When did I first hear about “fake news”
In late November 2016, I saw a story popup on my Facebook Timeline about a pizza place near Washington DC that was a front for a child sex ring. The article discussed a possible link between John Podesta and Hillary Clinton as organizers of the child sex ring. This article came from a website I had never heard of before.
I immediately knew the story was bogus.
However, someone did in fact think this story was serious. On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch traveled from North Carolina to the Comet pizza restaurant and fired 3 shots into the restaurant as he was “self-investigating” the news he had seen. Welch was arrested and luckily no one was hurt. A police report released at the time said:
“He had read online, that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there.” He then told officers on site that, “He wanted to help rescue them.”
I first heard the phrase, “Fake News” the next day. CNN news ran this headline: “Gun-brandishing man sought to investigate fake news story site, police say.” Fake news arrived like an earthquake in my mind from that day forward.
Below is the google news trends for the term Fake News from 2014–2019. The big spike on the graph occurred two days after the 2016 election. As experts sought explanations for why Trump won, major newspapers ran articles like this November 10 headline: Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?
The Russia connection to intentional misinformation spread online came a few weeks after the election. Certain mainstream media and opinion leaders began connecting fake news to Trump supporters AND called the legitimacy of Trump’s election into question as a consequence. A quick glance at headlines from November 2016:
Trump’s fake-news presidency — Washington Post
Click and elect: how fake news helped Donald Trump win a real election — The Guardian
Fake news giant: I feel bad about putting Trump in the White House — The Hill
HERE’S HOW FACEBOOK ACTUALLY WON TRUMP THE PRESIDENCY — Wired
Trump wouldn’t allow his victory to be criticized by the media in this way. So he did a very Trump thing, he took the term and made it his own. In a December 10, 2016 tweet, he called CNN fake news. He would call Jim Acosta fake news to his face in January 2017.
Crazy to think the idea of fake news has only been in my head since then. I don’t think “fake news” is going to slow down.
