Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a Dec. 15 rally in Hershey, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

My previous column about fake news generated some great questions from readers. Today, I'll answer a few.

Q: What do you mean by "fake news"?

I am not talking about subtle questions of opinion or interpretation, but blatant, wholly invented falsehoods. The Pope allegedly endorsing Donald Trump, say, or Hillary Clinton allegedly molesting children in a network of tunnels below a Washington pizza joint. There were many problems with election news; fakery was just one of them.

Q: Who's to determine what news is "fake"?

Each citizen, based on the authority behind the news report. A well-sourced story from an established and credible news organization deserves to be taken seriously. A vague and unsourced tale from a fake news organization like the Denver Guardian does not. Unsupported claims by political candidates are propaganda, until proven otherwise.

Fact-checking sites can help. See Snopes.com, politifact.com and factcheck.org.

Q: Do the facts really matter?

A surrogate for Donald Trump recently said there's "no such thing anymore, unfortunately, of [sic] facts." She noted that many of Trump's supporters believe whatever he says.

In some purely political matters, perceptions can matter more than reality. If Trump convinces enough voters that Hillary Clinton should be locked up, whether he means it or not, then the fact that the FBI said otherwise doesn't matter.

In the real world, though, facts rule. George W. Bush may have invaded Iraq believing we would be greeted as liberators, but our soldiers had to cope with car bombs. Ronald Reagan may have believed he could cut taxes and increase tax revenue, but future generations had to cope with his 186 percent increase in the federal debt.

Q: How much did the mainstream media's failings contribute to the rise of fake news?

A: Cable television contributed to the problem early on, by handing Donald Trump the microphone and letting him spout so many uncontested falsehoods. The ugly, uninformed tenor of much broadcast politics - talk radio included - also confuses bluster and bullying with truth. Policy and issue coverage got only 8 percent of all TV air time during the political conventions; candidates' qualifications got only 3 percent.

The big national newspapers and The Associated Press did a good job of fact checking and vetting candidates, from Trump's business issues to Clinton's private e-mail server. For "print" readers, on paper or online, the facts were available to those who looked for them. But they had to look pretty hard; many reports lacked proper context. And one could argue that the national press spent too much time on some stories and not enough on others.

The big new mainstream force in this campaign was social media. Platforms like Facebook spread and amplified fake news. They're only now beginning to address that problem.

Q: What was the biggest problem with The Plain Dealer's coverage?

I wish we had done a better job for the past several years of exploring the forces that have disrupted the lives of people in northeast Ohio. This fall, we tried to illustrate some of these things through stories about the struggle to keep steel in Cleveland, the lives of refugees here, and efforts to reduce violence among young people. We need to look such issues more consistently and more deeply. Absent honest discussion of these problems, communities are vulnerable to simplistic solutions and scapegoating.

Q: Are both political parties equally responsible for the public's susceptibility to fake news?

Since the problem lies in our bias for news that agrees with us, it happens on all sides. This past election, it happened more among Trump supporters.

That's partly a reflection of the candidates. Every credible fact checking operation this year found that Donald Trump told far more blatant falsehoods than any of his opponents. As of early December, The Washington Post's Fact Checker had given its Four Pinocchio rating to 63 of Trump's statements, versus seven of Clinton's. Politifact gave its "Pants on Fire" rating to 61 of Trump's claims, versus seven of Clinton's.

Trump was uniquely and publicly hostile to journalists, calling them scum, slime, disgusting, and "the most dishonest people you'll ever see."

Unsurprisingly, Republican faith in the news media plummeted during the campaign cycle, while Democrats' trust levels barely changed. This may explain why Macedonian teenagers, seeking to maximize profits by creating fake news, chose to fool Trump supporters.

Conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes recently reflected on this. Over the years, he said, conservative media sought to delegitimize journalism entirely - to fire the referees.

"That left a void that we conservatives failed to fill," he said. "For years, we ignored the birthers, the racists, the truthers and other conspiracy theorists who indulged fantasies of Mr. Obama's secret Muslim plot to subvert Christendom, or who peddled baseless tales of Mrs. Clinton's murder victims. Rather than confront the purveyors of such disinformation, we changed the channel because, after all, they were our allies, whose quirks could be allowed or at least ignored. We destroyed our own immunity to fake news, while empowering the worst and most reckless voices on the right."