How to Build a Fake News Story

Original by Julian Sanchez, with some supplemental observations offered by CJR.

This is actually a bit truncated. The steps are:

1. Faux Story

2. Why is the Em-Ess-Em ignoring this huge Faux Story?

3. After days or weeks of flood-the-zone coverage across multiple conservative media outlets, some significant portion of the base is convinced that the faux story is true and/or significant.

4. Mainstream press takes note of (3) and speculates about the political and electoral consequences.

5. Panicked Democrats react as though the faux story is true and/or significant.

6. See, we told you it was a huge story!

Lather, rinse, repeat.