Fake news websites in the United States

The proliferation of fake news websites in the United States is seen as part of the rise of post-truth politics.

Definition
Fake news websites deliberately publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation to drive web traffic inflamed by social media. These sites are distinguished from news satire as fake news articles are usually fabricated to deliberately mislead readers, and profit through clickbait.

The New York Times noted in a December 2016 article that fake news had previously maintained a presence on the Internet and within tabloid journalism in years prior to the 2016 U.S. election. Prior to the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, fake news had not impacted the election process to such a high degree. Subsequent to that election, the issue of fake news turned into a political weapon between supporters of Clinton and Trump; due to these back-and-forth complaints, the definition of fake news as used for such polemics became more vague.

Fake news websites
During Summer 2016, KMT 11 News published a series of fake news stories regarding celebrity appearances and filming locations in random local towns. These towns included Brentwood, Tennessee, Chandler, Arizona, and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Marco Chacon created the fake news site RealTrueNews to show his alt-right friends their alleged gullibility. Chacon wrote a fake transcript for Clinton's leaked speeches in which Clinton explains bronies to Goldman Sachs bankers. Chacon was shocked when his fiction was reported as factual by Fox News and he heard his writings on Megyn Kelly's The Kelly File. Trace Gallagher repeated Chacon's fiction and falsely reported Clinton had called Bernie Sanders supporters a "bucket of losers" &mdash; a phrase made up by Chacon. After denials from Clinton staff, Megyn Kelly apologized with a public retraction.

Chacon later told Brent Bambury of CBC Radio One program Day 6 that he was so shocked at readers' ignorance he felt it was like an episode from The Twilight Zone. In an interview with ABC News, Chacon defended his site, saying it was an over-the-top parody of fake sites to teach his friends how ridiculous they were. The Daily Beast reported on the popularity of Chacon's fictions being reported as if it were factual and noted pro-Trump message boards and YouTube videos routinely believed them. In a follow-up piece Chacon wrote as a contributor for The Daily Beast after the 2016 U.S. election, he concluded those most susceptible to fake news were consumers who limited themselves to partisan media outlets.

70news was another WordPress-based blog site, which produced fake news during 2016; in particular, one story falsely stating that Donald Trump had earned the most popular votes in the 2016 U.S. election, fooled search engine algorithms and ranked very highly in results the day after the election.

In addition to sites run on a shoestring budget, there are sites with more of an infrastructure behind them: Jestin Coler from Los Angeles founded Disinfomedia, a company that owns many fake news sites. He gave interviews under a pseudonym, Allen Montgomery. With the help of tech-company engineer John Jansen, journalists from NPR found Coler's identity. Coler explained how his intent for his project backfired; he wanted to expose alt-right echo chambers, and point out their gullibility. He stated his company wrote fake articles for the left-wing that were not shared as much as those from a right-wing point of view.

Paul Horner, a creator of fraudulent news stories, told The Washington Post he made $10,000 per month through ads linked to fake news. He said he posted a fraudulent advertisement to Craigslist offering thousands of dollars in payment to protesters, and wrote a story based on this, which was shared online by Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. Horner believed when the stories were exposed as false, this would reflect negatively on Trump supporters who shared them. After the election, Horner said that he felt his efforts helped Trump. In a follow-up interview with Rolling Stone, Horner revealed The Washington Post profile piece on him spurred increased interest with over 60 interview requests from media including ABC News, CBS News, and CBS's Inside Edition. Horner explained his writing style: that articles appeared legitimate at the top and became increasingly absurd as the reader progressed.

In an interview with The New York Times, Cameron Harris of Annapolis, Maryland, explains how he profited from creating fake news on his website, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com that included a false story claiming that pre-marked ballots for Mrs. Clinton were being held in boxes at a warehouse in Ohio.

Spread and identification of fake news
44 percent of all adults get their news from Facebook. Investigations conducted in 2017 showed nearly 40 percent of content by far-right Facebook pages and 19 percent of extreme left-leaning pages were false or misleading. In the 10 months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, 20 fake news articles shared on Facebook dramatically increased from 3 million "shares, reactions, and comments" to nearly 9 million. Mainstream media articles, on the other hand, declined from 12 million "shares, reactions, and comments" in February to only 7.3 million by Election Day.

A study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Education from January 2015 revealed difficulties that middle, high school, and college students experienced in differentiating between advertisements and news articles, or identifying where information originated. One concern noted by researchers of the study is that democracy is at risk of devolving due to the ways in which falsehoods about civic issues can quickly spread with a growing ease of access. In one assessment, high school students were asked to evaluate two Facebook posts mentioning Donald Trump's candidacy for president; one was from an actual Fox News account and the other was from a fake account. Over 30 percent of students stated that the fake account was more reliable because of its graphic elements and only a quarter recognized the significance of the blue checkmark on Twitter and Facebook, which indicates that an account was marked as legitimate.

Additionally, elementary school teachers have decided to challenge results from the Stanford study by showing children the importance of not being deceived by what is fake. Fifth grade teacher Scott Bedley in California created his own version of "Simon Says", in which students are given three minutes to read an article and decide whether a news story is true or false. Those who think it's false are told to stand up while those who think it's true remain in their seats. Bedley worked with another teacher in Kansas, Todd Flory, to devise a "fake news challenge" via Skype whereby Flory's class picked two real articles and wrote a fake one, to be presented to Bedly's class in California. Teachers are promoting these learning techniques with the hope that such strategies and skills will stay with their students' for the rest of their adolescent and adult lives.

2016 election cycle
Fraudulent stories during the 2016 U.S. presidential election popularized on Facebook included a viral post that Pope Francis and actor Denzel Washington had endorsed Donald Trump. Alternet reported that Trump himself had been the source of some of the related misinformation.

One prominent fraudulent news story released after the election&mdash;that protesters at anti-Trump rallies in Austin, Texas, were "bused in"&mdash;started as a tweet by one individual with 40 Twitter followers. Over the next three days, the tweet was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and 350,000 times on Facebook, and promoted in the conservative blogosphere, before the individual stated that he had fabricated his assertions.

U.S. President Barack Obama commented on the significant problem of fraudulent information on social networks impacting elections, in a speech the day before Election Day in 2016, saying lies repeated on social media created a "dust cloud of nonsense". Shortly after the election, Obama again commented on the problem, saying in an appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems".

BuzzFeed News found that on Facebook during the last three months of the election, fake news stories received more attention than real news stories. It was discovered that the top twenty fake news stories had 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments, while the top twenty real news stories were only shared, commented on, and reacted to 7,367,000 times.

U.S. response to Russia in Syria
Forbes reported that the Russian state-operated newswire Sputnik International reported fake news and fabricated statements by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Sputnik falsely reported on December 7, 2016 that Earnest stated sanctions for Russia were on the table related to Syria, falsely quoting Earnest as saying: "There are a number of things that are to be considered, including some of the financial sanctions that the United States can administer in coordination with our allies. I would definitely not rule that out." Forbes analyzed Earnest's White House press briefing from that week, and found the word "sanctions" was never used by the Press Secretary. Russia was discussed in eight instances during the press conference, but never about sanctions. The press conference focused solely on Russian air raids in Syria towards terrorists fighting President of Syria Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo.

Legislative and executive responses
Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in March 2016 and heard from officials in both countries on Russian operations to influence their affairs. U.S. Senator Angus King told the Portland Press Herald that tactics used by Russia during the 2016 U.S. election were analogous to those used against other countries. King recalled the legislators were informed by officials from both Ukraine and Poland about Russian tactics of "planting fake news stories" during elections. On November 20, 2016, King joined a letter in which seven members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee asked President Obama to publicize more information from the intelligence community on Russia's role in the U.S. election. In an interview with CNN, Senator King warned against ignoring the problem, saying it was a bipartisan issue.

Amid worries about fake news and disinformation being spread by Russia, representatives in the U.S. Congress called for more action to track and counter alleged propaganda emanating from overseas. On November 20, 2016, legislators approved a measure within the National Defense Authorization Act to ask the U.S. State Department act against propaganda with an inter-agency panel. The legislation authorized funding of $160 million over a two-year-period. The initiative was developed through a bipartisan bill, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, written by U.S. Senators Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Chris Murphy. Portman urged more U.S. government action to counter propaganda. Murphy said after the election it was apparent the U.S. needed additional tactics to fight Russian propaganda. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden said frustration over covert Russian propaganda was bipartisan.

Republican U.S. Senators stated they planned to hold hearings and investigate Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. elections. By doing so they went against the preference of incoming Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who downplayed any potential Russian meddling in the election. U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr discussed plans for collaboration on investigations of Russian cyberwarfare during the election. U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker planned a 2017 investigation. Senator Lindsey Graham indicated he would conduct a sweeping investigation in the 115th U.S. Congress session.

"Pizzagate"
In early November 2016, fake news sites and Internet forums falsely implicated the restaurant Comet Ping Pong and Democratic Party figures as part of a fictitious child trafficking ring, which was dubbed "Pizzagate". The conspiracy theory was debunked by the fact-checking website Snopes.com, The New York Times, and Fox News. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media. After threats, Comet Ping Pong increased security for concerts held inside its premises.

On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, from Salisbury, North Carolina, walked into the restaurant with a semi-automatic rifle, and fired one or more shots inside the building before being arrested. No one was injured. In addition to the AR-15 rifle, police seized a Colt .38 caliber handgun, a shotgun, and a folding knife from the suspect's car and person. The suspect told police that he planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory, and was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and carrying a rifle or shotgun outside the home or business. Following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and a District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to four years in prison on June 22, 2017, also agreeing to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. After the incident, future National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn and his son Michael G. Flynn were criticized by many reporters for spreading the rumors. Two days after the shooting, Trump fired Michael G. Flynn from his transition team, with The New York Times and ABC News both reporting the action by the President-Elect was directly tied to Flynn's Twitter posting of fake news.

Days after the attack, Hillary Clinton spoke out on the dangers of fake news in a tribute speech to retiring Senator Harry Reid at the U.S. Capitol. Clinton called the spread of fraudulent news and fabricated propaganda an epidemic that flowed through social media. She said it posed a danger to citizens of the U.S. and to the country's political process. Clinton said in her speech she supported bills before the U.S. Congress to deal with fake news.