Fake News

Fake News is a fairly new term given to certain news articles, web posts, pictures, etc.. that intentionally try to spread false information. This false information is usually aimed at damaging a large entity or famous person, however anyone could fall victim. There can be many reasons to create fake news articles but the main ones are to discredit/damage someone or something and to make money off the spreading of the article itself. There are a plethora of ethical issues present in the context of fake news. Yellow Journalism and similar media practices have existed for centuries but the emergence of fake news specifically has ushered in new ethical dilemmas altogether. --insert thesis statement here--

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History

Fake news became a household term in late 2016 - early 2017 as the US presidential candidates, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, began to use the term in speeches and social media posts. Who coined the term first is unknown but the origin of the first fake news articles stemmed from a small town -Veles- in Macedonia. It appears that the young adults of Veles figured out a get-rich-quick scheme by pumping out fake news articles to Facebook to gain the advertising money available on the site. Thus a group of teenagers from Macedonia ushered in the era of fake news, writing many articles mainly centered around the 2016 US presidential election.