I'm not keeping up with my own country's presidential election because I'm too focused on my own local election as a candidate. But googling the election, I came across this article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03...g-to-bring-down-indonesias-president/10892784 What the article does not say is all the incidents of fake news against MY candidate the challenger Prabowo Subianto. They accuse him of being an Islamist when he has a Christian brother and President Joko Widodo has a Muslim cleric as his running mate.
Fake news has been around as long as politics has been. Candidates smearing their opponents with lies or mistruths is nothing new.
When a guy on TV says his glue can hold the grand canyon together, it's not real. But wait, there's more... Aren't most ads "fake news"?
Pretty much. The federalists and anti-Federalists use to make up some doozy lies about the other side back in the day. Teddy Roosevelt used to campaign by train giving speeches at the stops along the way. He wrote a different speech for whatever stop was next. Sometimes it was the complete opposite of what he had just said in the previous spot depending on if it were city folk or country folk. In one stop he would talk about "those bumpkings" not knowing anything while in the next he would say the rich in the city were taking advantage of the poor farmers. James Polk accused Henry Clay of having sex with farm animals.
