Looking Ahead to the Future of ‘Fake News’

The rise of social media has brought multiple, recent charges of forgery and fraud in the dissemination of political attacks. The nature of such attacks is nothing new. Since the dawn of American elections, candidates have seen their words, views, and deeds fraudulently portrayed by political enemies. During the 1972 presidential election, an aide to Richard Nixon reportedly wrote a false letter to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader claiming that Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination, laughed at the use of an ethnic slur against Americans of French-Canadian descent. In 1880, a New York newspaper published a fraudulent letter, allegedly written by presidential candidate James A. Garfield, stating Garfield’s support for unrestricted Chinese immigration.