page_title: Fake news
section_title: Ancient
hierarchical_section_title: Fake news / History / Ancient
caption_attribution_description: English: Roman male portrait bust of Marcus Antonius. Fine-grained yellowish marble. Flavian age (69—96 A.D.). Rome, Vatican Museums, Chiaramonti Museum. Height: 68 cm. Found near Tor Sapienza before Porta Maggiore in 1830 or 1831.
context_page_description: Fake news, also known as junk news, pseudo-news, alternative facts, false news or hoax news, is a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media or online social media. Digital news has brought back and increased the usage of fake news, or yellow journalism. The news is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well.
  Fake news is written and published usually with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership. Similarly, clickbait stories and headlines earn advertising revenue from this activity.
  The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate online advertising revenue. Publishing a story with false content that attracts users benefits advertisers and improves ratings.
context_section_description: In the 13th century BC, Rameses the Great spread lies and propaganda portraying the Battle of Kadesh as a stunning victory for the Egyptians; he depicted scenes of himself smiting his foes during the battle on the walls of nearly all his temples. The treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites, however, reveals that the battle was actually a stalemate.
  During the first century BC, Octavian ran a campaign of misinformation against his rival Mark Antony, portraying him as a drunkard, a womanizer, and a mere puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. He published a document purporting to be Mark Antony's will, which claimed that Mark Antony, upon his death, wished to be entombed in the mausoleum of the Ptolemaic pharaohs. Although the document may have been forged, it invoked outrage from the Roman populace. Mark Antony ultimately killed himself after his defeat in the Battle of Actium upon hearing false rumors propagated by Cleopatra herself claiming that she had committed suicide.
  During the second and third centuries AD, false rumors were spread about Christians claiming that they engaged in ritual cannibalism and incest. In the late third century AD, the Christian apologist Lactantius invented and exaggerated stories about pagans engaging in acts of immorality and cruelty, while the anti-Christian writer Porphyry invented similar stories about Christians.
caption: Roman politician and general Mark Antony killed himself because of misinformation.[45]
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Roman male portrait bust, so-called Marcus Antonius. Fine-grained yellowish marble. Flavian age (69\u201496 A.D.). Rome, Vatican Museums, Chiaramonti Museum.", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D70", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:27 08:14:12", "Image Artist": "Sergey Sosnovskiy", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Copyright": "(c) 2008 Sergey Sosnovskiy", "Image ExifOffset": "588", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1282", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "0", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/20", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:04:25 16:50:28", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:04:25 16:50:28", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Fine weather", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "120", "EXIF SubSecTime": "70", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "70", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "70", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "689", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "850", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "180", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Soft", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5"}