During the 2016 Election, many fake news stories went viral with the help of social media and mass sharing. These online articles were created with the intent to slander, either directly or indirectly, the presidential hopefuls and sway the public from voting for that candidate.  One of these infamous articles was put out by the Denver Guardian, an online news outlet that was eventually found to be a fake journalistic site. Though the author is not stated on the post on the Denver Guardian site, the story was published as written by “DG Staff”. The Denver Guardian website is no longer available online, and a Facebook page for the outlet is not to be found. The website itself claims to be the oldest local news source in the Denver Area, but the claim made in the website’s footer is the exact same one as found on another fake news site, the Baltimore Gazette. In addition to this falsified claim, more details point to the inauthenticity of this site. When putting in the address given on the Denver Guardians “Contact Us” page, GoogleMaps images shows the location as an empty lot. All this aside, if I had come across this article before it was proved to be false, it probably could’ve fooled me. Since I have no connections to the Denver area, I wouldn’t have thought to google the address listed on the site’s contact page. However, the stories claim is a little wild and there is no specific author both of which, of course, incite curiosity.

 

 

The rumor claimed that F.B.I. Agent Michael Brown, who had played a part in the Clinton Email Leaks, shot and killed his wife before setting his home on fire and committing suicide. The story dealt with a steamy topic of a murder-suicide paired with the Clinton Email Leaks, an already charged political scandal. It is no wonder why so many people were intrigued by this story, it is dramatic and juicy. It was especially attractive to those that weren’t “With Her” as it seemingly added to “Clinton’s Body Count” and the conspiracy that Hilary and Bill Clinton were involved in the deaths of multiple people that opposed or posed a threat to Ms. Clinton’s campaign. This story is extremely powerful as it stated that yet another person involved with the email leaks had passed on which plants an extremely destructive idea in the imagination of the American public (and most specifically voters) that Hilary Clinton was a cruel woman offing all those that were a risk to exposing her lies; not typically something you want to think about somebody you’d be voting to rule the nation. This story was fabricated in a way that painted the Democratic Nominee as a valueless, manipulative woman. Whether or not this story suppressed or encouraged voting really depends on the reader, if they believed the rumor, they could either choose to no longer support Hilary by not voting at all, or not support her by voting for her opponent, Donald Trump. Either way though, this fabrication helped sway the public that chose to believe it, in Trumps favor.