Jim O'Bryan wrote: It points out that those yelling "Fake News" generally have the most to hide and fear from a free press and open discussions.
This inane claim is filled with irony, satire, reality and hard fact in the most circular of ways.
"Fake News" is fake. "Fake News" is real. And "Fake News" is everywhere and nowhere.
Using the definition below, "Fake News" is practiced by many "traditional" media outlets to increase revenue. So "Fake News" is profitable.
For example, I don't see how NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and Fox have the most to "hide and fear" from a free press??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news
This article is about the type of hoax. For the websites that specialize in it, see Fake news website. For other uses, see Fake news (disambiguation).
Three running men carrying papers with the labels "Humbug News", "Fake News", and "Cheap Sensation".
Reporters with various forms of "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper
Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.[1] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically,[2][3][4] often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, online sharing, and Internet click revenue. In the latter case, it is similar to sensational online "clickbait" headlines and relies on advertising revenue generated from this activity, regardless of the veracity of the published stories.[2] Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news is different from obvious satire or parody, which is intended to humor rather than mislead its audience.
The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics. With the expansion of technology, the need for views and ratings has been increasingly higher. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is a necessity in order to please advertisers that pay for advertising on their websites. If publishing a story with false content will produce a big caption and attract viewers, it may be worthy producing in order to benefit advertisers and ratings. Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media, primarily the Facebook News Feed, have all been implicated in the spread of fake news,[2][5] which have come to provide competition for legitimate news stories. Hostile government actors have also been implicated in generating and propagating fake news, particularly during elections.[6]
Fake news also undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to cover significant news stories.[7] An analysis by Buzzfeed found that the top 20 fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than the top 20 news stories on the election from 19 major media outlets.[8] Anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers have also been credited, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel.[9]
