‘Fake news’ has rapidly become a catch-all term to discredit all kinds of stories. We need to be smarter at recognising and combating outright fabrication

ntil recently, there was news and “not news” – as denoted by comments of “that’s not news” below the line on more light-hearted stories or features. Now there is “fake news”, said to be behind the election of Donald Trump as US president and a recent incident involving a gunman at a Washington pizzeria.

The term has become widely used – too widely. But it’s understandable there’s confusion when some fake news is only a bit fake, or fake for an arguably legitimate reason (such as satire).

Can we still make a useful definition of fake news? And should we even be worried about it at all?