Fake news! The Senator Fraser Anning saga

It sure sounds like the MPs and media have taken Anning's comment out of context and made it mean what he did not intend. That's how fake news is developed and promoted (based on the definitions above).

4. Conclusion

It seems to me that the 'fake news' definition from the Collins Dictionary has been played out before my eyes in Australia in 2018.

A new replacement senator, Fraser Anning, made a maiden speech in the Australian Senate and listed several of his priorities. One of those was, 'The final solution to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote. We don't need a plebiscite to cut immigration numbers; we just need a government that is willing to institute a sustainable population policy', were his words in context.

MPs, Senators and mass media picked up two words, 'final solution', took them right out of context and applied them to the Nazi 'final solution' to exterminate 10 million Jews in the Holocaust of World War 2. They bred and fed false and sensational information from a simple statement about immigration. One doesn't have to agree with Anning's content, but what the MPs and Senators made of those two words was fake news, in my view.

These falsely generated particulars were spread through the mass media.

So, fake news about immigration in a Senator's parliamentary speech was developed into 'real' news about Fraser Anning promoting a 'final solution' to the immigration problem that was like the Nazi's 'final solution'.