Each year, Politifact takes a look back at the year before and chooses the biggest lie found in their fact-checking vaults. But 2016’s biggest lie was not from any one person – not even a presidential candidate. It was an entire category: fake news.
Gardner Selby of the PolitiFact Texas fact-checking team has more on the decision to not choose any individual statement as 2016’s awardee.
Ignoring the facts has long been a staple of political speech. Every day, politicians overstate some statistic, distort their opponents’ positions, or simply tell out-and-out whoppers. Surrogates and pundits spread the spin.
Then there’s fake news, the phenomenon that is now sweeping, well, the news. Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word.
In 2016, the prevalence of political fact abuse – promulgated by the words of two polarizing presidential candidates and their passionate supporters – gave rise to a spreading of fake news with unprecedented impunity.
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