If you were paranoid, you might think that the 'fake news' push served two objectives:
1. As a psyops to stop the potentially very damaging allegations against powerful senior Washington DC political operatives on the eve of an important election.
2. To repair the damage to the mainstream press, who were steadily losing paid readership.
Both of these objectives have been successfully achieved however you perceive it.
Meanwhile the mainstream press is flooded with click bait advertising while at the same time pushing 'we are the only credible, trusted news source' messaging to readers, along with begging requests for funding so they can continue with their work.
The reality is that investigative 'reporters' were either let go or resigned in disgust from the MSM around the time blogging became a viable means of disseminating writing and making money.
We are now in an era of crack downs on free speech and debate: it will be interesting to se whether the mainstream mastheads can regain their 'trusted voice' relationship with large numbers of readers, or whether there will be an increase in cynicism and mistrust. Pravda, the old Soviet newspaper/mouthpiece comes to mind.
> If you were paranoid, you might think that the 'fake news' push served two objectives:
>1. As a psyops to stop the potentially very damaging allegations against powerful senior Washington DC political operatives on the eve of an important election.
If you're referring to "pizzagate", if you were paranoid you might also think that was the psyop. Paranoid people think a lot of things.
>Both of these objectives have been successfully achieved however you perceive it.
I'm not certain that's true. Damage to the mainstream press hasn't been repaired, and the people who believe in pizzagate still believe in it, and it was covered by the mainstream media, albeit briefly and as an example of, ironically, the fake news phenomenon.