Cool article with helpful charts: Fake News. It's Complicated
According to the article Deception Detection for News, there are three main categories of "deceptive" news:
The authors also point out that "genuine" news sources can contain "finger pointing":
In political events, territorial conflicts, wars or other current controversies, news channels or individual reporters may be accused of partisanship, blindness, or straight out lies. Such situations do not meet the intentional lying criterion, since reporting is likely to be consistent with the reporter’s beliefs, worldview, biases, or affiliations.
Sounds like what we discussed in the Bias section, doesn't it? :)
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According to Merrimack College media professor Melissa Zimdars, who created a list of False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources, there are four broad categories of fake news:
CATEGORY 1: Fake, false, or regularly misleading websites that are shared on Facebook and social media. Some of these websites may rely on “outrage” by using distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information in order to generate likes, shares, and profits.
CATEGORY 2: Websites that may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information
CATEGORY 3: Websites which sometimes use clickbait-y headlines and social media descriptions
CATEGORY 4: Satire/comedy sites, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society, but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news
No single topic falls under a single category - for example, false or misleading medical news may be entirely fabricated (Category 1), may intentionally misinterpret facts or misrepresent data (Category 2), may be accurate or partially accurate but use an alarmist title to get your attention (Category 3) or may be a critique on modern medical practice (Category 4.) Some articles fall under more than one category. Assessing the quality of the content is crucial to understanding whether what you are viewing is true or not. It is up to you to do the legwork to make sure your information is good.
Why should you care about whether or not your news is real or fake?
"The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker’s now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon."
