No matter what happens in the 2020 election, this chapter of American history could well be called the "fake news age." So I went back to the beginning... to the "fake" origins... http://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/media/fake-news-age/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/3...

All the anti-media attacks and Covid denialism, all the pro-Trump propaganda and all the assertions that you shouldn& #39;t believe your own eyes and ears — I argue that it& #39;s all rooted in Trump& #39;s insistence that news is "fake." He made the claim for the first time on Jan. 11, 2017...

On that day, @CraigSilverman couldn& #39;t believe HIS ears. He had been studying and exposing truly "fake" news, made-up stories, for years. Suddenly Trump has hijacked the term. The two of us took a trip down memory lane for this week& #39;s RS podcast http://cnn.com/audio/podcasts/reliable-sources">https://cnn.com/audio/pod...

He said it& #39;s a prime "case study in how our information environment works." Trump exploited the term "fake news;" aspiring autocrats around the world used it as a cudgel; and so "our ability to actually have a focused conversation about, you know, actual fake news" was impaired.

Key insight from @CraigSilverman: Trump "understood very early on that in a crowded field of candidates, and in a crowded and oversaturated information environment, EXTREME wins." The stuff that was supposed to disqualify him, helped him. Will it, again? http://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/media/fake-news-age/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/3...