Fake News
Fake News

“Thanks to Donald Trump, ordinary Japanese people
understand exactly what fake news is.”
John Middleton, FactCheck Initiative Japan [1]
Page Content
1   Origins of the Term 'Fake News'
In mid-2016 Buzzfeed's media editor, Craig Silverman, noticed a strange stream of often fanciful stories that seemed to originate in one small town in Eastern European town, Veles in Macedonia. Silverman and a colleague subsequently identified over 140 fake news websites which were putting out huge numbers of stories on Facebook. It turned out that enterprising teenagers had discovered a profitable market for fallacious gossip amongst potential voters in the United States in the run up to the presidential election. And they were paid handsomely for their efforts. They dreamt up headlines like "Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President" and "FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide". Later that year the term ‘fake news’ made its first appearance in the media. And the rest is history.

This extraordinarily 'sticky' meme was soon followed by another new creation, ‘alternative facts’, which was introduced by Kellyanne Conway during a 'Meet the Press' interview in Jan 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the attendance numbers of Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States.
Fake news and alternative facts are both worthy successors to ‘truthiness’ — a term coined by US TV host, Stephen Colbert, in 2005 as a way of describing some of the extraordinary statements made by President George W Bush (often referred to as 'Bushisms'). Truthiness is the truth we want to exist, the ‘truth’ that ‘feels right.’
Truthiness is rather like ‘confirmation bias,’ our propensity to believe and accept the comforting things we hear rather than the things that are actually true. Cocooned in our ‘filter bubbles’ we are all vulnerable to confirmation bias — these an other terms are defined in the Glossary...
2   Fake News is Real

“"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies."   Alfred Lord Tennyson
Fake News is real. Below you will find a selection of stories, all shown to be fake. [1] Some are highly original and very funny, but spreading fake stories is no laughing matter. It has consequences. Indeed, the impact can be devastating, even life-changing, for the individuals or business targeted; and more broadly, it may influence voting turnout and how people vote.
And it's not just stories, pictures also deceive: take these two photos showing MPs in the Houses of Parliament. One showing a empty House debating the effects of welfare reforms on the sick and people with disabilities; the other, supposedly showing MPs debating their pay rise. After these appeared in the media The Spectator decided to take a close look and it found that the right hand picture was not as captioned — there was no vote on 11 July 2013 — instead it was taken during the Prime Minister’s questions on 5 Sept 2012.
This is highly effective propaganda for those wishing to tarnish politicians, especially given the 'sticky' nature of the message (which makes it more likely to go viral.) [We've explained how to check images for authenticity in Tools to Spot Fakery.]

We start with a quick analysis of different kinds of fake news — what Facebook calls ‘false news,' and some journalists call 'junk news'.  FirstDraft has identified seven:
1) Satire or Parody — no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool;
2) Misleading Content — misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual;
3) Imposter Content — when genuine sources are impersonated;
4) Fabricated Content — new content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm;
5) False Connection — when headlines, visuals or captions don't support the content;
6) False Context — when genuine content is shared with false contextual information; and
7) Manipulated Content —when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive.

First Draft has also analyzed the motives behind some of those producing this bad information and suggested this useful matrix:
Fact-checking sites are making progress but they can only reach those seeking clarification or advice, and sadly most people don't know about them let alone use them. So if such sites are to have a meaningful impact, ways will need to be found to link them more closely to news channels and their readers.
3   Examples of Fake News
Made-up stories can be:
  • theatre — ‘War of the Worlds Radio Drama’ [Oct 1938]
  • a joke — ‘Annual Spaghetti Harvest in Switzerland’ [Apr 1957]
  • plain nasty — ‘Rowan Atkinson killed in Car Crash’ [Mar 2017]
  • absurd — ‘Freddy Star Ate my Hamster’ [Mar 1986]
These rather well-known — and in some cases rather infamous — stories are pictured below:
Stories can also be satirical — indeed, satire can be a highly effective way in making a point or exposing dogma, humbug or privilege. Here's a recent example from the #Unwanted Ivanka meme which started to appear in Jun 2019 after President Trump's daughter appeared to barge her way into a high level chinwag between leaders at the G20 in Osaka, Japan. The  meme went viral. See here for some of my favourite examples.
Information is Beautiful has produced some nice graphics quantifying some of the main fake / junk news stories circulating in 2017 and 2018.
More Stories
There are literally thousands of examples of 'fake news' on line, some capable of inflicting real damage to individuals or businesses. Here are some recent 'favourites'. They are not listed in any particular order:
Notre Dame Fire 'Started by ISIS/Terrorists'
The devastating fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in April 2019 prompted conspiracy theorists, anti-Muslim campaigners, and far-right figures to begin spreading baseless claims and conspiratorial theories that Muslims were to blame.



Fake Twitter accounts pretending to be CNN and Fox News were the first to start spreading disinformation about the fire. But it was soon clear that each account was newly created.

These fake accounts helped lay the groundwork for the conspiracies to follow.* The events are well-described by two Buzzfeed News reporters.

*    It took Twitter two hours to remove the fake CNN account, and even longer to remove the Fox News imposter.
Did the UN say taking kids to church violates their human rights?
On 29 June 2016, Charisma News published a misleading article using the clickbait title “Taking Kids to Church Violates Their Human Rights, Says UN.” 
The article followed publication of a report from the Committee on the Rights of the Child which looked inter alia into religious practices in the UK. One of the concerns listed by the CRC was that children were required to take part in religious worship “of a broadly Christian character” at publicly funded schools, and that "children do not have the right to withdraw from such worship without parental permission before entering the sixth form."
Restaurant hit by 'human meat' fake news claims
LONDON — In May 2017 an Indian restaurant, the Karri Twist in New Cross, was hit by a fake news article claiming that it sold human meat. Staff were harassed by phone calls from people screaming: "Why are you still open?" The proprietor was said to had been arrested and nine bodies found in the freezer. And some people believed it…
Lion and Zebra drink together at waterhole
Here's a nice picture of a zebra and a lion sharing a tranquil moment at a watering hole in South Africa.The image has been shared with a variety of captions over the years, such as “It’s not eating time,” “Alex and Marty” (a reference to the animated zebra-lion friendship in the movie Madagascar), and “National Geographic: Behind the Scenes.”

When the fact-checking site, Snopes, investigated the image they determined that it was digitally created for a 2010 advertisement for Traveler’s Insurance!
Social activist pours bleach over men 'manspreading' in St Petersburg metro
In a staged event — designed for a domestic audience in Russia — a woman  described as a ‘social activist’ pours liquid over men on the St Petersburg metro. The 'victims' are reported to have reacted "with anger and bewilderment." A commentary on Facebook reads: “This is a pretty extreme way to combat #manspreading”. By early October the stunt had been seen 6.4 million times, with many viewers expressing outrage, often in strongly misogynistic, anti-feminist language (which appears to have been the intention behind the stunt).
Two altar boys in Spain arrested for putting weed in the censer burner
Were two altar boys in Santiago de Compostela, Spain arrested for putting weed in the censer burner instead of incense? No, a South African website had copied the story from a Spanish satire website and it was fake. However, the story reappeared and went viral again via an article published by The Wild Child in Dec 2018:  "what started as a joke", it maintained, ended with two altar boys being were detained overnight. Assistants reported that "the holy precinct was suddenly covered in an odd smell".
Woman arrested for defecating on boss’s desk after winning the lottery
NEW YORK — A 41-year-old woman had the winning lottery ticket worth over $3 million on Friday night, but showed up to work anyway on Monday to deliver one last package on the boss's desk. “It was worth it,” she said when arrested. “I hit up every Mexican food truck and saved my dumps all weekend. I’ve been putting up with that guy’s shit for years, it’s time he put up with some of mine.”
The author of the story was comedian Dave Weasel. In 2016 his site, The Valley Report, had four hoaxes in the top 50. Weasel told BuzzFeed that he started his site to write satirical news articles like The Onion. But his first attempt at a hoax went viral and earned him significant revenue, so he continued.  His was the biggest fake crime news hit on Facebook; it generated more than 1.7 million shares, reactions and comments.
Pope Francis shocks world by endorsing Trump for President
ROME — This story was originally published by a site called WTOE 5 News before being copied by a popular fake news publisher Ending the Fed. By Nov 2016, the story had picked up 960,000 Facebook hits. WTO5 News has since shut down its website. However, when it was operational, it openly admitted to fabricating content and even had a disclaimer on its homepage saying: "most articles are satire or pure fantasy." At the time Ending the Fed was said to have >350,000 followers on Facebook.
In December Pope Francis spoke out against the dangers of fake news in an interview with the Belgian Catholic Weekly, calling it a "sickness."
Police Find 19 white female bodies in freezer with ‘Black Lives Matter’ carved into skin
CHICAGO — 39 year old Rasheed Thompson was arrested in connection with a series of dead bodies found in a freezer in his basement. According to reports, the corpses had the words “Black Lives Matter” carved into their foreheads.
The Chicago Coroner’s Office made the gruesome discovery after several 911 calls were placed by neighbours regarding suspicious activity at the residence. Upon entering his home, authorities reported that it “smelled of death," a black male opened the door who smelt of alcohol and marijuana, his speech was slurred, and he appeared somewhat disoriented. Thompson was taken into custody and later tested positive for PCP, which authorities believe may have led to his crimes.
ISIS Leader calls for American Muslim voters to support Hillary Clinton
RAQQA — Amadh Abu Makmud Al-alwani, said to be No.2 in ISIS, put up a video following the second US Presidential Debate asking American Muslim voters to support Hillary Clinton. In it he threatened Trump supporters, calling them ‘infidels’ and ‘goat f****ers’. He also claimed that even if Hillary was a woman and a 'two face devil', had the 'charm of a pig', and was 'treacherous as the snake,' that the Democratic presidential hopeful was at least in league with the “allied countries of the Islamic state” such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The controversial video that was taken down by YouTube only hours after being uploaded.  According to Buzzfeed this story was copied and re-posted by hundreds of fake news sites and clocked up some 522,000 Facebook engagements.
Patients die in specific hospital bed at same time every Sunday morning
USA: In a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning at about 11:00 a.m. regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the supernatural. A team of experts was called in to investigate. The following Sunday, a few minutes before 11:00, all of the doctors and nurses waited nervously outside the ward. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off evil spirits. Then, just as the clock struck 11:00, Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system so he could use the vacuum cleaner…
Covid-19: cybercriminals are having a field day
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to gather pace, a slew of health advice has been doing the rounds on social media, ranging from useless but relatively harmless, to downright dangerous. Russia is also reported to be “deploying coronavirus disinformation to sow panic in West”, and cyber-criminals have been having a field day targeting a wide range of health-realted industries with phishing emails, some laced with ransomware. We've devoted a separate page to this.
4   Do You Have a Favourite Story?
This is but a tiny sample of the myriad of fake stories circulating on the internet, often offending or enraging unsuspecting individuals (who often retweet them to friends)...



Do you have a favourite fake news story you'd like to share with us?  Can you beat Confucius on a bike?
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Notes
1     Middleton, a law professor at Hitotsubashi University, was speaking at Global Fact 4: Fact Checking Conference [Madrid, July 2017]. He noted that misinformation had long existed in the Japanese media landscape, but the public did not take it seriously until Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

2     There are more examples of fake news on another page, including the classic Orson Wells' broadcast of HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds'.
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