"Fake news” became a part of our vocabulary in late 2016 when it was used to try to influence the U.S. presidential election campaign. Here’s the story behind one such story:

“It was early fall, and Donald J. Trump, behind in the polls, seemed to be preparing a rationale in case a winner like him somehow managed to lose. ‘I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,’ the Republican nominee told a riled-up crowd in Columbus, Ohio. He was hearing ‘more and more’ about evidence of rigging, he added, leaving the details to his supporters’ imagination.

“A few weeks later, Cameron Harris, a new college graduate with a fervent interest in Maryland Republican politics and a need for cash, sat down at the kitchen table in his apartment to fill in the details Mr. Trump had left out. In a dubious art just coming into its prime, this bogus story would be his masterpiece.

“Mr. Harris started by crafting the headline: ‘BREAKING: Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.’

“‘At first it kind of shocked me—the response I was getting,’ Mr. Harris said. ‘How easily people would believe it. It was almost like a sociological experiment’” (Scott Shane, “From Headline to Photograph: A Fake News Masterpiece,” The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2017).

Embedded fake news

Fake news hasn’t slowed down since the election. If anything, it may have grown worse. The Federalist, a conservative web-based news magazine, ran an article titled “16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won”(Daniel Payne, Feb. 6, 2017).

The article reads: “It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel.

“Whenever you turn on a news station, visit a news website, or check in on a journalist or media personality on Twitter or Facebook, there is an excellent chance you will be exposed to fake news. It is rapidly becoming an accepted part of the way the American media are run.”

Let's note a few examples.

Fake news: transgender suicides rose due to Trump win: The article continues: “After Trump’s electoral victory on November 8, rumors began circulating that multiple transgender teenagers had killed themselves in response to the election results. There was no basis to these rumors. Nobody was able to confirm them at the time, and nobody has been able to confirm [them] in the three months since Trump was elected . . . The stories hyping this idea garnered at least nearly 100,000 shares on Facebook alone, contributing to the fear and hysteria surrounding Trump’s win.”

Fake news: MLK Jr. bust removed: “On January 20, TIME [magazine] reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. This caused a flurry of controversy on social media until Miller issued a correction. As TIME put it, Miller had apparently not even asked anyone in the White House if the bust had been removed. He simply assumed it had been because ‘he had looked for it and had not seen it’” (ibid.)

Fake news: travel ban led to death: “On January 31, a Fox affiliate station out of Detroit reported that ‘A local business owner who flew to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment said she was blocked from returning home under President Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations. He said that while she was waiting for approval to fly home, she died from an illness’ . . . The story spread so far because it gratified all the biases of the liberal media elite: it proved that Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ was an evil, racist Hitler-esque mother-killer of an executive order.

“There was just one problem: it was a lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. The Fox affiliate hadn’t bothered to do the necessary research to confirm or disprove the man’s account. The news station quietly corrected the story after giving rise to such wild, industrial-scale hysteria” (ibid.).

The Federalist article went on to list many other similar examples of sloppy, biased or downright false reporting designed to discredit the new presidential administration.

Has the United States become so jaded by our affluence that we value the magic of technology more highly than basic human kindness and decency? Could it be that the pervasiveness and anonymity of social media encourages some to manipulate and destroy others for profit? Is there something about the human condition that helps to expose this phenomenon?

Why do people make up fake news?

The Bible reveals why human beings make up fake news. Fake news is at once simple and complex—simple because it comes from one source and complex because that one source can unpredictably conjure up many socially unacceptable thoughts.

Scripture reveals that our minds and hearts are corrupt: “The human mind [including the heart or feelings] is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it is” (Jeremiah 17:9, God’s Word Translation, emphasis added throughout).

Jesus said to His disciples, “If you then, being evil [that is, having the corrupted nature contrary to God that is common to man], know how to give good gifts to your children . . .” (Matthew 7:11). The apostle Paul lamented the human condition: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15, New Living Translation).

Fake news embodies the evil part of human nature. “It is not what people put in their mouth that makes them wrong. It is what comes out of their mouth that makes them wrong” (Matthew 15:11, Easy-to-Read Version).

Surprisingly, fake news didn’t begin with human beings. It began with an unseen power that makes use of deceitful and indirect methods to lead humanity down a path to destruction, deceit and death.

Who originated fake news?

Fake news began with and is perpetuated by the god of this world. Satan is very angry at you and me. His devious, scheming goal is to destroy humanity by motivating us to do his dirty work: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. As a result, they don’t see the light of the Good News about Christ’s glory” (2 Corinthians 4:4, GW).

Satan didn’t start out that way. He was originally an honored, high-ranking angel. But he went rogue. He rebelled and became Satan, meaning adversary or enemy, the destroyer of all things (see Ezekiel 28:12-19). God exposes Satan as the serpent (Genesis 3:1), the dragon, the devil (false accuser, Revelation 12:10), and “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

Lucifer became narcissistic and corrupted himself (Ezekiel 28:12-18). He rebelled against God and tried to throw Him off His throne (Isaiah 14:13-14). Instead, God threw Satan back to the earth and constrained him here (Luke 10:18; Jude 1:6). Now, since Adam and Eve chose to follow him in their sin, Satan rules over the kingdoms of men until Christ returns (Matthew 4:8-9; John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11; Isaiah 14:16-17; Revelation 20:1-3).

Since Satan couldn’t remove God from His throne, he turned his anger on God’s creations—the earth and its inhabitants. If you can’t destroy the Creator, then destroy His creation.

Universal fake news

The originator and perpetuator of universal fake news is Satan, who substitutes imitations of God’s good news with a fake version. Listen to God’s warning through the apostle Paul: “For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it!” (2 Corinthians 11:4).

Paul further tells us that “. . . Satan . . . transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

But Satan is not an angel of light; he is the prince of darkness (Colossians 1:13) who blinds most of this world to Christ’s glorious good news (Colossians 1:26).

His falsehoods include, but are not limited to, the promotion of celebrations such as Christmas and Easter and worshipping on Sunday, the first day of the week (rather than the biblically commanded seventh-day Sabbath). Yet Jesus Christ and His disciples never observed or taught these. As even the New Catholic Encyclopedia admits:

“The earliest Christians did not immediately dissociate themselves from the observance of the Jewish feasts [actually the Lord’s feasts of Leviticus 23]. Many references in the N[ew] T[estament] indicate that Jesus and His disciples, as well as the early Palestinian Christian communities [that is, God’s Church as referred to in the book of Acts and other New Testament letters], observed the Sabbath and the major annual [biblical] festivals” (1967, “Early Christian Feasts,” Vol. 5, p. 867; see also Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, 1959, pp. 93-97, 103-104).

Fake news as a lie

God’s Ninth Commandment condemns lying (Exodus 20:16). Jesus brands Satan a liar and the originator of lying (John 8:44). Lying is sin, which God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19). Those who persist in this sin will ultimately suffer permanent death in the lake of fire (Romans 6:23; Revelation 21:8).

Satan’s propagation of fake news has corrupted humankind from creation, and he is dedicated to the annihilation of human life (Isaiah 14:6; Isaiah 14:17; Matthew 24:21-22; Revelation 12:9; Revelation 12:12). God’s good news, in contrast, is healing, hopeful and peaceful, and it leads to everlasting life.

The good news is that fake news will be gone after Jesus Christ establishes the Kingdom of God on earth following His return. Christmas, Easter and so many of today’s major religious beliefs, which are contrary to God, will become forgotten history (Mark 7:7; Isaiah 66:23). Humanity will then keep God’s holy laws and Sabbaths (Hebrews 8:10-11) that liberate us (James 1:25) from spiritual hoaxes and reveal God’s master plan of salvation for all humankind.

God’s good news will overwhelmingly triumph over Satan’s lies and fake news: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).