By co-opting the term to describe any negative media coverage, Trump helped other countries explain away atrocities

Since taking office Donald Trump has popularized the term fake news, using it to criticize unfavorable news in mainstream media, media organizations and on one occasion, even an individual person.

But since Trump brought it to public attention the term has also been borrowed by leaders of countries around the world – particularly those in charge of authoritarian regimes.

Although Trump has claimed he invented the phrase fake news, and boasted that it was “one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with”, the term existed before the president, when it was used to describe deliberately misleading and in some cases completely fabricated news stories.

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But by co-opting “fake news” to describe any form of negative media coverage, Trump has helped countries from Venezuela to Syria to Myanmar explain away atrocities and human rights abuses. Here are some examples.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicolas Maduro. Photograph: Marco Bello/Reuters

Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela

The Venezuelan government controls much of the country’s media and the country’s leaders have been criticized around the world for assaulting Venezuela’s democratic freedoms.

In July 2017 Maduro went on the attack in an interview with Russian propaganda arm RT. “Fake news” was his weapon.

“Venezuela is being exposed to bullying by the world media besieging [the country]. [They] spread lots of false versions, lots of lies. This is what we call ‘fake news’ today, isn’t it? The era of post-truth [has come],” Maduro told the RT broadcaster.

Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria

Assad has been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in modern history, and has forced six million people to flee their country.

In February an Amnesty International report said the Syrian government had killed at least 13,000 people in a military prison between 2011 and 2015. Assad disputed the report.

“You can forge anything these days,” Assad told Yahoo News. “We are living in a fake news era.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugee Muslims at Balukhali refugee camp, 50km from, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh on Wednesday. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP

Myanmar state government

The country has been accused of “ethnic cleansing” over its assault on the Rohingya population. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine State, on the west coast of Myanmar, and the country’s military has been accused of killings, mass rape and arson.

Rakhine state has borrowed Trump’s language to refute the allegations.

“There is no such thing as Rohingya,” the New York Times reported U Kyaw San Hla, an officer in Rakhine’s state security ministry, as saying in December. “It is fake news.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lawyer Xie Yang who has been detained by Chinese authorities as part of a crack down on human rights. Photograph: Supplied

Chinese state media

Known for its restrictive approach to press freedom, in March 2017 the Chinese government borrowed Trump’s term to dispute claims by a Chinese rights activist that police had tortured another activist.

“The stories are essentially fake news,” the Xinhua news agency, which is run by the Chinese state, said in an English-language article.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russia’s foreign ministry building in Moscow. Photograph: Pressphotos/Getty Images

Russian foreign ministry

The website of the foreign ministry has a whole section it uses to discredit news reports. Those reports are mostly by western news outlets, including CBS, CNN, and the Washington Post.

The ministry superimposes a large red “fake” logo over screen shots of those reports, in its own interpretation of Trump’s fake news language.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alfonso Dastis. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis

Hundreds of people were injured in Catalonia in October, when Spanish police raided polling stations in attempt to prevent Catalonia’s independence referendum taking place. Videos showed police kicking people attempting to vote and striking them with batons.

Dastis’s response: “I am not saying that all are fake pictures, but some of them are and there have been a lot of alternative facts and fake news.”