The 'Fake News' Retort Makes a Comeback

As a political strategy, replying 'fake news' to questions undermines the truth.

Posted July 19, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley

The term “ fake news ” has made a resurgence recently, with politicians using this retort to shut down reporters' questions regarding floods and scandals. While this often achieves the goal of putting a damper on further questioning, how does this affect the public?

According to a 2021 review article , people accept what is called fake news because, “When it comes to the role of reasoning, it seems that people fail to discern truth from falsehood because they do not stop to reflect sufficiently on their [own] prior knowledge.”

However, susceptible people “have insufficient or inaccurate prior knowledge.”

To combat fake news, education is key

Unlike other high-literacy countries, we live in a society in which the Department of Education is being dismantled and leadership education positions are being handed out to non-academics. As such, how can we develop sound educational policies? How can students be taught to discern:

Finland has an effective weapon to combat fake news: education. According to the World Economic Forum, “The Nordic nation tops a list of European countries deemed the most resilient to disinformation, [according to] the Media Literacy Index , compiled by the Open Society Institute in Sofia." They also reported: "Policymakers around the globe have voiced the need to combat fake news and back in 2013, the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report warned that 'digital wildfires' could spread false information rapidly.”

In Finland, children are taught to recognize fake news, even in daycare.

Four problems with fake news

There are at least four daunting problems with what is called fake news. The key issues include:

As a 2017 Pew Foundation report noted, “A Pew Research Center study conducted just after the 2016 election found 64 percent of adults believe fake news stories cause a great deal of confusion and 23 percent said they had shared fabricated political stories themselves—sometimes by mistake and sometimes intentionally."

People fail to distinguish what they know from what others know. According to Steven Sloman, a professor in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, it appears that an illusion of understanding “emerges because people fail to distinguish what others know from what they themselves know." This illusion of knowledge can be seen as a mix-up of understanding by confusing other people's thinking or knowledge with one's own.

To seriously combat fake news, people need intellectual curiosity, credible sources, and the ability to be reflective.

As a demonstration of how reflective people—those less susceptible to illusion—think, Sloman will ask, “How many animals of each kind did Moses load onto the ark?" While most people say two, more reflective people say zero. (It was Noah, not Moses, who built the ark.)

Can we put an end to fake news?

Here are four thoughts to use as a check when someone refers to fake news.

Dismissing information as fake news undermines a free press. It's an attempt by those in power to discredit reliable news sources, making it difficult for the public to know what to believe.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, The Psychology of Fake News, Pennycook, Gordon et al., Volume 25, Issue 5, 2021, 388 - 402.

Pew Research, The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online , October 19, 2017.

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Rita Watson, MPH , is an associate fellow at Yale's Ezra Stiles College, a former columnist for The Providence Journal, and the author of Italian Kisses: Rose-Colored Words and Love from the Old Country .

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.