Fake News and the Dictionary – level 3

15-11-2017 07:00

During the last presidential campaign in the USA, Donald Trump spoke many times about ‘fake news’, which he defined as when ‘media corporations have their own agenda’. The term comes up frequently in Trump’s current rhetoric as president, as well.

Trump accuses media organisations of spreading ‘fake news’ and claims that he invented the term, while the Collins Dictionary says that the term was on US television in the 1990s. The dictionary defines it as ‘false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting’.

Now the Collins Dictionary named ‘fake news’ as word of the year. Other politically-charged words that the dictionary featured were ‘echo chamber’ and ‘Corbynmania’.

Difficult words: agenda (a plan to do something), rhetoric (way of speaking), sensational (getting attention), disseminate (spread), guise (a disguise), politically-charged (with relevance in politics), echo chamber (saying things that your group and you want to hear), Corbynmania (strongly supporting UK political Jeremy Corbyn).
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