Answer:
In the eyes of some, ‘fake news’ means “whatever I don’t agree with.” This is not the definition adopted for the FNC. We’ve extensively investigated the various ways credible media experts have defined ‘fake news’ and have boiled it down to what they virtually all share in common. For the purposes of the FNC, we are defining fake news as follows:
Fake News: “A completely fabricated claim or story created with an intention to deceive, often for a secondary gain.”
The “secondary gain” is most often monetary (i.e. to capture clicks and/or ‘eyeballs’ to generate ad revenue), but sometimes the secondary gain may be political.
However several important distinctions need to be made when it comes to the definition of fake news.
First, claims made by newsworthy individuals, even demonstrably false claims, are by definition newsworthy and therefore not considered fake news for the FNC. This is opposed to fabricated claims about newsworthy individuals made by obscure sources seeking to make money and/or a political statement, which are considered fake news by our definition.
Second, our operative definition of fake news explicitly excludes humorous or satirical stories designed to entertain rather than deceive. The same goes from opinion pieces or editorials - they too are excluded from the category of fake news. To qualify for these exemptions, these types of stories must be clearly labeled as such in the story itself, and not, for example, buried somewhere else on the website where the story appears.
From a practical perspective, we guarantee none of the headlines or stories in the FNC-1 task will consist of recent controversial claims made by well-known individuals. Nor will they be humor, satire or OpEd pieces.