Mark Dajs - The True Story of Fake News: How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions

Just one week after the 2016 presidential election, when tens of millions of Hillary supporters were still in absolute shock that Donald Trump actually beat her and while many Trump supporters were in a similar state of surprise since he was the long-awaited anti-establishment underdog the term fake news became the talk of the town and quickly turned into one of the most loaded and controversial labels in America. It wasnt just a topic that circulated in a week-long news cycle. It was an issue that got more polarizing and more complex as the weeks and months went on; and with seemingly every day that passed the fake news conspiracy got deeper and darker.

Fake news stories have been around for centuries, although they had usually just been called disinformation, propaganda, yellow journalism, conspiracy theories, or hoaxes; but this modern incarnation was different. All of a sudden it was supposedly everywhere, and just cost Hillary Clinton the election.

Democrats were so shocked at Hillarys defeat that they couldnt come to grips with the fact that despite all the polls and media coverage painting a picture that Trump would surely lose he didnt. With headlines like Think Trump has a chance to snag GOP nomination? Analysis gives him just 1%,1 and Our pollster polls model gives Hillary Clinton a 98.1% chance of winning the presidency,2 Hillary supporters thought her victory would be a sure thing. In a now-famous clip, Bill Mahers audience burst out in laughter at Ann Coulter on his HBO show when she predicted Donald Trump had the best chance of winning early on in the race.

Instead of accepting the fact that voters wanted a non-politician in the White House for a change, and that they wanted the illegal immigration problem fixed, Obamacare overhauled, and a conservative Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin Scalia who had recently died Democrats started playing the blame game, and their reasons for Hillarys defeat kept getting longer and more bizarre by the day.

First, they pointed the finger at FBI director James Comey for amending his testimony about the investigation into Hillary Clintons email scandal when classified material sent from her was later found on Anthony Weiners computer (then-husband of Huma Abedin, her campaigns vice chairman).3 Then they blamed white supremacists and the KKK, or the whitelash against a black president as CNNs Van Jones famously cried about on election night.4 They went on to blame Islamophobia, xenophobia, and sexism, saying that people just didnt want a woman president. But then they came up with their most creative excuse ever. An excuse that would serve as a massive umbrella under which all other excuses could be tied together into one grand unified excuse: Fake News.

People must have been duped into not trusting or disliking Hillary Clinton because they read lies about her on Facebook, they concluded. The culprit? Not ordinary right-wing news sites highlighting the reasons why Hillary was wrong for the job, or documenting her history of corruption and scandals. No. It was supposed fake news articles that were posted on little-known websites and then spread virally through Facebook by people sharing them.

The Washington Post led the charge and sounded the alarm with a headline reading, Facebook fake-news writer: I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me.5 An avalanche of accusations followed, causing a moral panic in the mainstream media as they tried to warn the world about this newly discovered danger. Rolling Stone magazine immediately echoed this new battle cry with the headline, How a Fake Newsman Accidentally Helped Trump Win the White House.6 CBSs 60 Minutes declared, In this last election the nation was assaulted by imposters masquerading as reporters. They poisoned the conversation with lies [and] many did it to influence the outcome.7

The Washington Post pointed out a few of the most popular (actual) fake news articles, and named the man behind them Paul Horner, a 38-year-old Internet entrepreneur who ran CNN.com.de, CBSnews.com.co, NBC.com.co, ABCnews.com.co, and other fake news websites which were designed to look like actual news sites and used similar URLs. Stories posted on these sites were really satire, not technically fake news. But an article about anti-Trump protesters being paid duped Eric Trump and Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who both tweeted about it thinking it was proof of another George Soros plot, since he had been giving tens of millions to Black Lives Matter front groups so they could fan the flames of civil unrest.8

Paul Horner and his fake CNN, ABC, and NBC websites werent part of a plot to hurt Hillary Clinton, or help Donald Trump in the 2016 election they were just satire, which should be obvious to anyone who read past the first two or three sentences of the stories. And Horners motivation wasnt political; it was financial.

Most fake news and satire websites simply want to make money from the web traffic their articles bring to the sites. The way most website advertising works is that Google Ad Sense (or other ad companies) pay them per page visit, so if the site can create sensational headlines and get lots of people to post links to their articles on Facebook it will drive a lot of traffic to their site and they get paid. While a few fake news websites did produce some viral stories during the 2016 election, as you will see, these stories had no measurable effect on voters.9

The liberal media, however, seized on fake news publisher Paul Horners admissions and his viral success, and used his stories as if they were the smoking gun in a huge conspiracy to spread disinformation about Hillary Clinton hoping to prevent people from voting for her, despite his stories being satire and designed to actually make fun of Trump supporters.

A few of the most viral fake news stories about the election were that Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, The Amish in America Commit Their Vote to Donald Trump; Mathematically Guaranteeing Him a Presidential Victory, FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apartment Murder-Suicide, and Donald Trump Sent His Own Plane to Transport 200 Stranded Marines.10

While these stories were designed to bolster Donald Trump and demonize Hillary, fake news is a two way street. The mainstream media was framing the issue as if all fake news articles were written to smear Hillary Clinton, but there were plenty of viral fake stories and memes with fake quotes attributed to Donald Trump that were made to smear him as well.

For example, one of the most popular memes of the entire election was one with a fake quote of Donald Trump that cited a non-existent interview with People magazine which claimed he said, If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.11 It started circulating in October of 2015 shortly after Trump announced his run for president and despite being easily debunked, people kept spreading it around for over a year and it would regularly show up on Facebook and Twitter from liberals who kept posting it, thinking it was real.

Some of the fake news trying to smear Trump was far more sophisticated than a fabricated quote made into a meme, and far more dirty. BuzzFeed published details about a Russian dossier which claimed that Donald Trump had been caught on video getting golden showers (being peed on) by Russian hookers.12 A lot of idiots on the Internet believed the story even though it was just part of a disinformation campaign designed to smear Donald Trump, and publishing the story ultimately led to BuzzFeed getting sued for defamation.13