In what is good news for those who make a living out of edited, curated and fact-checked journalism, two-thirds of the respondents to a new Pew Research Center survey say fake news stories cause a lot of confusion about the basic facts of current events.
Fake news has been in the real news of late after the spreading of a fake story about a Washington, D.C., pizzeria led to a shooting and the dismissal of a Donald Trump advisor.
The survey, which was conducted among 1,002 adults, revealed that about a quarter of those respondents (24%) had shared a made-up news story, with 14% of those saying they knew it was fake when they did so.
And while most have concerns, a majority feel they are pretty good at identifying fabricated stories.
The survey found that 39% feel "very confident" they can spot the fakes, with 45% saying they were "somewhat confident."
The phone survey was conducted Dec. 1-4 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
