Why was there no outrage at the obvious slanted coverage of prior elections, which, when lacking alternative sources, had real ramifications for a close race, such as in 2000. Since then, the internet has arisen to challenge the narrative promulgated by the TV news, so the traditional media is making a big thing about the fake news, because in the old days, they could have done a lot more to throw this one for Clinton, the way they tried to for Gore. If they gin up enough concern over fake news, that's an excuse to crackdown on alternative news sources.

Fake news is a problem on Facebook. If you get your information from Facebook, that's your problem. If you use a search engine, instead of Facebook to check on immediate events, you're going to be a lot better informed. Anyone who settles for a single source is always going to be susceptible to deceit, and there is no way to prevent that by hunting down the deceivers, since they can think of new ways to deceive faster than you can outlaw them. That's why my computer's malware program performs a heuristic analysis as part of the standard scan. But people can't do that with news, so anyone really interested in being informed is going to look for confirmation. For everyone else, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.