Fake news

The narrow meaning is a fabricated story styled to look like journalism, often on a site with a name that resembles a real outlet. Such stories are usually written to earn advertising revenue, to push a political message or to damage a person or organization. The broad meaning is political: the phrase is applied to real reporting that someone disputes. Because the second use is so common, many researchers avoid the term and use misinformation or disinformation instead, which separate intent from format.

A fabricated story needs a headline that invites sharing, a source that looks credible at a glance, and an audience primed to believe it. It is then carried by shares, reposts and screenshots. A false story often travels farther as a screenshot than as a link, which makes it harder for platforms and fact-checkers to trace.

Analysts look at the domain's age and registration, whether the site publishes an author or contact details, whether the story appears anywhere else, and how the first accounts to share it are connected. See source credibility for how those signals are weighed.

A hypothetical case: a site with a name similar to a well-known financial outlet publishes a story that a company will announce a recall. Within minutes the story is quoted in a few social posts, and some readers treat the quotes as confirmation. Nothing in the company's own channels supports it. The comms team's first tasks are to establish that the story has no real source, publish a clear statement in the channels reporters and customers actually check, and ask the platforms hosting the copies to review them.

Fabricated stories can move markets, trigger customer questions and put pressure on staff. Speed of verification matters more than the quality of the rebuttal. Teams that already track where a story first appeared and how it moved can answer the question of whether it is real before it becomes the day's story. PeakMetrics has covered a market-moving case in when a fake headline shakes the market.

A short checklist helps under pressure. Confirm whether the named people and events exist. Check whether the company's own systems, filings or spokespeople support any of it. Look up the site's registration and whether other outlets carry the story. Save copies with timestamps before the page changes. Then decide who needs to be told first: usually the executive team, customer support and the platforms hosting the content. Recording each step also gives the team a defensible account of what it knew and when.

Fake news is not the same as satire, opinion or an honest error that a publication corrects. It is also not limited to politics. Product, health and corporate topics are common targets.