TWO From Yellow Journalism to Tabloids to Clickbait: The Origins of Fake News in the United States Sharon McQueen Scholars may debate the definition and starting point of fake news, but, at its most basic, fake news is a lie. One might, therefore, reasonably surmise that fake news originated with the dawn of human speech. INTRODUCTION In the late summer of 1835, as New York City turned its attentions skyward in anticipation of Halley’s Comet, the main news page of The Sun reported that Sir John Herschel, a renowned British astronomer of the day, had discovered life on the moon—life so strange and marvelous that it almost defied belief (“Great Astronomical Discoveries,” 1835). Almost (Copeland 2007, p. 147). What Sir John Herschel saw—and what The Sun exclusively reported— caused a sensation not only in New York but around the country and, indeed, around the world. This was quite an accomplishment for a newspaper that had been in publication for just under two years. It was also quite an accomplishment for Richard Adams Locke, who had been hired as the newspaper’s editor only two months prior to the story’s publication. In time, the public would come to know that Locke was not only the editor of such stories but their author as well.
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