Fake News Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Questions With Answers  >  Miscellaneous Trivia  >  Fake News Trivia

Fake News Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is “Fake news”?
A: Fake news or junk news or pseudo-news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.

The false information is often caused by reporters doing what?
A: Paying sources for stories, an unethical practice called checkbook journalism.

The news is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media, but occasionally finds its way to what?
A: The mainstream media.

Fake news is written and published usually with the intent to mislead in order to do what?
A: Damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership.

Similarly, clickbait stories and headlines do what?
A: Earn advertising revenue from this activity.

Having not yet taken action, in 2019, Facebook was exploring ways to do what?
A: Combat anti-vaccine information on its platform.

The relevance of fake news has increased in what?
A: Post-truth politics.

For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate what?
A: Online advertising revenue.

If publishing a story with false content attracts users, this benefits whom?
A: Advertisers and improves ratings.

Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media, primarily the Facebook News Feed, have all been implicated in what?
A: The spread of fake news, which competes with legitimate news stories.

Hostile government actors have also been implicated in generating and propagating fake news, particularly during what?
A: Elections.

Fake news undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to do what?
A: Cover significant news stories.

An analysis by BuzzFeed found that the top 20 fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than what?
A: The top 20 election stories from 19 major media outlets.

Anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers have been criticized for what?
A: Because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel.

The term is also at times used to cast doubt upon legitimate news from a what?
A: From an opposing political standpoint, a tactic known as the lying press.

During and after his presidential campaign and election, Donald Trump popularized what term?
A: The term "fake news" in this sense when he used it to describe the negative press coverage of himself.

In part as a result of Trump's use of the term, the term has come under increasing criticism, and in October 2018 the British government decided that it will what?
A: That is will no longer use the term because it is "a poorly-defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes."

Fake news is a neologism often used to refer to what?
A: Fabricated news.

This type of news, found in traditional news, social media or fake news websites, has no basis in fact, but is presented as being what?
A: Factually accurate.

Michael Radutzky, a producer of CBS 60 Minutes, said his show considers fake news to be what?
A: "Stories that are provably false, have enormous traction in the culture, and are consumed by millions of people".

These stories are not only found in politics, but also in areas like what?
A: Vaccination, stock values and nutrition.

Guy Campanile, also a 60 Minutes producer said what?
A: "What we are talking about are stories that are fabricated out of thin air.”

In some cases, what appears to be fake news may be what?
A: News satire, which uses exaggeration and introduces non-factual elements that are intended to amuse or make a point, rather than to deceive.

Propaganda can also be what?
A: Fake news.

Some researchers have highlighted that "fake news" may be distinguished not just by the falsity of its content, but also what?
A: The "character of its online circulation and reception".

In the context of the United States of America and its election processes in the 2010s, fake news generated what?
A: Considerable controversy and argument, with some commentators defining concern over it as moral panic or mass hysteria and others worried about damage done to public trust.

In January 2017, the United Kingdom House of Commons conducted a parliamentary inquiry into what?
A: The "growing phenomenon of fake news".

Some, most notably United States President Donald Trump, have broadened the meaning of "fake news" to include what?
A: News that was negative of his presidency.

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), launched in 2015, supports what?
A: International collaborative efforts in fact-checking, provides training and has published a code of principles.

In 2017 it introduced an application and vetting process for what?
A: Journalistic organizations.

One of IFCN's verified signatories, the independent, not-for-profit media journal The Conversation, created a short animation explaining what?
A: Its fact checking process, which involves "extra checks and balances, including blind peer review by a second academic expert, additional scrutiny and editorial oversight".

Beginning in the 2017 school year, children in Taiwan study a new curriculum designed to teach what?
A: Critical reading of propaganda and the evaluation of sources.

Called "media literacy", the course provides what?
A: Training in journalism in the new information society.

Roman politician and general Mark Antony killed himself because of what?
A: Misinformation.

During the first century BC, Octavian ran a campaign of what?
A: Misinformation against his rival Mark Antony, portraying him as a drunkard, a womanizer, and a mere puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII.

He published a document purporting to be Marc Antony's what?
A: His will, which claimed that Marc Antony, upon his death, wished to be entombed in the mausoleum of the Ptolemaic pharaohs.

Although the document may have been forged, it did what?
A: It invoked outrage from the Roman populace.

Marc Antony ultimately killed himself after his defeat in the Battle of Actium upon hearing what?
A: False rumors propagated by Cleopatra herself claiming that she had committed suicide.

During the second and third centuries AD, false rumors were spread about whom?
A: Christians claiming that they engaged in ritual cannibalism and incest.

In the late third century AD, the Christian apologist Lactantius invented and exaggerated stories about pagans engaging in what?
A: In acts of immorality and cruelty, while the anti-Christian writer Porphyry invented similar stories about Christians.

In 1475, a fake news story in Trent claimed that the Jewish community had done what?
A: Murdered a two-and-a-half-year-old Christian infant named Simonino.

The story resulted in what happening?
A: All the Jews in the city being arrested and tortured; fifteen of them were burned at the stake.

Pope Sixtus IV himself attempted to stamp out the story, but, by that point, it had already done what?
A: Spread beyond anyone's control.

Stories of this kind were known as what?
A: "Blood libel"; they claimed that Jews purposely killed Christians, especially Christian children, and used their blood for religious or ritual purposes.

After the invention of the printing press in 1439, publications became widespread but there was no what?
A: There was no standard of journalistic ethics to follow.

By the 17th century, historians began the practice of what?
A: Citing their sources in footnotes.

In 1610 when Galileo went on trial, the demand for verifiable news did what?
A: It increased.

During the 18th century, where were publishers of fake news fined and banned?
A: In the Netherlands.

One man, Gerard Lodewijk van der Macht, was banned how many times by Dutch authorities?
A: Four and four times he moved and restarted his press.

In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin wrote fake news about what?
A: Murderous "scalping" Indians working with King George III in an effort to sway public opinion in favor of the American Revolution.