By Gene Foreman and the News Literacy Project
The “fake news” phenomenon was on vivid display in social media during the bitter 2016 presidential campaign. A typical example of the nonsense was a story, shared a million times on Facebook, stating falsely that Pope Francis had endorsed the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. BuzzFeed reported that during the last three months of the campaign, more Facebook members shared, “liked” or commented on the top 20 fake news stories than engaged with the 20 most important news stories on real news websites.