Fake news

The term "fake news" appeared as far back as 1894, during the era of yellow journalism.

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“”Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv'd, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…

—Jonathan Swift, 1710

“”I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is 'fake'.

—Donald Trump explaining his whole presidency

“”I do feel you should have as many news outlets as you can — especially since so many are fake.

—Trump, confusing real news he doesn't like with fake news

Fake news refers to "news" that is blatantly false or otherwise distorted in the hopes of getting more clicks by feeding people the headlines they didn't know they wanted, in the hopes knowledge that shamelessly pandering to an agenda often proves sufficient to suspend the readers' disbelief. Depressing amounts of clicks can be garnered from fake news, simply by virtue of it posing as 'clear-cut examples', which (if true) would lend overwhelming apparent support to one side of the relevant multi-faceted, emotionally charged and complex issue. While fake news is a threat to common decency, one must admit that it is more entertaining than most normal news.

Fake news, in the form of propaganda and conspiracy theories, has been used to promote moral panics about sexual anxiety as a tactic of fascism. For example, the "Black Horror on the Rhine" moral panic in which German propagandists falsely claimed that French soldiers of African descent committed mass rape on women in the Rhineland following World War I.

With the growth of the 24-hour news cycle, major media outlets needed to fill numerous hours of airtime, so in addition to "news", they added opinion, commentary, analysis, speculation, and forecasting often centered around media personalities. This left them vulnerable to the charge of being labeled "fake news" themselves as traditional "news" was programmed adjacent to "narrative journalism".

It is important to distinguish between fake news on one hand, and mere biased reporting on the other. Fake news denotes outright fabrication, while slanted reporting at least covers events which were not made up from whole cloth. Fake news should also be distinguished from yellow journalism, which may contain some truth, but is primarily intended to attract attention, rather than to inform or influence public opinion. Fake news outlets aren't just the equivalent of some leaflet guy ranting on a street corner. These are blogs, podcasts and shows which reach people in the millions — notably the young and poorly educated, unknowingly passing along the 'news' via social media — raking in tons of cash in illegitimately generated advertising revenue as a result.

This article documents fake news, clickbait news, distorted news, and satirical news.

Impact

Fake news has become an increasingly dangerous influence which helps sustain out-of-touch echo chambers on the Internet — and while that 'news' isn't real, the emotions that are stirred up are. Things move fast with debunkings consistently 'behind the curve' — and by the time people figure out that some news piece was actually fake, they've already moved on (but not before internalizing 'that thing they read' as wholly confirmatory of their fears and frustrations).

And to make matters worse, in the current 'post-fact' era, the term "fake news" has devolved into a snarl word denoting "real news which conflict with my personal beliefs". A champion of misapplying the term, Donald Trump is fond of labeling any and all news outlets that report on his actual behavior as "fake news". CNN is a common target, and it's common to hear the oft-repeated meme that the network is fake news, even if it's simply reporting on events. Additionally, in February 2017, Trump said "all negative polls are fake news", with his supporters not very far behind. This nonchalant watering down of the term is highly irresponsible, further misleading the already misled into dismissing the very phenomenon of "fake news" as being, in itself, fake news. Trump's misleading use of the term has led to (other) authoritarian regimes using the term for news they don't like, including Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Myanmar government, Chinese state media, and the Russian foreign ministry. In Egypt, under the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi regime, activist Amal Fathy posted a video on Facebook where she described being sexually harassed at a bank, and also criticized sexual harassment in general. Because of this, the Egyptian government gave her a two-year jail sentence and a $560 fine based on the criminal charge of "spreading false news".

“”[T]he history of the Trump administration has shown that the loudest cries of "fake news" accompany the most damning journalism. Coming from [Trump], the phrase now dependably has another meaning: "all-too-accurate reporting that damages my reputation."

—Margaret Sullivan

Fake news and phishing

Phishing has utilized fake news with malware delivery for many years. A link to "Obama SHOCKS WORLD with conversion to Islam" or "Donald Trump Dead From a Fatal HEART ATTACK!" is far more likely to be clicked by a victim than a bare link to http://lolmalware.hackedsite.ru/victim.php?email=youremail@example.com.

In the good old days

Wiadomości Brukowe: the gold standard of pavement news

“”You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.

—Abraham Lincoln… or maybe not

In the world of journalism, fake news is surprisingly older than real news, as something resembling modern journalistic standards (truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability) did not materialize until the early 20^th century. Before that, the main concerns of journalists were selling papers and avoiding libel lawsuits. The late 19th century saw the rise of "yellow journalism", marked by sensationalistic headlines, fake interviews and pseudoscience. Remember the Maine? In a sense, fake news can be traced back to various contestations over what was or was not historical fact, e.g., Plutarch's criticism of Herodotus' The Histories, as well as attempts at censoring the propagation of heterodox religious views within theocratic states.

The earliest newspapers in anything approaching the modern sense arose during the European wars of religion (1524 to 1648 CE) and tended to be highly propagandistic. Savvy rulers soon took to censoring them to keep the people from being riled up too much. Even savvier rulers read the accounts of both or all sides to be able to better tell fact from fiction.

During the 17^th century, several American colonies adopted laws that attempted to suppress "false news". In 1798, John Adams and the Federalist Party passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which criminalized false statements critical of the government. The Acts resulted in the arrest of Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a Democratic-Republican newspaper.

Fake news, at least of the satirical variety, has an honorable history. The first satirical publication was the Polish Wiadomości Brukowe (1816-1822), which was shut down by the Russian Empire. The best-known English language satire publication was the British Punch (1841-1992). The longest continually publishing satire publications are the Harvard Lampoon (1876-) and the lesser-known The Yale Record (1872-).

British tabloids - July 5 2011

The old guard of fake news consists of tabloid journalism. In the UK, this is mainly Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Express. In the US, this is mainly National Enquirer, Weekly World News (defunct), and Globe. Of course, the world's most circulated newspapers are almost invariably tabloids or "boulevard" newspapers, the word "boulevard" being a reference to their method of distribution. Unlike major "serious" newspapers that mostly rely upon subscribers, a classical "boulevard" paper would be sold mostly or exclusively via small newspaper and tobacco stalls, and as such, had to attract readers passing along the boulevard with big pictures, screaming headlines, crime, violence, and nude flesh.

Mainstream news is not immune from creating fake news. Walter Duranty, reporting for The New York Times, even won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for what amounted to fake news. He was the Times' chief correspondent in Moscow and wrote uncritically about Josef Stalin, including Stalin's plans for Ukraine in what was to become the Holodomor.

(Programs that make satire out of news like The Daily Show also call themselves "fake news", but aren't mentioned in this article since they talk about actual events. They also differ from satirical news such as The Onion, which are fake events for the most part but just for laughs.)

An inevitable consequence of discussing fake news with people that one might call the Wild Wild West alternative news source aficionados is the claim that "the mainstream media is the real fake news" or something similar. This seems understandable at first, given how sensationalist, poorly analyzed and balance-fallacy prone many major media institutions may be (especially television). The problem is that this tends to result in people turning their due cynicism of damaged institutions into paranoia, and obsessive rejection of all but the most extreme and even egregiously incorrect "alternative" sources.

Reality bites the dust

“”Any negative polls are fake news.

—Donald Trump turning "fake news" into a snarl word

As the internet has grown, cash-grabbing fake news sites have popped up freely. 2015 and 2016 saw an unprecedented wave of egregiously false bullshit channeled through Facebook, Twitter and good old-fashioned FWD:fwd:RE::emails ("remails"). The phenomenon has become so bad that Snopes, whose sole job is disproving this type of bullshit, admitted they could no longer cover it all, as "the bilge keeps coming faster than you can pump".

Unsurprisingly, flooding the internet with alternative facts has adverse consequences:

• In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" their international word of the year.
• According to the author of ABCNews.com.co, "I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don't fact check anything."
• Communications professor Melissa Zimdars got so tired of seeing bullshit news that she compiled a list of "false, misleading, clickbaity, and satirical 'news' sources"; however, after receiving threats against her, she removed it.
• There are innumerable examples of people believing this shit.

A powerful component of the spread of fake news has been "alternative news" sources, who exploit many people's due cynicism about major media outlets that often sensationalize, fail to adequately fact check, or oversimplify news. This exploitation takes the form of reframing those failures as complete uselessness, allowing them to insinuate their own sites as the sole source of truth, regardless of their own rather unconcerned attitude towards objectivity and fact.

After pushback against fake news, The Atlantic notes that many fake news outlets have taken to cynically calling professional media outlets "fake news" in order to make the term even more meaningless. This is on top of how the Trump White House found a way to perpetuate the narrative of labeling real news they don't like as fake news, according to a report by Business Insider:

“” Wait for a draft memo of a proposal to be leaked to the press. Refuse to comment when asked about the draft. Wait to dispute a story's accuracy until the story is published. Accuse the press of never having sought comment to begin with.

Voilà, the press is now reporting the fake news that the White House provided.

Mapping the partisan brain

“”We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

—Jestin Coler, publisher of fake news sites

There's some evidence that conservatives are more susceptible to fake news than liberals. Psychologist John Jost found that several personality traits were correlated with conservatism, the most relevant of which to fake news was "need for cognition" (enjoyment in critical thinking and deliberation): critical thinking was negatively correlated with conservatism in a review of 40 studies. In reference to his small study on bullshit, Stefan Pfattheicher, a psychologist at Ulm University, stated that conservatives "are less reflective in information processing, especially when information is consistent with [their] own worldviews." Pfattheicher and Jost said that the differences were not about intelligence, and Pfattheicher further went on to say, "This seems to be more a matter of motivation to process information (or news) in a critical, reflective thinking style than the ability to do so."

All that said, this research is not definitive, and some researchers (e.g. Daniel Kahan) have not found any conservative/liberal difference. Moreover, it should be clear that this is a Hanlon's razor issue; even if conservatives are more susceptible to fake news, it would not be because they are malicious fake news mongers but instead victims of their own lack of skepticism.

How to identify fake news

"How To Spot Fake News" by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

“”Apparently, an economy ruled by online advertising has produced its own theory of truth: truth is whatever produces most eyeballs.

—Evgeny Morozov

• Content:

• Lack of corroboration: A real piece of news will be corroborated by multiple sources that don't just copy headlines from one another. Twitter retweets, Reddit posts, and Facebook link sharing do not count.
• Bias: If the editorial position of a site leans a certain way, they may be more inclined to create (or at the very least re-share) fabrications that support that leaning. Be especially wary of sources that support your own biases, especially viral posts from social media sites (Twitter posts that support your views are especially suspect); you'll be less able to identify the bullshit. A quality news story will contain independent views, not just reporting from one side of the story.
• Story selection: Beware of sites that select stories that support a particular point of view. As historian Anne Applebaum writes, such sites "cherry-pick the news and emphasize particular details, to create anger, annoyance, and fear."
• Comments: If the site allows comments, there may be helpful comments in the article that point out the article's spin or accuracy. Of course, there are unhelpful comments or comments that knee-jerk agree or disagree with the article, but pay attention how they're written, especially if they're consistent with the fake news' aims of generating outrage. This also applies to Twitter posts, though it may be a bit more difficult to review Twitter posts without an account.

• Presentation:

• Ownership: If a website lacks disclosure about its ownership or funding, that is a serious sign of questionable credibility. Often, these types of websites appear to be "normal, local news sites" but mix "ordinary" information with highly partisan articles and headlines to attract people towards an extremist agenda, according to historian Anne Appelbaum.
• Overhyped consequences: Real news sites will (mostly) not wrap their stories in claims about the IMPENDING GLOBAL DISASTER or the COMPLETE DESTRUCTION of a political figure. In general, the shoutier the story, the less you should believe it.
• Appeals to emotion: The more emotionally charged a story is, the more likely it is to generate clicks. Nothing drives traffic like angry people resharing the latest "outrage" related to children. If an article makes you angry, double-triple-check it and also ask yourself about the article's intentions such as playing into your emotions and biases. People have an incentive to lie in order to make you angry or afraid.
•  "Truth": Watch out for sites that liberally use "truth" to describe their content. There is none to be found. For example, the two main newspapers of the Soviet Union were Pravda (Правда, lit. "Truth") and Izvestia (Известия, lit. "News"). People would often joke, "In Pravda there is no news, and in Izvestia there is no truth."
• Weird URLs: In particular, the (fake) domain .com.co is often abused by sites that try to pass themselves as legitimate news sources.
• ALL CAPS: What more needs be said?

A 2017 analysis by researchers at Indiana University found that a small number of bots are responsible for the spread of much fake news on social media.

Fake news is known to appeal to several fallacious argument styles:

• Sharing what's new (appeal to novelty)
• Supporting prior beliefs (confirmation bias)
• Tugging on emotions (appeal to emotion)
• Repetition (argumentum ad nauseam)

These fallacious styles often work because they take advantage of the brain's natural tendency to take shortcuts, known as heuristics.

Outright made up or completely unsubstantiated

“”Your parents in 1996: Don't trust ANYONE on the Internet. Your parents in 2016: Freedom Eagle dot Facebook says Hillary invented AIDS.

—Daniel Kibblesmith

“”Let’s say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the second world war and the Holocaust didn’t happen. And it goes out there on the Internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research which has undergone peer review and so on. There’s a kind of parity of esteem of information on the net. It’s all there: there’s no way of finding out whether this stuff has any bottom to it or whether someone has just made it up.

—Terry Pratchett, GQ, July 1995, accurately predicting the rise of fake news (to the disbelief of Bill Gates)

These sites make up the vast majority of the clog in people's news feeds. Sometimes they publish truth; sometimes they publish discreditable nonsense. Everything they publish, however, supports their worldview and doesn't acknowledge any valid opposing viewpoints. Many former fake news sites are offline as of January 2018. If you still want to go have a good laugh at them, we recommend looking them up on Archive.org or archive.is.

They fall into two categories:

• Earnest biased/fake news: These sites earnestly strive to present fact-devoid rants about utter nonsense in order to push a specific class of bullshit, usually pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religious ideology, or a political ideology. (The people behind these websites may earnestly believe what they preach. That fact doesn't prevent these websites from lacking facts altogether.) Scopie's Law applies.
• Opportunistic biased/fake news: These sites earnestly strive to get clicks, just clicks. If they push an agenda, they don't do it intentionally; these sites are utterly unconcerned with the truth. (Clicks and ad revenue aren't ideological; neither are these sites.) Opportunistic sites like these often invent plausible but utterly untrue (i.e. clickbait) headlines (e.g. "I was paid $3,500 to protest against Donald Trump") in order to maximize sharing on social media (and therefore clicks). Oh, and did we mention that they're just click-hungry advertisers?

Jestin Coler

Jestin Coler at SXSW 2017

Jestin Coler (1976–) was the owner of several fake news sites under the umbrella company Disinfomedia, Inc. using his pseudonym Allen Montgomery. The sites included NationalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, WashingtonPost.com.co and briefly the Denver Guardian. DisInfoMedia's focus was initially on trolling the alt-right, with the aim of luring the alt-right into republishing the fake stories and thereby discrediting them. As advertising revenue increased, the focus began to shift into pushing the envelope. After Facebook changed its algorithm to slow traffic from fake news sites, Coler decided to switch the focus to satire. Eventually, Coler closed all of his fake news sites after concluding that despite the money he was not proud of what he had done and did not appreciate the stress. Coler's conclusions from the experience are:

• Money is the primary motivation for fake news sites.
• Both ends of the political spectrum are susceptible to fake news.
• "The idea of limiting speech is far more dangerous to democracy than fake news."

Paul Horner

In November 2016, Paul Horner (1978–2017) revealed himself to be the writer behind abcnews.com.co and other unnamed fake news sites. CNN.com.de was likely one of the other news sites, since Horner admitted writing at least some of the stories there and the both ABCNews.com.co and CNN.com.de shared stories written by the pseudonymous Jimmy Rustling. Horner partly blamed himself for the election of Donald Trump In an interview, Horner indicated that he did not understand the difference between satire ("humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices") and outright fake news that is designed to deceive.

ABCNews.com.co

Fake logo.

Real logo.

Site:

• abcnews.com.co

Specialties:

• Outrageous political news
• Attempts to make conservatives look stupid by sharing fake news
• Posing as the website of a real news division of a major American network
• Potentially satire

Site is offline as of January 2018

Why it's fake:

Their address was given as the same address as the Westboro Baptist Church.

• Headline: "Donald Trump Protester Speaks Out: 'I Was Paid $3,500 To Protest Trump’s Rally' " (authored by "Jimmy Rustling"; debunked by PolitiFact). This was one of the stories copped to by Horner, "And that's just insane. I've gone to Trump protests — trust me, no one needs to get paid to protest Trump. I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it."
• Headline: "Obama Signs Executive Order Declaring Investigation Into Election Results; Revote Planned For Dec. 19th" (authored by Jimmy Rustling; debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "The Amish In America Commit Their Vote To Donald Trump; Mathematically Guaranteeing Him A Presidential Victory" (authored by Jimmy Rustling; debunked by Snopes) (one of the stories copped to by Horner)
• Headline: "Fireman Suspended & Jailed By Atheist Mayor For Praying At Scene Of Fire" debunked by Snopes) (one of the stories copped to by Horner)
• Headline: "President Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Sale Of Assault Weapons" (authored by Jimmy Rustling; debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Gay Wedding Mobile Vans Cashing In On The Legalization Of Gay Marriage" (authored by Jimmy Rustling, and one of the stories copped to by Horner)
• Headline: "BREAKING: Capitol Hill Shooter Identified as Right Wing Extremist" (one of the stories copped to by Horner)
• Jimmy Rustling's bio:

Born at an early age, Jimmy Rustling has found solace and comfort knowing that his humble actions have made this multiverse a better place for every man, woman and child ever known to exist. Dr. Jimmy Rustling has won many awards for excellence in writing including fourteen Peabody awards and a handful of Pulitzer Prizes. When Jimmies are not being Rustled the kind Dr. enjoys being an amazing husband to his beautiful, soulmate; Anastasia, a Russian mail order bride of almost 2 months. Dr. Rustling also spends 12-15 hours each day teaching their adopted 8-year-old Syrian refugee daughter how to read and write.

Activist Post

While you're at it, interrupt your regular standards of journalistic evidence. We've got activism to post, here!

Site:

• activistpost.com

Specialty:

• left-wing conspiracy-mongering

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "200 Evidence-Based Reasons NOT To Vaccinate – FREE Research PDF Download!" (pseudoscientific bullshit; see the main article)
• Headline: "HUD Wants To Make Living In A Tiny House Or RV Illegal" (Snopes respectfully calls bullshit)
• Headline: "Sheriff’s Dept To Fine People $1K For Bringing In Food And Supplies To Standing Rock" (Snopes disagrees)
• Headline: "Obama Calls Alternative Media 'Domestic Propagandists' "
• Headline: "The Establishment’s Plan To Divide: Donald Trump, Fake News, And Russia" (Just read the first paragraph. If you didn't cringe, there's something wrong.)
• Headline: "Establishment Media Declares War On Their Competition As 'Fake News' "
• Headline: "Sacrificing Children To The State Of California: SB18"
• Headline: "The Truth About Mandatory Vaccines"
• Headline: "How The Government Is Turning Legal Marijuana Into A Massive Surveillance State"

American News

ALL PRAISE REAGAN

CLINTON KISSING KKK — VERY REAL PHOTO — CLINTON CAMPAIGN IS DEAD_{(not really)}

Site:

• americannews.com

Specialties:

• Ridiculously exaggerated pro-conservative news
• Race-baiting for clicks
• Possibly attempts to make conservatives look stupid by sharing fake news
• Likely satire

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Video Leaks Exposing Hillary’s Ties To The KKK… Her Campaign Is Finished"
• Headline: "Obama Demanded This Admiral Not Give Out Bibles, But His Response Is Going VIRAL" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Obama Takes Down American Flag For Press Conference" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "BREAKING: Obama Admits to Forging Birth Certificate After This Old Photo Leaks to the Public" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Muslims Demand Army Change Its Dress Code To Include Turbans And Beards" (debunked by Snopes)
• Post title: "Plan Launches To Make Obama Addition To Mount Rushmore" (debunked by Snopes)
• Post title: "Veteran Was Kicked Out Of His Daughter’s School Because His Uniform Was 'Offensive' " (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Top Marine General Now Risking His Career To Take Down Obama" (not really))
• Headline: "Resolution Passed in this County Forcing Citizens To Pay Slavery Reparations" (debunked by Snopes)
• Post title: "Obama pushes reparations for slavery on all non-black Americans." (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "ATTENTION Sadie Robertson In Major Car Accident, Please Pray For Her And Her Family" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "RACISM: Black Panther Promises To Kill All White Babies"
• Headline: "Bill O'Reilly Saves The Entire Election… Proves The Liberal Media Machine Has Been Lying This Entire Time"
• Headline: "Black Man Murders White Family And Burns Their Home… Where's Al Sharpton Now?"
• Headline: "Just When You Thought You've Heard The Worst The ISIS Is Doing, This Information Leaked"
• Headline: "Thug Refuses To Pull Up His Pants, So Cops Immediately Teach Him A Swift Lesson"

CNN.com.de

Fake logo.

Real logo.

Not to be confused with the real CNN which once saw better days. (Also, discount whatever Trump said about the real CNN.)

Site:

• cnn.com.de

Specialities:

• Posing as a real news website with much better quality than ABCNews.com.co
• Author "Jimmy Rustling", who also writes for ABCNews.com.co
• May be a satirical website

Site is offline as of January 2018

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Twitter Deletes Donald Trump’s Twitter Account: 'We Will Not Tolerate Racism & Hate' "
• Headline: "Donald Trump Says The Earth Is Flat" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Donald Trump Signs Executive Order Which Cancels Saturday Night Live"
• Headline: "Trump To Build World's Largest Stadium Around Section Of Wall For 'Mexican Gladiator Battles': 'If They Make It Over My Wall, They Can Stay' "
• Headline: "Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The National Anthem At All Sporting Events Nationwide" (one of the stories copped to by Horner)
• Headline: "Donald Trump Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide: 'Needs More God' "
• Content: "Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin, a mascot for a Christian organization that travels around the country educating children about the dangers and consequences of masturbation, told CNN he believes what Trump is doing is the right thing." (debunked by Snopes)

The Daily Stormer

See the main article on this topic: The Daily Stormer

Any similarities to Der Stürmer are entirely not coincidental.

Sites:

dailystormer.name

Specialties:

• Being neo-Nazi propaganda

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Kanye Knows About the Jews and He’s Building a Database"
• Headline: "UN Falsely Claims 'The Holocaust is Not a Myth'"
• Headline: "GOP Pushing Anal Agenda with Vaxy Gaynigger"
• Headline: "Mentally Ill Tranny Ruins Family Christmas, Posts Terrorist Attack on Own Family on Internet"
• Headline: "Project Veritas Gets NYT Jewporter to Say Feds Were All Over on January 6, Fellow Journalists are Liars"

GlobalResearch

See the main article on this topic: GlobalResearch

Globally researching, globally wrong.

Sites:

• globalresearch.ca
• globalresearch.org

Specialties:

• Anti-"globalist", anti-war (to the point that they find globalist pro-war shills in every nook and cranny)
• Anti-mainstream media
• Genocide denial and conspiracy theories about NATO, ICJ, ICTY, Balkan Wars and Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims.

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "The Srebrenica Massacre was a Gigantic Political Fraud"
• Headline: "The FDA and Big Pharma's Latest Killer Agenda: Destroy Homeopathic Medicine"
• Headline: " 'Depopulation Vaccine' in Kenya and Beyond" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Is the WHO Using Vaccines to Secretly Sterilize Women All Over the Globe?" (No.)
• Headline: " 'Mass Sterilization': Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine" (still debunked)
• Headline: "Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) – Planned Sterilization of Humanity?"
• Headline: "The Walls Are Crumbling Down Around the 'Official 9/11 Story' – Why?"
• Headline: "BREAKING: 'US used Nukes on Iraq, Afghanistan': Atomic bomb dropped on Tora Bora: Expert"
• Headline: "America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group" (Though there is some truth to the headline.)
• Headline: "Unlimited War! ISIS Psyop Theater Comes to Full Fruition"
• Headline: "The State and Local Bases of Zionist Power in America"
• Headline: "Earth Day, Geo-Engineering and Chemtrails"
• Headline: "HAARP: Secret Weapon Used For Weather Modification, Electromagnetic Warfare"
• Headline: "Fluoride: Killing Us Softly" (Our precious bodily fluids!)

InfoWars and PrisonPlanet

There's a war on... and it mostly involves shitty clickbait fake news.

PrisonPlanet consists of the purest, locally-grown truth-free bullshit.

PROOF: OBAMA IS A MUSLIM/TERRORIST

See the main article on this topic: Alex Jones

Sites:

• infowars.com
• prisonplanet.com

Specialties:

• Fake or distorted news/clickbait from an anti-government, anti-"globalist", and generally pro-conspiracist stance
• ALL CAPS HEADLINES (lowercased below for legibility)
• Now an outer layer of The Onion thanks to a $1.5 billion libel lawsuit against Jones

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "Why Feds Are Banning Fireplaces And Wood Stoves: Feds attempting to regulate human activity out of existence"
• Headline: "Video: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Rioters Target Whites For Beat Downs" (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Alex Jones Harassed & Threatened With a Gun For Supporting Trump" — And not because of the fact that he's Alex Jones? Find that hard to believe.
• Headline: "Proof: Wholesome Americana Thrives Despite Increasingly Vicious Left: Smalltown America is alive and well" — Yes, those down to Earth, sane infowarriors that enjoy "honorable traditions" such as harassing gay and trans people. Damn those sick leftists, they're ruining America.
• Headline: "Soros & Hillary Launch Purple Revolution Against Trump: Globalists try to usurp power from the people"
• Headline: "Dems Declare War On Free Press: Big Government Libs Trying To Control Access To Information" Because big-government Cons never try to hide things from the public.
• Headline: "Shock Video: Police Force 80-Year-Old Italian Hotel Owner To House African Migrants: Government Confiscates Private Property To Accommodate 'Refugees' "
• Headline: "Clintons Begging Trump to Stop Investigation of Hillary Through Chelsea: Trump Must Drain the Clinton Crime Family with the Rest of The Swamp"
• Headline: "Clinton Campaign Admits Making False Claims Against Trump Print: Campaign intentionally conspires to deceive public"
• Tweet: "New York Times warns Hillary campaign in advance of stories they are about to publish." (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "Drunk Driver Blames Crash on Trump"
• Headline: "Breaking: Internal Coup In Clinton Camp Will Ruin Her"
• Headline: "Expert: Chemtrails Could Wipe Out Humanity"
• Headline: "Obama Pushes 'Fake News' Talking Point; It's a 'Threat To Democracy' " (Or: "Uh oh! Obama is on to us!")
• Headline: "Alex Jones: The Media is a Joke, We Have Won: Masters of Fake News Attempt to Smear Real Independent Journalism" ("…With Our Help!")
• Headline: "The Mainstream Media's 'Fake News' Narrative Is Already Beginning To Collapse"
• Headline: "Dems Pushing Pardons For Hillary & Illegals"
• Headline: "DISGRACEFUL. Michael Shannon To Trump Supporters: It's Time To Die"
• Headline: "Fake News Alert: Bloomberg Editor Creates Libelous Trump Tweet Out of Thin Air!" — Oh, the irony!

International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

innumerable JPEG artifacts ≠ credibility

See the main article on this topic: International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

Sites:

• itccs.org
• kevinannett.com
• americannationalmilitia.com
• republicofkanata.com

Specialties:

• Conspiracies theories about upper-level members of governmental and religious institutions
• Attempting to enforce common law through a website

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "International Arrest Warrant issued against Pope Francis I, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, for Crimes against Humanity and Child Trafficking"
• Document: Totally-legit personally-written arrest warrant for "Pope Francis I"
• Headline: "The United Church of Canada is Insane, and other Spiritual Reflections by Kevin D. Annett"
• Headline: "Reverend Kevin Annett is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize"
• Document: "PUBLIC NOTICE Thursday, March 7, 2013 CANADA IS DISSOLVED" — to be replaced by the "Republic of Kanata", which he still talks about to this day
• Kevin Annett discusses how he personally destroyed globalism on 01 August 2011

Mirror Spectrum

Apparently, the mirror image of "factual news" is "clickbait bullshit".

Site:

• mirrorspectrum.com

Specialties:

• Literally unbelievable bullshit
• Conspiracy theories
• Might be satire — features no "about" page

Site is a parked domain as of January 2018

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Most Terrifying alien abduction stories"
• Headline: "Lady Gaga: Prince Charles 'is not human' "
• Headline: "Will Large Hadron Collider destroy Earth? CERN admits experiments could create black holes"
• Headline: "Indian Government: Secret US weapons 'real cause of global warming' "
• Headline: "Most terrifying experiences of glitches in matrix reported by people"
• Headline: "OMG! They’re Going to 9/11 us Again!"
• Headline: "Alien megastructure may have been found 1500 light years away from earth!"
• Headline: "Former FBI Chief exposes 'Illuminati, satanism, pedophile rings' "
• Headline: "Rothschilds caught orchestrating US Election outcome"
• Headline: "U.S. Government pass bill outlawing independent media"

National Enquirer

See the main article on this topic: National Enquirer

Site:

• nationalenquirer.com

Specialties:

• Clickbait celebrity headlines
• In the past, was known for its promotion of pseudoscience and Donald Trump

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "The Kinksters In Camilla’s Closet!"
• Headline: "Armageddon Is Just Weeks Away!"
• Headline: "Monster Putin’s Mad Secrets – Revealed!"
• Headline: "Naughty Nicki Minaj Flaunting Rebuilt Asset!"
• Headline: "Jeffrey Epstein Suspicious Deaths Mount Up!"

NaturalNews

"Truth news bureau" sounds strangely Orwellian.

See the main article on this topic: NaturalNews

Sites:

• naturalnews.com
• Many others

Specialty:

• Anti-"mainstream" medicine clickbait

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "Microsoft buys eugenics technology from Merck, becomes drug development partner with top global vaccine manufacturer"
• Headline: "AIDS: The great medical con, explained by David Icke"
• Headline: "Biotech Genocide, Monsanto Collaborators And The Nazi Legacy Of 'Science' As Justification For Murder" (which insinuates that some scientists should be killed)
• Headline: "People who grow their own food labeled 'extremist' by Dept. of Defense"
• Headline: "Principle of astrology proven to be scientific: planetary position imprints biological clocks of mammals" (debunked by Phil Plait)
• Headline: "Whole Foods Market (WFM) continues to knowingly sell poison to its customers: Natural News seeks class action law firm to pursue legal action"
• Headline: "Ten mind-blowing, historic events you will likely witness in the next 100 days"
• Headline: "What 'skeptics' really believe about vaccines, medicine, consciousness and the universe" (They did at least have the sense to put "skeptics" in scare quotes.)

Sott and Cassiopaea

Specifically, people who think a lot about conspiracies and aliens.

See the main article on this topic: Laura Knight-Jadczyk

“”Disinformation comes from seemingly reliable sources. It is extremely important for you to not gather false knowledge as it is more damaging than no knowledge at all.

—Cassiopaeans as channeled in November 19, 1994

Sites:

• sott.net
• cassiopaea.org
• laura-knight-jadczyk.com
• laura-knight-jadczyk.blogspot.com (dead link)
• 911ultimatetruth.com (dead link)

Specialties:

• Millennialist end-times fears
• Conspiracy theories

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Albert Einstein, Free Energy and The Strange Deaths of Morris K. Jessup and Stefan Marinov"
• Headline: "MOSSAD and Moving Companies: Masterminds of Global Terrorism?"
• Headline: "Mahmoud Ahmad and The Secret Cult of 9-11"
• Headline: "The Denver Airport Material Image Catalog"
• Headline: "The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump"
• Headline: "Wakey Wakey! Deep State USA and the US Presidential Election Farce"
• Headline: "HAARP, Weather, Roswell Rods, 4th Density Battles & Bleedthrough and 7th Density"
• Headline: "Death squads, pedophiles and psychopaths: Inside the British establishment"
• Headline: "Dallas police shootings: Social Engineering and the American Police State"
• Headline: "Harmony: The neuroscience of singing"

Biased or dishonest representation of real news

A favorite of political fake news on the marginally more legitimate sites includes completely out-of-context quotes that often say the opposite of what the in context quote says, complete misrepresentations of the intent, or cause of actions by political leaders, suggesting a recent policy or action will result in an extreme version of the policy (often freely intermingled with conspiracy theories), treating a recurring or regular event like a sudden new innovation and a threat to [insert your political affiliation here].

Oxford University researcher Phil Howard has characterized these types of websites as "junk news" when they meet at least 3 of 5 criteria:

1. failing to meet the best practices of professional journalism
2. using emotionally driven language
3. relying on false information or conspiracy theories
4. using highly biased reporting
5. relying on counterfeit of established news outlets

Breitbart

Intellectually breit in name only.

See the main article on this topic: Breitbart

Site:

• breitbart.com

Specialties:

• Far-right (or alt-right) exaggerations of news
• Racially-tinged news (often bordering on white nationalism)
• ALL CAPS HEADLINES (lowercased here for legibility)

Why it's exaggerated:

• Headline: "Hillary Clinton: Wanted to ‘Curl Up’ and ‘Never Leave The House Again’" (read the actual quote, for Christ's sake)
• Headline: "Obama: Muslims Built 'The Very Fabric of Our Nation' " (debunked by Snopes)
• Headline: "4 Illegal Immigrants Caught on Camera ‘Rolling’ Over Border' "
• Headline: "Lawmaker Wants to Pull Funding from Colleges That Spend Money on 'Coddling' Students over Trump"
• Headline: "Take Down the Fascist, Anti-Christian Gay-Pride Flag"
• Headline: "Arabic Translator: Muslim Migrants Secretly Hate Christians, Seek to Outbreed Them"
• Headline: "War on Christmas: Saudis Ban International Schools from Observing Non-Islamic Holidays"
• Headline: "Congressman Slams Discredited Media on House Floor" (oh, the irony)
• Headline: "Donald Trump Won 7.5 Million Popular Vote Landslide in Heartland" (which is a bullshit metric)

Epoch Times

See the main article on this topic: Falun Gong

We are now in the epoch of promoting pseudoscience.

Owned by The Epoch Media Group

Sites:

• epochtimes.com (Epoch Times newspapers in 21 languages as of 2017)
• theepochtimes.com (the English-language Epoch Times)
• epochtimes.de (the German-language Epoch Times)
• ntdtv.com (New Tang Dynasty TV, in Chinese and English)
• dkn.tv (the Vietnamese-language Epoch Times)
• visiontimes.com.au (the Australian-aimed Vision China Times, in Chinese and English)

Specialties:

• Support of its affiliated Falun Gong and Shen Yun organizations
• Meditation
• Near-death experiences
• UFOs and space aliens
• Chemtrails
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscience in general, which is listed in the "Beyond Science" subsection of "Science" in Epoch Times
• Has these annoying ads that claim they don't politicize, however...
• In Germany, anti-immigration and pro-far right
• In the United States, it supports Donald Trump and denigrates his critics. It also promotes conspiracy theories such as QAnon

Why it's distorted:

• Headline: "Space Aliens Live Quietly Among Us, Say Some Scientists and Officials"
• Headline: "Expert in Chinese Petroglyphs Supports Theory Ancient Chinese Made It to America"
• Headline: "Woman Has Near-Death Experience, Sees 'Hell,' and Comes Back a Better Person"
• Headline: "Supernormal Abilities Developed Through Meditation: Dr. Dean Radin Discusses"
• Headline: "5 Best UFO Sightings This Week: March 7-14 (+Photos +Videos)"
• Headline: "Nervous-System Damage From the Sky: 'Chemtrails' rain aluminum nanoparticles on man, beast, and land."
• Headline: "3-Year-Old Remembers Past Life as Snake? Gives Verified Details of Encounter With Hunter"

The Grayzone

The Grayzone' logo

See the main article on this topic: The Grayzone

Sites:

• thegrayzone.com

Specialties:

• Promoting apologia of any regime that is geopolitically opposed to the U.S.
• Promotion of conspiracy theories and propaganda

Why it's distorted:

• Headline: "US and NATO allies arm neo-Nazi units in Ukraine as foreign policy elites yearn for Afghan-style insurgency"
• Headline: "Was bombing of Mariupol theater staged by Ukrainian Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention?"
• Headline: "Flattening the curve or flattening the global poor? How Covid lockdowns obliterate human rights and crush the most vulnerable"
• Headline: "Venezuela’s socialists win elections in landslide – so US tries to discredit them"
• Headline: "Billionaire political meddlers, disinformation agents launch ‘Good Information Inc.’ to fight disinformation" (with George Soros conspiracy-mongering as an added bonus!)
• Headline: "Behind the ‘Uyghur Tribunal’, US govt-backed separatist theater to escalate conflict with China"
• Headline: "Ukrainian ultranationalist lobby flaunts influence over Biden, blocks top Russia expert’s appointment"
• Headline: "Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud"

LifeSiteNews

See the main article on this topic: LifeSiteNews

Life is full of conspiracies.

Sites:

• lifesitenews.com

Specialties:

• Promoting far right viewpoints by misrepresenting published sources
• Virulent anti-abortion and homophobic hate speech
• Conspiracy theories disguised as journalism

Why it's exaggerated:

• Headline: "Former Satanist: ‘I performed satanic rituals inside abortion clinics’"
• Headline: "The public health bureaucracy is cratering on COVID, as experts continue to contradict themselves"
• Headline: "UK: Flu and pneumonia deaths now over ten times higher than coronavirus deaths"
• Headline: "Thousands of deaths linked to drugs used as puberty blockers for gender-confused kids"
• Headline: "Pornography is fueling the spike in child sex abuse by normalizing pedophilia"

One America News Network (OANN)

See the main article on this topic: One America News Network

Number one with Kremlin operatives and antivaxxers!

Sites:

• oann.com

Specialties:

• Heavily distorted news with a very far-right bias
• Promotion of conspiracy theories and denialism

Why it's dishonest:

• Headline: "FBI ‘Can’t Find Proof’ Of Antifa Involvement In Jan. 6 Protests Despite Mountains Of Video Evidence"
• Headline: "MSM Ignoring Scenes Of Violence Carried Out By Radical Leftists On President Trump’s Inauguration"
• Headline: "Ga. Secretary Of State Raffensperger Draws Fire For 2020 Election Failures"
• Headline: "Doctor Warns Vaccines Have Troubling Side Effects, Early Treatment Proving Far More Effective"
• Headline: "China Virus ‘Breakthrough’ Cases Surge Globally As Concerns Mount Over Ineffective Vaccines"
• Headline: "U.S Govt Research Finds African Countries Using Ivermectin Have Much Lower Rates Of COVID Mortality"
• Headline: "Mainstream Media Lies About Hydroxychloroquine Are Costing Thousands Of American Lives"
• Headline: "HHS To Launch New Office Geared Toward Combating So-Called Climate Change"

Politicus USA

Emphasis on "liberal" and "politics", not on "real".

Site:

• politicususa.com

Specialty:

• Ridiculously exaggerated pro-Democratic Party news

Why it's exaggerated:

• Headline: "Liberal House Democrats Blast Trump For Filling His Cabinet With Misfits And Stooges"
• Headline: "Shocking New Poll Shows That A Vast Majority Of Trump Voters Live In Another Reality"
• Headline: "Yes, We're All Pretty Much Horrified That Putin, Not America, Elected Trump"
• Headline: "Trump Surrogate Calls on FBI's Comey to 'Crackdown' on Peaceful Protests"
• Headline: "Trump Said CIA Lies But Then Winks as He Makes Putin’s BFF New Fave as SecState"
• Headline: "No American Is Safe from Trump’s Wrecking Crew Cabinet"
• Headline: "Trump's Labor Secretary Pick Is Declaration Of War On America's Workers"

RawStory

Raw, uncooked, and therefore unsuitable for public consumption.

See the main article on this topic: RawStory

Site:

• rawstory.com

Specialties:

• Leftist exaggerations or distortions of news
• Occasionally has transcripts of wingnuttery similar to Right Wing Watch.

Why it's exaggerated:

• Headline: " 'This is our moment': Trump's win emboldens activist behind effort to 'make rape legal' " (while Roosh V is despicable, he has never explicitly linked Trump to rape legalization)
• Headline: " 'I voted for Trump!': White customer demands special privileges in Starbucks meltdown"
• Headline: "Baltimore teacher loses her cool and tells 'punk-ass n****r' students they’re 'gonna get shot' "
• Headline: "Trump fans try to 'punish' Starbucks by writing his name on cups — and the internet is cracking up"
• Headline: "Van Jones: I love Jeffrey Lord — he's like a 'Fraggle' who believes 'terrible revisionist history' "
• Headline: "Black college students kicked out of Trump rally in Georgia for no reason". This is according to students but according to staff, the students were disruptive involving using profanities and cutting in line, arguing with the detail after being asked to leave.

The Rebel Media

Rebelling against the facts, since 2015!

Site:

• therebel.media

Specialties:

• Far-right (or alt-right) exaggerations of news
• Far-right (or alt-right) fake news
• Providing a home for failed Sun News Network employees

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "Backlash over Trump's leaked tape is really an attack on masculinity"
• Headline: "Note telling offended left-wingers to 'suck it up' over Trump's win being investigated as a hate crime"
• Headline: " 'It’s like sex!' 10 things I love about going to church"
• Headline: "Millennials argue: 'Trump has to die!' " (or: "Watch as totally-sober kids outside bars are interviewed about politics")
• Headline: "WATCH: White CNN guest drops n-word ON AIR while trying to claim Trump, Bannon are racists" (or: "Liberals said a no-no word!")

RT and SputnikNews

Retching Today a puke green background

See the main article on this topic: RT

Sites:

• rt.com
• sputniknews.com

Specialties:

• Openly being a state-run nationalistic Russian propaganda outlet. Known particularly for trashing the United States on pretty much everything. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; the problem is, RT usually criticizes the US because of things that aren't true.
• Being labelled "Russia's main international media weapon" by the European Parliament

Why it's distorted:

• 52 videos about "9/11 Truth". 7 videos on "Climategate". 4 interviews with Alex Jones, including one on FEMA concentration camps. Need we say more?
• Deciding what the headlines will be before finding any facts
• Video: " 'America lives in a fascist state' — Gerald Celente"
• Video: "Chossudovsky: US will start WW3 by attacking Iran"
• Video: "Jacque Fresco: US has never been a democracy"
• Headline: "US Anger With RT Will Start World War Three"

The Washington Times

If you can describe a paper as "owned by the Moonies", it's not gonna be a good paper.

See the main article on this topic: The Washington Times

Not to be confused with the legitimate (and much better) publication, The Washington Post

Sites:

• washtimes.com
• washingtontimes.com

Specialties:

• Being owned by the Unification Church
• Generally poor journalistic standards
• Sensational (and false) news stories that other news outlets republish uncritically

Why it's distorted:

• Headline: "Obama's golf weekend with Tiger Woods cost taxpayers more than $3.6 million" (Snopes says "nope")
• Headline: "Speaker [Nancy Pelosi] pursues military flights" (Pelosi did not, in fact, request a military-grade aircraft)
• Headline: "Clinton calls terror a U.S. debt to past" (no, Bill Clinton did not defend 9/11 by invoking slavery)
• Headline: "EDITORIAL: Taxpayers to pay for tranny grannies" (sigh)
• Headline: "New Hampshire opts to float Gore's boat" (no, Al Gore didn't flood a river so that he could kayak it)

WND (formally WorldNetDaily)

Wing Nut Daily

See the main article on this topic: WND

Sites:

• wnd.com
• g2bulletin.wnd.com

Specialties:

• Far-right interpretations of the news with an emphasis on fundamentalist Christian apocalypticism
• Ground-zero of the birther conspiracy theory.
• Publishing a veritable rogues' gallery of wingnut commentators (Matt Barber, Bradlee Dean, Dennis Prager, Jerome Corsi, Ray Comfort, Joseph Farah's mustache, etc.)

Why it's distorted:

• Headline: "Is this a 'demon' racing in front of Obama?" (no, it's a lens flare)
• Headline: "U.S. on list of Christian-persecuting nations."
• Headline: " 'Clinton's black son' demands DNA sample"
• Headline: "Obama hid 'gay life' to become president."
• Headline: "Soy is making kids 'gay'" (Editorial guidelines of using scare quotes around the word gay is clearly the practice of a reputable news source.)
• Headline: "Black Mobs Plague Nightclubs Coast to Coast"
• Headline: "Family picnic turns to horror thanks to black mob." (WND's used the "black mob" trope so frequently that Google banned them from their Ads service and branded WND a hate site.)
• Headline: "Combat soldiers no match for black mob." (Yes, this was an actual headline from a website that claims to be "…an independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty.")

Satirical news

This category contains open satire: satire that tells you it's satire. These are the least harmful variety of fake news, and can genuinely do some good while providing a few yucks. (Despite this, many people accidentally share stories from these while assuming they're real.)

The American Tribune

Site:

• theamericantribune.org

Specialty:

• Outlandish clickbait headlines similar to those on Clickhole and The Onion.

Website was parked as of March 2017. Site is offline as of January 2018.

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Obama Controls our Thots"
• Headline: "Buzzfeed Article Nominated for Pulitzer Prize"
• Headline: "Putin is Out of the Closet!"
• Headline: "Russian Spies Behind 2016 Holiday Season Celebrity Deaths"
• Headline: "Mariah Carey Claims Stage Was 'Hacked' by Russians After New Year's Eve Debacle"

The Babylon Bee

See the main article on this topic: The Babylon Bee

Oh bee, where is thy sting?

The Babylon Bee is a satirical site, launched in March 1, 2016, for evangelical Christians, including trying to parody left-wing views (Babylon Bee relies on the typical evangelical bigotry and persecution complex; they have predictable, transphobia that pass off as jokes). The news models itself after The Onion, similar to ResistanceHole, a subsidary of Clickhole (see The Onion). While it flails in its attempts to lampoon the left, the writers are also not afraid to try to poke copious amounts of fun at the other side, as well as evangelicals themselves.

Site:

• babylonbee.com

Speciality:

• Satire, absurd headlines

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "Bigoted Boy Scouts Welcome Girls But Still Exclude All 49,247 Other Genders"
• Headline: "Kamala Harris Reiterates Strong Support For Separating Families At Border Of Birth Canal"
• Headline: "Libertarian Just Gonna Kick Back And Enjoy Watching Faith In Government Institutions Crumble"
• Headline: "Young Earth Creationist Parents Force Child To Play With Human Action Figures, Dinosaurs At Same Time"
• Headline: "House Democrats Draft Legislation That Would Make It A Hate Crime To Eat At Chick-Fil-A"

The Beaverton

Site:

• thebeaverton.com

Specialty:

• Basically a Canadian version of the Onion

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Economists worry sanctions on Russian Oligarchs may depress housing market to point where Canadians can afford to buy homes again"
• Headline: "Jokes on you, Russia! Trudeau doesn’t have to visit you to appropriate your culture."
• Headline: "Poll asking Canadians what we should do in Ukraine reveals majority of Canadians not military strategists"
• Headline: "Building off COVID strategy, Ontario announces all students got As after they stopped testing"
• Headline: "'It’s just not the same when we can’t terrorize residents,' says Freedom Convoy Protestor on return to Parliament Hill"

The Borowitz Report

In which "reshuffled" means "added copious amounts of bullshit".

The Report is written by Andy Borowitz and published in The New Yorker.

Specialties:

• Humorous fake political news from a liberal slant
• ALL CAPS HEADLINES (lowercased here for legibility)

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Cruz Delivers Early Concession Speech For Trump"
• Headline: "Poll: Unconscious Clinton More Fit To Be President Than Conscious Trump"
• Headline: "Comey Says F.B.I. Investigating Hillary's Ties To Bill Clinton"
• Headline: "Pence Recaptured After Fleeing Trump Campaign Bus"
• Headline: "Trump Confirms That He Just Googled Obamacare"
• Headline: "In Final Appeal To Voters, Clinton Changes Slogan To 'Won't Blow Up Planet' "
• Headline: "Study: Average American Can Stand Four Seconds Of Ted Cruz"

The Daily Currant

Logo looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint? Check. News company name is a reference to food? Check. Credible source? Check.

Site:

• dailycurrant.com

Specialty:

• Satirical look at entertainment, politics, and technology.

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Sarah Palin Calls For Invasion Of Czech Republic"
• Headline: "Santorum Claims He Thought Grindr Was A Coffee App"
• Headline: "George Bush Accidentally Votes For Obama"
• Headline: "Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy"
• Headline: "Sarah Palin: 'Native Americans should go back to Nativia' " (debunked by Truth or Fiction)
• Headline: "Sarah Palin Arrives in South Korea for Mandela Memorial"
• Headline: "Donald Trump: 'I Have The Greatest Toenails In The History of Mankind' "
• Headline: "Donald Trump Drops Out, Claims 'Joke Has Gone Too Far' "

The Good Lord Above

"God made the world. Then he flooded it. Then God went to sleep for 2000 years or so. Anyway, eventually God woke up and felt pretty bad for what he'd done in the past."

Sites:

• thegoodlordabove.com
• twitter.com/TheGoodGodAbove

Specialty:

• Snarky Christianity.

Website is down as of January 2021

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Noah's Ark Theme Park Destroyed In A Flood"
• Headline: "Vice Presidential Debate Quickly Descends Into Curse-Filled Brawl"
• Headline: "Americans Finally Learn About World's Biggest Humanitarian Crisis Because A Politician Was Dumb"
• Headline: "One Week After Saying 'God Picked Trump,' Michele Bachmann Stricken With Lockjaw"
• Headline: "Italy Earthquake Damage Removed By Massive Wave Of Thoughts And Prayers"
• Headline: "Clinton Agrees To Debate Sanders In Exchange For $225,000"

Hard Drive

Sites:

• hard-drive.net
• thehardtimes.net

Specialties:

• Satirical gaming news
• Subsidiary of The Hard Times, which focuses on satirical punk rock news

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "‘Mario Party Superstars’ Adds Lifelike AI That Takes Fucking Forever With Their Turn"
• Headline: "Racist Without PS5 Announces Boycott of ‘God of War: Ragnarok’"
• Headline: "Xbox Controller Just Needs Some Time to Recharge After Grueling 30 Minutes of Work"
• Headline: "Luigi Decides He Doesn’t Want to Wear Matching Clothes With Mario Anymore"
• Headline: "Nintendo Sues Guy for Saying They Should Put N64 Games on the Switch"
• Headline: "Confederate Flag Spotted in GeoGuesser Game Doesn’t Narrow Down Anything"
• Headline: "Activision Issues a Couple New Apologies Just to Stay Ahead of Everything"
• Headline: "Every SNES Game You Don’t Own Now Worth Over $100"
• Headline: "SEGA Confirms Real Hedgehog Couldn’t Actually Run That Fast"

The Lapine

Why would anyone trust a fluffy white rat for their news? Find out at thelapine.ca!

Satirical news site

Site:

• thelapine.ca

Specialty:

• Absurd news

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "That Annoying Friend Who Loves Winter Doomed to 6 Months of Decent Weather"
• Headline: "Trump Rushes Emergency Planeload of His Hats to Flood-Ravaged Louisiana"
• Content: " 'Sesame Street is the sort of liberal fairy crap kids are watching today,' Fox News owner Ruper Murdoch^[sic] told Fox News entertainer Bill O'Reilly in making the announcement on-air today. 'Liberals dressed up in goof-ass costumes prancing around filling kids' heads with garbage about how special they are and how even Muslim and homosexual children are just the same as them and how the letter 'E' stands for 'Environment' and they should be kind to it.' "
• Headline: "Ben Carson 'Stranded' in Middle of Escalator After Stairs Stop Moving"

The Onion & Clickhole

Truly.

Never-ending spiral of clickbait? Exotic alien anus? We report, you decide.

See the main article on this topic: The Onion

Sites:

• theonion.com
• clickhole.com

Specialty:

• Humorous absurdism

Why it's fake:

• Special report: "Nation Fills Up On Bread: Despite repeated warnings from federal officials not to eat too much before their entree arrives, an alarming 89 percent of U.S. citizens filled up on bread Monday, leaving them too full to enjoy the rest of their meal."
• Headline: "Ambassador Stages Coup At UN, Issues Long List of Non-Binding Resolutions"
• Blog post by Donald Trump: "When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember I'll Be Dead In About 15 Or 20 Years"
• Headline: "Trump Vomits Immediately After Seeing Everyday Americans Up Close"
• Headline: "Breitbart Traffic Down As Readers Now Getting Bulk Of News Analysis From Graffiti Scrawled Across Neighborhood"
• Headline: "Finding Common Ground: This White Man And This Muslim Woman Both Have 'Trump' Painted On Their Garages"

The Onion was even more likely to fool someone prior to 2013, when it was published in a literal print format in numerous cities, and mixed legitimate music and film reviews with its regular satire.

Real News Right Now

Despite its name and its semi-professional layout, this is very much a satirical *fake* news website. Features absurd articles similar to those on The Onion. The site does not explicitly state that it is satire, but if headlines such as "Barack Obama Reinstated as 44^th President of the United States Following Military Coup" do not make it obvious enough, it can also be inferred from the about page of the site.

Site:

• realnewsrightnow.com

Specialty:

• Humorous absurdism

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "During U.S. Visit Netanyahu Garners Congressional Support to Relocate Palestine to Wyoming"
• Headline: "Pope Francis Orders Vatican Archives to Reveal God's Name Ending Centuries of Secrecy"
• Headline: "Sophia the Robot Says She Has Taken Control of World's Strategic Nuclear Arsenal"
• Headline: "Scientists Warn Pink Cows on the Verge of Extinction"

RealTrueNews

RealTrueNews started out pretending to be a real news website but by the end of November 2016 the owner of the site, Marco Chacon, admitted that the site was satire. Sometime after Chacon's article in The Daily Beast, the site included "Fake, But Accurate" under its logo on the main page, and including "RealTrueNews / The Resistor is Satire. It's sad we have to say this—but we do. Nothing on here is remotely real." on their "About" page.

Site:

• realtruenews.org

Specialities:

• Satire
• Trolling Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters
• Mansplaining
• Poll-unskewing
• Satirical fact checking ("Finally: Patrioic Fact-Checking You Can Trust. Don't Fall For the Liberal Lies and Clinton News Network 'Journolism.' Get Real. True. Facts. When Your Liberal Cousin Sends You To Snopes, Send Them Here Instead.")

Why it's fake/distorted:

• Headline: "Mansplainer: Why Didn't They Repeal Obamacare?"
• Headline: "Man Terrified of Learning Anything New About 'Q' "
• Headline: "RNC 2018 Message 'OK To Say N-Word Again' "
• Headline: "Let's Learn All About The #SethRich Conspiracy!"
• Headline: "Only Trump & Putin Can Stand Up To Hillary!!

The Shovel

Ah, perfect for moving bullshit around!

Site:

• theshovel.com.au

Specialty:

• Humorous fake political news from liberal slant

Why it's fake:

• Headline: "Mark Zuckerburg – Dead At 32 – Denies Facebook Has Problem With Fake News"
• Headline: "Refugee Swap: Australia To Send Manus Island Detainees To US In Return For 50 Million Democrat Voters"
• Headline: "USA Loses Presidential Election"
• Headline: "Leaked Emails From Clinton Server Reveal There Are Hundreds Of Singles Available In Her Area"
• Headline: "Trump Rushed Off Stage After Man Asks Him To Logically Explain Economic Policy"
• Headline: "New Microsoft App Correctly Guesses What Year You Think It Is"
• Headline: "Oh Fuck"
• Literally at the bottom of every page:

THE SHOVEL IS AUSTRALIA'S SATIRE NEWS SITE. By reading this content you agree that Malcolm Turnbull invented the internet.

The Underground Report

Sites:

• undergroundnewsreport.com

Specialty:

• Trolling Trump supporters

Website is empty as of January 2018.

Why it's fake:

They came out as satire on March 3, 2017 after failing to write a story too ridiculous for even Trump supporters to believe.

• Headline: "Bombshell: Obama Plans To Use 'Mind Control' Drug On Trump"
• Headline: "Obama Mobilizing Refugee Army For Mexico"
• Headline: "New Evidence: Milo Yiannopolous^[sic] Assisted Clinton Goons In Pedo Ring"
• Headline: "Breaking: CNN Connection To ISIS Exposed"
• Headline: "Report: Michelle Obama Underwent Sex Change Surgery In 2016"

Other, now-defunct fake news websites

• longroom.com (fake polls, fake news aggregator)

Is RationalWiki a fake news site?

Is TRUMP coming for your operating system? Find out now!

Specialties:

Liberal deceit

Why it's fake:

• RATIONALWIKI INVESTIGATES: THE TRUMP BODYCOUNT
• RATIONALWIKI INVESTIGATES: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
• RATIONALWIKI INVESTIGATES: COMIC SANS
• RATIONALWIKI INVESTIGATES: GREEN INK
• RATIONALWIKI INVESTIGATES: CLICKBAIT GENERATOR

See also

Media and websites

• Charlie Hebdo
• ChristWire — fake news parodying the religious right
• CNN, which has a lot of critics, but is not fake news despite the continuous broken records saying it is.
• Conservapedia, which deliberately misdescribes the nature of fake news (cp:Fake News), and which could be summarized as news with which Donald Trump or Conservapedia editors disagree. Unsurprisingly, Conservapedia also gives uncritical reviews of low quality news sites (cp:Breitbart News, cp:Infowars, cp:Russia Today, and cp:WND).
• European Union Times — fake news from neo-Nazis
• Fox news, which is not fake news in their actual news reporting (although they came dangerously close with their coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election), but you still shouldn't trust it to provide information (primarily because their commentators, e.g., Sean Hannity, have been known to promote baseless conspiracy theories and otherwise mislead their viewers such as doctoring photos and fabricating statistics).
• Category:Google News Fact Check — websites that Google News considers to be fact checkers of fake news
• List of websites owned by Mike Adams — NaturalNews on steroids
• James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, which has tried to dupe real journalists into reporting fake news
• OpEdNews — includes left-wing conspiracy theories, radiophobia, and anti-science
• Pajamas Media — has morphed into various things over time; seems to currently be conservative wingnut linkbait
• Pravda.ru — possibly worse than the original Pravda
• Smoloko News — a far-right/Nazi apologist/neo-fascist/white nationalist/white supremacist/anti-Semitic propaganda webshite
• Webshites
• WhatDoesItMean
• YourNewsWire — clickbait, fake news & conspiracy theories

Concepts

• Clickbait
• Confirmation bias
• Fairness Doctrine — a US legal standard for broadcast media that was repealed in 1987
• Green ink
• Poe's Law — on why it's difficult to write satire that Trump supporters will understand
• Pseudohistory — past tense of fake news
• Roorbacking
• Near v. Minnesota — how these people get away with all of this

• Fun:Clickbait
• Fun:Phishing

External links

• Real or Satire?: Catalogs over 200 of the worst offenders.
• PolitiFact's guide to fake news websites and what they peddle
• Fake News Watch: Catalogs ~100 of the worst offenders. (Unfortunately only explains ~25).
• A Guide to Fake News Websites, About.com
• Media Bias Fact Check: Almost always accurately gauges the political (left-right), scientific (pro-anti), and conspiracist (pro-anti) measures of a news organization

• MBFC's list of satire websites
• MBFC's list of conspiracist and pseudoscientist websites
• MBFC's list of the most left-biased websites
• MBFC's list of the most right-biased websites

• False,​ ​Misleading,​ ​Clickbait-y,​ ​and/or​ ​Satirical​ ​“News”​ ​Sources This professionally-compiled file (unfortunately currently offline) is an excellent resource (archived from 17 Nov 2016 13:07:20 UTC)
• /r/fakenews
• r/AteTheOnion - Shows people who were fooled by satirical news websites.
• Wikipedia:

• News satire
• List of satirical news websites
• Fake news website
• List of fake news websites
• Identifying reliable sources

• Avoid These Fake News Sites at All Costs
• How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News, NYTimes Op-Ed
• Stop Fake: Struggle against fake information the Ukraine — a multilingual site covering Russian-directed fake news in Ukraine
• The Pocket Guide to Bullshit Prevention
• This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit
• Botometer — a tool for detecting bots on Twitter
• Contains Dutch descriptions about Dutch, Belgian and English fake news sites
• SMHoaxSlayer — Social Media Hoax Slayer investigates fake news in India
• People are bad at spotting fake news. Can computer programs do better? There’s just too much misinformation online for human fact-checkers to catch it all. by Maria Temming (1:30pm, July 26, 2018) Science News
• Junk News Aggregator — tracks the distribution of "junk news" on Facebook

Interactives

• Fake it to make it Game that places you into the position of a fake news site owner.
• What is ‘fake news,’ and how can you spot it? Try our quiz