“Fake news,” broadly defined as false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news, is frequently asserted to be pervasive online with serious consequences for democracy. Using a unique multimode dataset that comprises a nationally representative sample of mobile, desktop, and television consumption, we refute this conventional wisdom on three levels. First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online. Third, fake news comprises only 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. Our results suggest that the origins of public misinformedness and polarization are more likely to lie in the content of ordinary news or the avoidance of news altogether as they are in overt fakery.

“假新闻”被广泛定义为伪装成合法新闻的虚假或误导性信息，通常被认为在网上普遍存在，给民主带来了严重后果。我们使用包含全国代表性的移动，台式机和电视消费样本的独特多模数据集，在三个层面上反驳了这种传统观念。首先，任何形式的新闻消费都远远超过其他形式的媒体消费，占美国人日常媒体饮食的至多14.2％。其次，就美国人确实消费新闻的程度而言，它主要来自电视，而电视的消费量大约是在线新闻消费的五倍。第三，假新闻仅占美国人日常媒体饮食的0.15％。