No you're thinking of submarine pieces. Fake news came to prominence as a term when conservative clickbait from random domains started popping up in early 2016.

No you're thinking of submarine pieces. Fake news came to prominence as a term when conservative clickbait from random domains started popping up in early 2016. The left started using the term very prominently, but then when Facebook tried to crack down on it all, the right appropriated the term as a general term of derision towards non-conservative news sites.