The unsaid thing about fake news is that it's manipulation by non-giants. It's not the big media corps/newspapers lying to the people, it's some small website playing up cognitive bias.
Not sure I agree with that. The difference between CNN and Fox, say, is far larger than the difference between the "big three" was back in, say, the 1970s (the time of Vietnam, and the US government trying very hard to paint a world that was different from reality). What we have now is the major media trying to paint a world, rather than just report it. In any given instance, that's not necessarily "fake news". But by what you choose to cover and what you choose to ignore, you can paint a very different picture. What you say is still true, but it doesn't add up to the truth. It presents a distorted picture of the world.
Those grassroots lie-factories could be more dangerous than state-directed ones. The state has a single message to push. A market, by contrast, will try every damn thing it can think of, and some of it will work.
I don't remember where I read it, but I believe the 2016 Russian disinformation campaign took advantage of a number of conspiracy theories that arose "in the wild".
I believe the influence of the Russian disinformation was overstated that it could very well be declared fake news.
Which messages? Which groups were targeted? How many people did it hit?
It was targeted to increase distrust? On which platform?
What historically was regarded as propaganda could very well be dissected afterwards. I don't really see that here or any arguments that this influence cannot be traced.
I would be very surprised if Russia didn't try to boost their favorite candidate as a geopolitical rival, but to imply relevant Russian interference is an example of distorting the truth in my opinion. And not a trivial one.
Furthermore you are also implying that everyone having a somewhat dissenting opinion about unrelated issues to being manipulated. Some might take issue with that.
That's not actually unsaid. Manipulation and falsehood by "news" sites on the web is what the "fake news" phenomenon originally referred to, but the term was successfully co-opted by the Trump campaign to refer instead to the mainstream media, and to discredit any negative reporting on him.