ArcaMax

A recent BuzzFeed News report, for example, found that during the final three months of the presidential campaign, the 20 top-performing fake election stories --reported in hoax sites or hyper-partisan blogs -- generated more engagements (8.7 million shares, reactions, comments, etc.) on Facebook than the 20 best-performing election stories from legitimate media outlets (7.3 million).

We should not be surprised. Entertainment typically sells better than news. News people are limited to reporting reality. Fake news can be as unfair, unbalanced and hyper-sensational as its creators please in pursuit of an audience that would be mightily disappointed by anything less.

Unfortunately, we appear to entering an era with the rise of president-elect Trump that blurs the lines between the real and the crazy as never before.

You can see that in the widely reported use by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's chosen national security adviser, and his son, Michael G. Flynn, of social media to spread fake #Pizzagate news stories and other allegations of serious crimes, backed by no evidence.

And one of the leading purveyors of the Pizzagate sludge is Alex Jones of the conspiracy-focused website Infowars, who is in a mutual-admiration bromance with Trump. Trump has praised the "amazing" reputation of Jones, and Jones said Trump called to thank him after Trump's election victory.

Also, in characteristic style, Jones and others are trying to dismiss the charged gunman Welch as a "false flag" decoy by the alleged Pizzagate conspiracy to fuel new calls for censorship of independent websites.

In other words, those who disagree with the conspiracy theory must be part of the conspiracy, either as co-conspirators or stooges.

Which, again, sounds a lot like Trump and other birthers. Now Trump has shed that theory just in time to head for the White House -- and take the new paranoia mainstream.

Meanwhile, as the threats and other vile harassment of Comet Ping Pong and its neighbors continues, several nearby merchants thanked their customers for sticking by them -- and questioned why the FBI and social network officials can't do more to hunt down their harassers.

That's a good question. The First Amendment protects free speech in general, but not necessarily when it is obscene or threatening. It's OK to burn a flag, the Supreme Court has said, but not always to burn a cross. One is a political expression, the other is a well-known form of intimidation.

In the Internet age, we're just beginning to debate the difference as we try to distinguish the fake from the real.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.