Did fake news help Trump?

Throughout our most recent presidential election, Republicans were complaining about fake news. After the election, Democrats insisted that fake news helped Donald Trump win. To an extent, I agree with that, but not for the reasons they portray.


The American media has lost a lot of the public's trust over the years. They have been caught in all sorts of deception. This includes inaccurate reporting, taking content out of context, opinions reported as facts, and uneven treatment of issues with multiple sides.

I don't think any rational individual can deny that the American media wanted Hillary Clinton elected over Donald Trump. They seemed to increase their level of deceit beyond normal. I'm not going to go into details about what exactly the media did wrong. There are already multiple websites explaining their antics (although most of these include significant bias, sometimes calling out information that was not deceitful). I would rather not waste my time repeating them. Oddly enough, even a lot of the skeptics missed some such as the myth of the uneducated voter.

Democrats frequently point out obscure Internet sources that lied about Clinton. They conveniently ignore all of the high-profile dishonesty that was intended to help her. While there was undeniably dishonesty on both sides, the deceit was clearly lopsided in favor of helping out the Democrats.

Trump had some serious downsides. With how far the media went in trying to dictate the outcome of the election, they destroyed what little credibility they had left. Not everything anti-Trump was false, but people were highly skeptical. As a result, a lot of real news against Trump was never taken seriously.

Democrats keep insisting that Trump won partially because his supporters were more vulnerable to fake news. In reality, they were actually more skeptical of fake news than the Democrats. They were so skeptical that they even rejected some real news.

Some people are now pushing for the schools to address fake news. In almost all instances, their examples reflect the obscure websites lying or showing bias in support of conservative values. None seem open to acknowledging any deceit whatsoever from liberal sources. If the schools get their way, we will become likely to see fake news used as a means to push liberal values. People will remain susceptible, but only when it suits their desires.