[hyperpape]

That wasn't clickbait. Arguably it was worse. "You'll never guess what happens when she starts to sing!" isn't likely to contribute to increased military tensions between nuclear powers.

To put it as a triviality: just because two things are bad doesn't mean they have to be bad in the same way.

I also wouldn't classify that story as "fake news"[0]. Those were things like "Revealed: Obama says Clinton would be terrible president", or "Revealed: Trump under investigation by European Court for Human Rights". Those were straightforward false claims, with zero actual sourcing, by people who knew they were lying. This Washington Post article was shitty reporting, using thin sources, that fit a currently popular hysteria. And it was completely inaccurate. But the authors didn't sit down and say "what can we make up." They got some sources and didn't do any due diligence, because it was too hard to pass up on such a juicy story.

I'm not wedded to the idea that these articles aren't fake news, but I'm confident it doesn't make sense to call them clickbait.

[0] Of course, this relies on the idea that fake news doesn't just mean "news that is wrong", which has been with us forever, but more about a social media driven trend within the past year or two.