Last December, Variety and other media outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to become an executive producer of "The Celebrity Apprentice" while he was president . CNN's Kellyanne Conway defended the president-elect's prerogatives, but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was "fake news." Since then, he has tweeted about fake news over a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, apparently frustrated by media coverage of his administration's response to the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes the “Russian collusion fake news story,” as he called it last summer. He attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone. "One of the greatest terms I've come up with is 'fake,'" Trump said on Mike Huckabee's talk show in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for over a century.) Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"? Get the original essay The president's strategy was successful, however, at least in one respect: He appropriated a term that had often been been used to describe propaganda. and the lies disguised as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, that proliferated on Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These fabricated stories – “POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS THE WORLD, APPROVES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT,” among them – poisoned the information ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory. Judging by the president's tweets, his definition of "fake news" is credible, reporting that he doesn't like it. But he complicates matters by issuing his own blatantly false statements, which inevitably make the news. Trump brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, with no obvious shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be largely or entirely false. (By comparison, the number of inaccurate statements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.) The president also publicizes smears that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesperson, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was "wrong" to promote the agenda of a group that spreads "hateful narratives that peddle lies." The next day, lawmakers denounced the president, using terms such as “fascist” and “stupid.” It is an unprecedented scene in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain. Trump's tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on contemporary idioms of the alt-right. It is a loose movement, as researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as "an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, men's rights advocates, of trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists and anti-immigration activists.” bored young people" who express "a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties and Nazi imagery can be explained away as entirelysincere or completely ironic. Trump is no digital news savvy, but his Twitter feed is just as ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when called to account, he often pretends that he was joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult his personal enemies, as he did last week when he tweeted baseless speculation about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough's connection to the "mystery no resolved” of the death of an intern. The president's tweets criticizing CNN, the Times, NBC News, and other media organizations may be comical and strange, but they cause serious damage. Last week, a Libyan channel cited one of Trump's CNN tweets in an attempt to discredit a report by the channel on the persistence of slavery in that country. And when the leader of a country previously dedicated to promoting press freedom around the world so colorfully seeks to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten journalists in order to protect their own power. At home, the Trump effect is more important. subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; On the Supreme Court, justices appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents uphold broad ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy arise from state laws and the case-by-case rulings of local judges. The climate that Trump helped create could weaken some of these protections, for example by prompting state legislatures to repeal protective laws that govern the rights of journalists to protect their confidential sources. Trump's alignment with right-wing publishers like Infowars and Breitbart, some of whom view Fox News as the old-fashioned communications arm of an outdated Republican establishment, reflects broader media fragmentation. In the cacophony of the digital age, publishers and advertisers prioritize deeply engaged readers who don't just click through to sites. News organizations as distinct as the Times and Breitbart now view their audiences as communities in formation, bound by shared values. More overtly factional political journalism does not necessarily presage the death of factual, truth-seeking, and impartial reporting. Yet excellent journalism generally follows some form of scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and replicability of results; journalism based on ideology can be discredited by the practitioner's preemptive assumptions. Fortunately, by attacking the media, Trump has strengthened it in many ways. This year, the Times, the Washington Post and many other independent professional companies have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined freedom of the press as a defense against abuses of power. Among other accomplishments, media coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has made transparent the seriousness of his findings thus far and has limited the president's obvious desire for interference. Last Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, a plea deal with Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, who admitted to lying in January to the FBI about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the United States. . Court documents filed with Flynn's plea recount how senior officials on the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on security issues.American foreign policy. The documents also contain a reference to a discussion Flynn had with "a very senior member" of the transition team, a characterization that suggests the list of names of those who could be named is short. The chances of history remembering Mueller's investigation into Trump and his closest advisers as fake news are diminishing by the day. Fake news has been a problem in the Philippines, where social media has outsized political influence. Following the 2016 Philippine elections, Senator Francis Pangilinan called for an investigation into the conduct of social media platforms that enabled the spread of fake news. Pangilinan called for sanctions for social media platforms that provided the public with false information about his ideas. The news that was published was intended to discredit the opposing party and used social media as a means to spread propaganda into the mainstream media. According to media analysts, developing countries like the Philippines, with generally new access to social media and democracy, feel the problem of fake news to a greater extent. Facebook is one of the biggest platforms as an open website, which works as a booster to influence public opinion through fabricated stories. Although Facebook provides free media sources, it does not provide its users with access to fact-checking websites. For this reason, government authorities are calling for a tool that would filter “fake news” to ensure the integrity of cyberspace in the Philippines. Rappler, a social news network in the Philippines, investigated the online networks of Duterte supporters and found them to contain fake news, fake accounts, bots and trolls, which Rappler says are being used to silence dissent. The creation of fake news and fake news accounts on social media poses a danger to the political health of the country. According to Kate Lamble and Megha Mohan of BBC News, "What we are seeing once again on social media is a manufactured reality... They also create a very real chilling effect against normal people, against journalists (who) are the first targets, and they attack. in a very personal way, with death threats and threats of rape. "Journalists often risk their lives publishing stories that challenge fake news in the Philippines. Donald Trump during a meeting at the White House on Monday. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning expressed his frustration with from the press and the courts in a series of tweets in which he accused both institutions of deliberately undermining his agenda. The tweets reflected the president's well-known views on the media and the federal judiciary, each a repeated target of his attacks. online at 6:35 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Trump accused the news media of publishing intentionally inaccurate stories about him and his administration in service of a “hate agenda.” intentionally incorrect and false sources to suit their hate agenda Sad! — Donald J. Trump June 13, 2017 Without citing specific articles or evidence of lies, he followed up an hour later with an attack on the 9th Court. of U.S. Circuit Appeals, which on Monday became the second federal appeals court to rule against his administration's blocked executive order to limit travel to the United States from several majority-Muslim countries. The court based its decision in part on a tweet posted by Trump on 13, 2017