The printing and dissemination of spurious news is hardly new, but the term fake news is. However, when we say that an English word is “new,” we are using a broader meaning of that word than if we were to refer to, say, a musical genre. Fake news appears to have begun seeing general use at the end of the 19th century.
Secretary Brunnell Declares Fake News About His People is Being Telegraphed Over the Country.
—Cincinnati Commercial Tribune (Cincinnati, OH), 7 Jun. 1890
Fake News. The following is handed to us for publication. Sunday’s Enterprise says that I and a companion were run over by the Neptune and thrown into the water. As can be proved by more than one, we did not so much as get our feet wet, nor were we helped into the Neptune. Clarence Collins.
—The Kearney Daily Hub (Kearney, NE), 7 Jul. 1890
The public taste is not really vitiated and it does not in its desire for ‘news’ absolutely crave for distortions of facts and enlargements of incidents; and it certainly has no genuine appetite for ‘fake news’ and ‘special fiend’ decoctions such as were served up by a local syndicate a year or two ago.
—The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, NY), 2 May 1891
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, July 20th, 2017.]
Secretary Brunnell Declares Fake News About His People is Being Telegraphed Over the Country.
—Cincinnati Commercial Tribune (Cincinnati, OH), 7 Jun. 1890
Fake News. The following is handed to us for publication. Sunday’s Enterprise says that I and a companion were run over by the Neptune and thrown into the water. As can be proved by more than one, we did not so much as get our feet wet, nor were we helped into the Neptune. Clarence Collins.
—The Kearney Daily Hub (Kearney, NE), 7 Jul. 1890
The public taste is not really vitiated and it does not in its desire for ‘news’ absolutely crave for distortions of facts and enlargements of incidents; and it certainly has no genuine appetite for ‘fake news’ and ‘special fiend’ decoctions such as were served up by a local syndicate a year or two ago.
—The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, NY), 2 May 1891
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, July 20th, 2017.]
