There is a spectrum of what people call "fake news" ranging from: 1. Complete fiction presented as fact up to push a narrative [1] 2. Reporting on conspiracy

There is a spectrum of what people call "fake news" ranging from: 1. Complete fiction presented as fact up to push a narrative [1] 2. Reporting on conspiracy theories as fact, presenting circumstantial evidence as hard evidence. 3. Intentionally misleading by cherry-picking statistics/data/etc [2][3] 4. Taking things out of context to paint a picture of a person that doesn't exist [4] 5. Criticizing someone's words rather than their position to construct a straw man (most character assassination pieces do this) 6. Presenting biased reporting on stories 7. Only presenting stories that paint a story of the world that the author agrees with The first is unequivocally fake news. Any source that reports a story like this should be suspect, and any that doesn't issue a retraction should be ignored. The second is what the mainstream media pins the Alex Jones type on, calling them fake news. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th are usually the tactics of what people call "alternative media," but almost all legacy media companies use these tactics, at least occasionally. This is why WSJ, CNN, WaPo, etc often get the fake news label from the alternative media and other critics. If fake news is defined as fiction presented as fact, then it's not unfair to label these tactics as fake news. The last two are just punditry and audience pandering, and the only ones calling them "fake news" are partisans that can't stand partisan viewpoints from the other side. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/10/women-in-hijabs-on-2-campuses-say-they-were-attacked-by-men-invoking-donald-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/1... [2] http://theparadoxproject.org/blog-1/2016/12/4/mostly-false-politifact-and-bias http://theparadoxproject.org/blog-1/2016/12/4/mostly-false-p... [3] http://theparadoxproject.org/blog-1/2016/12/20/picking-your-fact-politifacts-biased-fact-check-choices http://theparadoxproject.org/blog-1/2016/12/20/picking-your-... https://medium.com/incerto/the-facts-are-true-the-news-is-fake-5bf98104cea2 https://medium.com/incerto/the-facts-are-true-the-news-is-fa... [4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube-star-pewdiepie-after-anti-semitic-posts-1487034533 https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube... further reading: I love this essay by Nassim Taleb: "The Facts are True, the News is Fake" https://medium.com/incerto/the-facts-are-true-the-news-is-fake-5bf98104cea2 https://medium.com/incerto/the-facts-are-true-the-news-is-fa...