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I did think about it as I wrote it, but more because it is so Trumpian and I do really dislike it as a phrase. In the end used it as lazy shorthand.
I disagree with your reasoning though Oliver. It was presented as news and it is falsified - so 'fake news' or 'false news' or whatever. The Onion or The Day Today are satirical news. Adding a modifier to 'news' is perfectly possible, especially if by doing so one is highlighting that what is presented as news is actually not.
villa-ru-
I disagree with your reasoning though Oliver. It was presented as news and it is falsified - so 'fake news' or 'false news' or whatever. The Onion or The Day Today are satirical news. Adding a modifier to 'news' is perfectly possible, especially if by doing so one is highlighting that what is presented as news is actually not.
It's obviously fine to disagree, but you're not addressing my point. It's one of conceptual propriety and how people can be manipulated by conceptual distortions. Of course it's also fine to add a modifier to news--'daily news' or 'foreign news' etc. are perfectly fine, but the problem with 'satirical news' is, again, that it is not news. It's satire, and satire may use news as its basis or in itself have news value, e.g. 'Alec Baldwin does Trump impression', but it is not news. The case with 'satirical news' is more harmless (although people do mistake satire for news), but 'fake news' is active manipulation in the way that I described above. Every time someone uses that term, they help people like Trump and their propaganda.
Oliver Schick
Can I make a plea not to use that term if at all possible?
It's a sneaky conceptual confusion.
News is news. It's only news when it's true. There is no such thing as 'fake news'. If you use that term, you either denigrate news (if you call something true false) or elevate something false to the status of 'news' (even if, as someone opposing it, you want to say it is false), in the process devaluing actual news by calling something false also 'news'.
The sooner this contradiction in terms, generally used either maliciously (in the former case) or innocently self-defeatingly (as in the second case), disappears from popular usage, the better.