During the 2016 election cycle, WTOE 5 News released an article proclaiming, “Pope Francis Shocks the World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement.” According to Facebook, this article received 960,000 engagements, making it one of the most widely circulated articles of 2016. The revelations in this article were especially enticing because, just a few months earlier during a speech in Mexico, Pope Francis said, “[A] person who thinks only about building walls . . . is not Christian.” This story was a reversal from the Vatican’s longstanding refusal to comment on political issues. Ultimately, the “news” was unbelievable because the article and the site hosting the article were both fabricated.
The phenomenon of intentionally fraudulent, faux-journalistic content rose to national attention after the 2016 presidential election, but intentionally misleading or false “news” articles predate this election cycle and transcend political subject matter. However, this cycle was altogether unique because the use of social media has accelerated the ability for misleading or fraudulent “news” articles to spread, especially when nearly one-fifth of adults using social media in the United States get news from sites such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. In fact, the most popular fake news stories were shared more often on Facebook than popular stories from mainstream news outlets. Amidst this surge, opportunists began to intentionally create misleading or false news articles in the hopes of generating site traffic. Many of these articles have the potential to enrich the individual purveyor but also have the potential to disrupt the online advertising industry. This traffic could drastically increase the interest in advertising on a site and thus the cost of advertising space.
This Comment proposes that governmental actors could intervene to regulate “Fake News” as commercial speech because the purveyor’s economic incentives encourage producing intentionally false content.
