Hillary Clinton: Fake News an ‘Epidemic’

Hillary Clinton made her first public speech in several weeks, honoring Harry Reid on Capitol Hill, and she dedicated a portion of her remarks to excoriating the influence of “fake news” stories on the American public. “The epidemic of malicious, fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year,” she began, “it's now clear that so-called ‘fake news’ can have real-world consequences. This isn’t about politics or partisanship—lives are at risk... It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.” Clinton commended Congress for working on legislation to combat foreign propaganda efforts, and she encouraged Silicon Valley to come up with innovative ways to filter out the patently fake stories that have gained popularity online. The most famous example, of course, is the so-called “Pizzagate” scandal, in which various fringe outlets and conspiracy mongers spread the false story that Clinton allies run a child sex-slave ring out of a pizzeria in D.C. A North Carolina man was arrested at the restaurant this past weekend, toting an assault rifle, claiming he was there to “investigate” the story he’d read online.