunked many of the false stories circulating around the internet.
鈥淧eople who think they鈥檝e been pushed out of the political world as it is right now are going to be susceptible to misinformation 鈥� they鈥檙e going to focus on whatever makes them feel better,鈥� she says.
Right now, that鈥檚 liberals. Ms. Binkowski says she has seen an uptick in liberals sharing misleading stories on their news feeds. Others agree.
鈥淐ertainly, you can see more examples in the kind of stuff that people of the left are now fascinated by,鈥� says Judith Donath, a faculty fellow at at Harvard University. 鈥淟iberals were not being terribly alarmist before the election, but now there鈥檚 this nonstop sense of emergency.... You don鈥檛 really want to stop and smell the flowers, because you think that if I miss something, disaster might happen.鈥�
A convergence of crises
Before the election, fake news stories abounded on conservative feeds, according to a number of studies. Headlines claiming that or that in public schools were shared hundreds of thousands of times. The most notorious fake news story 鈥� the fabricated story that at a Washington pizza parlor 鈥� led an armed man to investigate and fire a shot during business hours.
The trend represents a perfect storm of several crises converging, many scholars say.
鈥淭here鈥檚 the platform crisis of social media as a news distributor, there is the industrial crisis of mainstream journalistic venues closing and downscaling, and there is the larger cultural crises of the epistemological devaluation of verifiable truth,鈥� says Aram Sinnreich, professor at American University鈥檚 School of Communication in Washington. 鈥淭hen there鈥檚 also the political crisis with opportunistic public officials and voters both privileging politically convenient stories over truthful ones.鈥�
Fake news has generally trended conservative. In the last three months before the election, 17 of the top 20 most-shared fake news stories favored Trump, according to 聽And聽over the same period, fake news stories favoring Trump got 30 million shares 鈥� quadruple the number of shares for fake news posts favoring Clinton, according to by economists of Stanford University and of New York University.
The recent spike in fake news stories on the left can be attributed to the enormous increase in the number of liberals now seeking information from all sources, says Professor Donath, also the former director of the Sociable Media Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. That trend has also bolstered mainstream newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, which聽 after the election.
鈥淪o if you have a huge multiplier in the news people are consuming, while keeping the same percentage of these outlets that really aren鈥檛 trustworthy, you鈥檇 of course have more of the fake stuff,鈥� says Donath.
And new fake stories keep circulating. An article from last week claimed that police officers had burned the camps of indigenous activists fighting the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. The story, which included an image of burning tipis from a , was shared nearly on Facebook.
Other fake stories on liberal feeds included a that reported that first lady Melania Trump was selling jewelry on the White House website. And a number of stemmed from an unverified Twitter account, @RoguePOTUSStaff, which purports to offer secret information from 鈥渞ogue鈥� White House staffers. The account is followed by more than 650,000 people.
Trump's own take on fake news
For his part, Trump has appropriated the term 鈥渇ake news鈥� but changed its meaning.
On Monday, the president , 鈥淎ny negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.鈥�
His statement Tuesday appears to confuse the rise in the murder rate with the murder rate. While the 2015 murder rate was 4.9 per 100,000 people 鈥� less than half of what it was in 1991 鈥� it is up from 4.4 per 100,000 in 2014. That was the largest one-year jump in 50 years.聽
On Feb. 2, Trump went so far as to post 聽to his official Facebook page. The story claimed that Kuwait issued聽聽鈥淪mart!鈥� Trump tagged his post. And as of noon Tuesday, the still-live post had been 鈥渓iked鈥� over 250,000 times, and shared nearly 70,000 times. The alt-right websites Breitbart, Infowars, and Sputnik were also among those who cited the story.
This despite the fact that the Kuwaiti foreign ministry on Friday said that it 鈥渃ategorically denies these claims and affirms that these reported nationalities ... have big communities in Kuwait and enjoy full rights,鈥澛�
In the end, the proliferation of fake news could be a boon for traditional journalism, as the surge in circulation numbers suggest.
鈥淚t鈥檚 almost a theater of the absurd, but if you listen to what the majority of the public is saying, they prefer to have legitimized news,鈥� says Kevin Smith, deputy director of聽at the Ohio State University in Columbus. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 about, when they go low we go high ... it鈥檚 about going straight. We need to keep that impartial review of what鈥檚 going on.鈥�
[Editor's note: The original version stated the murder rate figures for 2014 incorrectly.]
