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FBI Tracked 'Fake News' Believed To Be From Russia On Election Day (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The FBI monitored social media on Election Day last year in an effort to track a suspected Russian disinformation campaign utilizing "fake news," CNN has learned. In the months leading up to Election Day, Twitter and Facebook were the feeding grounds for viral "news" stories floating conspiracies and hoaxes, many aimed at spreading negative false claims about Hillary Clinton. On Election Day, dozens of agents and analysts huddled at a command center arrayed with large monitoring screens at the FBI headquarters in Washington watching for security threats, according to multiple sources. That included analysts monitoring cyber threats, after months of mounting Russian intrusions targeting every part of the US political system, from political parties to policy think-tanks to state election systems. On this day, there was also a group of FBI cyber and counterintelligence analysts and investigators watching social media. FBI analysts had identified social media user accounts behind stories, some based overseas, and the suspicion was that at least some were part of a Russian disinformation campaign, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
...many aimed at spreading negative false claims about Hillary Clinton.
Trump and Clinton were arguably the two most hated presidential candidates to run in US presidential election history. They didn't need the "help" of fake news to have material on which to attack each other as there was no shortage of negative true information about them.
And yet mysteriously, the fake information abounded, in fact, the fake information has a long history of existing. A lot of it from Trump, who seems inclined to create accomplishments out of smoke and mirrors. But a lot from the GOP, who still wants to chase after Benghazi and Whitewater.
The key difference was that every little thing Trump did was held up by the media (and the Republican establishment) as a harbinger of the end of modern civilization if Trump were to get elected.
Actually, pretty much everything Trump did was completely ignored by his base, serious questions weren't answered, and he's fulfilled a lot of low expectations of him. But then, so has his base, who is still championing his successes, declaring his Christian morality, and insisting that the rest of us give him a chance even as he denounces all his opponents for standing in his way.
On the other hand, every thing that Hillary did (and there was lots: evading federal records laws, flipping on "don't ask don't tell", flipping on gay marriage, colluding with the DNC on debate prep, colluding with the DNC on subverting Sanders' campaign, the highly questionable financial arrangements of the Clinton foundation, etc.) was largely treated as non-news by the same media.
Is that why they reported on it incessantly?
So, in summary, there was absolutely no shortage of negative news on Clinton, it was just getting ignored by the news media.
Except for all the stories.
The copious amounts of them. Taken seriously.
Meanwhile, so is the clown.
What percentage of CNN stories are fake? Do you have some examples of them consistently publishing fake news? Seems more like you've just bought into Trump's "don't trust anyone" rhetoric.
So a big fat 0%. Nice.
Originally, people talked about fake news like "Clinton has brain tumor and only 6 months to live" or "Birmingham in the UK is a 'no-go zone. Something that's been made up and has no basis in reality.
That's quite a bit different than being mean to Trump or a false story that was retracted and the people responsible were held accountable.
Now I won't say they have the highest quality stories, but they're a fare cry from the absolute lies that you'll see from right-wing sources.