Slate takes break from weeding fake hate crimes from its running list to cover classes on spotting fake news

Brett T. | 7:14 PM on December 24, 2016

In case you didn’t know, everyone has been put on notice by the media police to stop misusing the term, “fake news.” The term was floated to explain Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss and place the blame on a couple of fictitious stories being passed around on social media.

Of course, things got out of hand when the public started applying the “fake news” label to bogus stories being reported by respected media outlets. By then, establishment media had pivoted to the narrative that Russian hacking had cost Clinton the election, but the fascination with fake news lived on.

Slate, for example, published a piece this week on teaching young people “media literacy,” thus equipping them with the skills to contend with misinformation.

How to teach high-school students to spot fake news: https://t.co/0G13yZAE8G pic.twitter.com/ibMzV0iHQS

— Slate (@Slate) December 24, 2016

That’s a valuable skill, seeing as Slate was one of the sites that promoted the hoax about a young Muslim woman harassed by drunk Trump supporters on a New York City subway.

Someone might consider sending Slate’s reporters back to school to learn about terms like “claimed,” “alleged,” and “reportedly.” For its part, Slate did apply the disclaimer “apparently” to the claim that the Trump supporters who did not exist and therefore did not yell anti-Islamic insults were drunk at the time.