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Turning the Tables: How Trump Turned Fake News from a Weapon of Deception to a Weapon of Mass Destruction of Legitimate News

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Abstract

Fake news has been with us for centuries and indeed had great impact in the American election of 2016. But the man who became President in that election has cleverly turned fake news into something far more dangerous. By denouncing any news he finds unwelcome as fake news, Donald Trump has launched an attack of unprecedented scope and virulence against legitimate media that endeavor to report the truth. Although the press and the First Amendment in America have always been under attack from the government, Trump’s new line of attack puts freedom of expression in a kind of peril it has never seen before.

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Levinson, P. (2019). Turning the Tables: How Trump Turned Fake News from a Weapon of Deception to a Weapon of Mass Destruction of Legitimate News. In: Happer, C., Hoskins, A., Merrin, W. (eds) Trump’s Media War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_3

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