Fake News Spreads Because People Trust Their Friends Too Much

At the moment, we are so deep in the fake-news morass that it’s hard to even envision a way out. One possibility, though, is old-school media literacy: Teach people the importance of only believing and sharing stories from high-quality news sources. After all, while people don’t trust “the media” in general, polls suggest Americans actually do trust major outlets like ABC, NBC, CBS, and The Wall Street Journal — in fact, only a quarter of Americans say they don’t trust those outlets. In theory, if you could better explain to...