They Call It “Fake News” in Other Countries, Too

Feyk Sh’kifut, “Fake Transparency,” was the caption of an article in the January 29 Israeli daily Haaretz. Its subject was a new set of regulations announced by Facebook to deal with b’ayat ha-feyk nyuz, “the problem of fake news,” by making it more difficult to hide its origins. The author of the article, obviously, did not think the regulations would prove effective.

It’s not only in Hebrew that the English term “fake news” is now domesticated. I don’t read enough of the world’s languages to be able to assure you that it exists in every one of them, but it has definitely spread far and wide. Les Français sont de plus en plus préoccupés par les fake news, “The French are more and more worried by fake news,” was a headline last week in the French daily Figaro. Vier von fünf Menschen in der Schweiz sehen Fake News als Gefahr für die Demokratie, “Four out of five Swiss view fake news as a danger to democracy,” Switzerland’s Aargauer Zeitung informed its readers last October. Los españoles son los eurepeos que más creen las fake news, “The Spaniards are the Europeans who most believe fake news”—that’s from the Spanish El Heraldo. A headline in the Dutch Nieuwskoerir warned, Door fake news gaan mensen twijfelen aan de volledige realiteit, “Through fake news, people come to doubt all reality.”

You’ve had enough? So have the Italians. Le fake news fanno male alla salute, says the mass-circulation Corriere della Sera: “Fake news is bad for your health.”