"Fake News"

We've heard this president use this term quite frequently, but what does it really mean? I think, more than anything, this is simply a phrase and label that Trump uses to describe any journalistic portrayal of him or his presidency that doesn't cultishly sing his praises. I will admit that there are many news outlets that have a pretty obvious leftward slant, but the inverse is true with right wing news sources. Too many people these days see a headline and simply accept it as fact, but also there are many people who will immediately dismiss anything they see that they don't like. This president seems to use the "fake news" card very effectively to his advantage. Any criticism or mention of the fact that he's doing a less than stellar job as president he immediately cries "fake news!" This blatant disregard of journalistic integrity is so much more harmful than many people realize. Back in the days of Walter Cronkite people trusted the news as an unbiased source of what was going on in the world around them. Nobody cried "fake news" in those days because the only outlet made it its goal to tell it like it is and give the people the news straightforward. While those days are long past, and now many people are fed up with bias in the news, there are still outlets that do their best to be objective, and this president is doing a lot of damage by discrediting them. I believe that as long as you do your own research into the nature of a particular news outlet, you can accurately ascertain the credibility of that source, but with what the president is doing, his millions of followers have trapped themselves in echo chambers where no headlines that they don't like are present. I myself try to expose myself to both sides of any story that I come across because that's just it; there are always two sides. Ignoring that because Trump has declared the headline "fake news" is incredibly harmful to society and it needs to stop.