Fake news is not new.
It’s been around since humans learned to communicate.
But, when “fake news” is used to influence people and change the course of governments and countries and cultures and the entire world. then, fake news is no longer ‘just fake news’; it is a weapon, just as dangerous as a war which forces people to “change their minds and ways of doing things”.
The U.S. has been a victim of downright lies in politics and government, since forever, and we are not the same country that the founding fathers intended to create.
Once the cable news arrived in the 1990s...the path ahead became cluttered, and open to misinformation efforts. The same can be said for internet news from 15 years ago, and the arrival of social media about ten years ago. In the 1990s, if you counted newspaper-reading time and TV news viewing (with AM radio chatter)....I probably had 8 hours a week of news. Today? It’s getting near almost 20 hours per week. Most of it....is either marginal news (like the newest Kardashian trend), or some CNN-invented misinformation.