Fake News 
-
SOURCE: Now & Then (Vox Media)
12/7/2021
Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman on the Corrosive Effects of Disinformation (Podcast)
The early American press, the telegraph, and broadcast media have all been vectors of the kind of political disinformation we are plagued by today.
-
3/14/2021
The Birth, and Life, of a Word
by Ralph Keyes
One of the most widely-used terms in discussions of American racism has its roots in a campaign by two pro-slavery writers to troll abolitionists through a fake tract promoting "miscegenation."
-
SOURCE: Newsday
11/29/2020
Social Media 'Misinformation' Endangers Democracy, Historians Say
Historians Peniel Joseph and Karl Jacoby, along with media scholar Howard Schnieder, assess the way that strategic misinformation on social media has exploited racial divisions in Trump's efforts to overturn the election results.
-
SOURCE: TIME
10/6/2020
How Abraham Lincoln Confronted—and Helped Spread—Political Misinformation
by Elizabeth Mitchell
Today's media makes it easier to identify stories with reporters who have a track record for credibility (or lack thereof), and harder for political partisans to plant misinformation, though as even Honest Abe's track record shows, politicians will use disinformation to their advantage as much as they can.
-
SOURCE: Lead Stories
4/27/2020
Fact Check: NO Evidence Presidents Lincoln And Kennedy Were Assassinated For Trying To End Federal Reserve
There is no evidence that both Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated because they wanted to destroy the Federal Reserve system (which also did not exist in Lincoln's day).
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
2/24/20
The ancient Greeks had alternative facts too – they were just more chill about it
by Joel Christensen
Persuading others – or even yourself – what is true is not a challenge unique to the modern era. Even the ancient Greeks had to confront different realities.
-
11/24/19
Fake News and the Founders: Get Used to It!
by Harlow Giles Unger
Fake news did not diminish as the nation matured. Indeed, it became entwined in the nation’s literary fabric.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
8/29/19
Could footnotes be the key to winning the disinformation wars?
by Karin Wulf
More than ever, we need what this tool provides: accountability and transparency.
-
SOURCE: The Washington Post
12-23-2018
Max Boot the victim of a fake headline apparently concocted by QAnon, the rightwing conspiracy pro-Trump troll
by Max Boot
A photoshopped headline made it seem that Boot had changed his opinion about troops in Syria.
-
Were the Russians Behind Fake News that Helped Bring Down a Labour Government in 1924?
by Gill Bennett
Maybe yes, maybe no. But either way there are lessons to be learned from this story.
-
SOURCE: NYT
11-26-18 (accessed)
Video of the Week: Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News
by Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook
We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984 AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-internet era.
-
SOURCE: Salon
10-18-18
Historian Christopher Browning on the Trump regime: We’re “close to the point of no return”
A scholar of the Nazi period explains why fake news may be a more powerful authoritarian tool than secret police.
-
SOURCE: The Washington Post
10-16-18
Trump called Ulysses S. Grant an alcoholic. Here’s what historians say about that.
The story referenced by Trump was probably fake news.
-
SOURCE: Tom Dispatch
9-20-18
Learning the Power of Lies
by Arnold R. Isaacs
Facts vs. Falsehoods in the Age of Trump
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
9-13-18
Lessons from White House disinformation a century ago: ‘It’s dangerous to believe your own propaganda’
by John Maxwell Hamilton andMeghan Menard McCune
One hundred years ago, the U.S. government published documents that fueled the mounting Red Scare, helped justify the American military invasion of Russia and poisoned American-Russian relations for years to come.
-
9/30/18
In This Dark Hour It’s Important to Remember that Good Journalism Has Triumphed Before
by Marvin Kalb
A veteran journalist recounts the times in modern history when journalists changed history.
-
SOURCE: The Hill
9-6-18
Trump: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was ridiculed by the 'fake news'
"You know when Abraham Lincoln made that Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, you know he was ridiculed?" Trump said during a rally in Billings, Montana.
-
SOURCE: NPR
Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS
Back in the 1980s, the rumor that AIDS was human-made was based partially on a report written in 1986 by Russian-born biophysicist Jakob Segal.
-
SOURCE: Time Magazine
8-9-18
How Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake News
Even historians find that they can be tricked.
-
SOURCE: The Chronicle of Higher Education
7-22-18
History in an Age of Fake News
by Patrick Iber
Historians can be bothersome, remembering past practices that no longer meet changing moral standards, or never did.
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel