Virtually nobody trusts what they read any more. The United States ranks dead last among 46 nations surveyed in confidence in the press. Only 29% of Americans say they broadly believe what they read, see or hear in mainstream media. And more than three quarters of the public think that big outlets knowingly publish fake news. 

The term “fake news” first came into common usage around the 2016 election, where Clinton claimed that Trump was being buoyed by false information shared on sites like Facebook, while Trump claimed the likes of CNN and MSNBC were themselves fake news.

Joining MintPress Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod are two guests who know the long history of fake news in America. Dr. Nolan Higdon is an author and university lecturer of history and media studies at California State University East Bay. Meanwhile, Mickey Huff is professor of social science, history and journalism at Diablo Valley College in California and the director of the critical media literacy organization Project Censored.

Together, the pair have written two books: “United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It)” and a forthcoming work, “Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy.”

The divisiveness of social media has been in the news recently, with former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen having claimed that the social media giant had promoted inflammatory content to its users in order to generate more revenue, despite the consequences it has on society. 

Huff and Higdon agreed that disinformation is a major problem, but that the most pernicious examples of it come from the most established news outlets, many of whom were integral in selling America’s wars to the public.

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