A Brief History
On October 25, 1924, the Daily Mail, a London based British newspaper, published a fake letter called “the Zinoviev letter,” a letter said to be from Grigory Zinoviev, a Moscow based leader of the Communist International. The letter was a fake and intentionally presented to sway public opinion against the Labour Party in Britain’s 1924 elections.
Digging Deeper
The fake letter was successful in stoking anti-communist public hysteria and getting the Conservative Party a victory in the elections.
While calling the media “Fake News” is often seen as a conspiracy theory ploy used by one side or the other, the fact is that false “news” accounts have been used for centuries in order to mold public opinion toward a desired end. Examples include “Yellow Journalism” using sensational stories in 1898 to whip up war fever in the US against Spain and recently falsely portraying Iraq as having WMDs in 2003.
Question for students (and subscribers): What is the worst fake news story in the past decade? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bennett, Gill. The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies. OUP Oxford, 2018.
Cohen, Daniel. Yellow Journalism: Scandal, Sensationalism, and Gossip in the Media. Twenty First Century Books, 2020.
The featured image in this article, the first page of the notorious Zinoviev Letter, is in the public domain because it is one of the following:
- A photograph, which has never previously been made available to the public (e.g. by publication or display at an exhibition) and which was taken more than 70 years ago (before 1 January 1953); or
- A photograph, which was made available to the public (e.g. by publication or display at an exhibition) more than 70 years ago (before 1 January 1953); or
- An artistic work other than a photograph (e.g. a painting), or a literary work, which was made available to the public (e.g. by publication or display at an exhibition) more than 70 years ago (before 1 January 1953).
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