by brent griffiths 11/17/16 02:03 pm est updated 11/17/16 08:16 pm est president barack obama weighed in on the growing debate over fake news, warning that it could poison politics to the point that "we won't know what we're fighting for." <u+201c>and that should be remembered, because at an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looked the same when you see it on a facebook page or you turn on your television,<u+201d> obama said thursday at a joint news conference in berlin with german chancellor angela merkel. story continued below obama<u+2019>s concern comes as facebook and google grapple with how to try to fix how their algorithms, which have proven easy to hijack with deliberately misleading or completely fabricated "news." in one particularly egregious instance, a google search for "final election count" returned as one of its top results a site claiming that donald trump won the popular vote, despite the fact that hillary clinton carried it by more than a million votes. a buzzfeed news investigation revealed that during the final three months of the presidential campaign, the 20 top-performing fake news stories drove more engagement than the 20 top-performing stories from major news outlets. it's not the first time obama has commented on the issue. while campaigning for clinton in michigan, obama called out those who believe something just because they've seen it online. <u+201c>and people, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright lies over and over again, as long as it's on facebook and people can see it, as long as it's on social media, people start believing it. and it creates this dust cloud of nonsense," he said. correction: this article originally said, wrongly, that buzzfeed had revealed that "fake news was more popular and prevalent and drove more engagement on the site than real news.<u+201d> by michael grunwald by bill scher by thomas wright by joshua zeitz
obama: we must guard against fake news - politico
brent griffiths michael grunwald