Skip to main content
Wednesday, November 11, 2026Nov 11
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Kennedy: The true part about fake news

A pedestrian passes newspapers on display with front pages featuring images of members of the royal family, outside a shop in London, Wednesday, March 10, 2021. In countries with historic ties to Britain, allegations by Prince Harry and Meghan about racism within the royal family have raised questions about whether those nations want to be closely connected to Britain anymore after the couple's interview with Oprah Winfrey. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
A pedestrian passes newspapers on display with front pages featuring images of members of the royal family, outside a shop in London, Wednesday, March 10, 2021. In countries with historic ties to Britain, allegations by Prince Harry and Meghan about racism within the royal family have raised questions about whether those nations want to be closely connected to Britain anymore after the couple's interview with Oprah Winfrey. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) A pedestrian passes newspapers on display with front pages featuring images of members of the royal family, outside a shop in London, Wednesday, March 10, 2021. In countries with historic ties to Britain, allegations by Prince Harry and Meghan about racism within the royal family have raised questions about whether those nations want to be closely connected to Britain anymore after the couple's interview with Oprah Winfrey. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

By Mark Kennedy 3 min read

I’ll tell you a little secret: Part of the news business is fake.

But it’s not the part you might think – the fact part. It’s the word part.

We reporters are expected to be experts on lots of stuff – which we are not. So we fake it. Not by making up facts or spreading lies. No, we fake it by using college-level words instead of everyday words.

We think uncommon words make us sound smarter, which is mildly dishonest.

I know this for a fact, because I am guilty of using stilted words, too. (See. Right there. Stilted is not a real-people word. Nobody in America ever said, “Hey Fred, will people think I’m stilted if I buy a John Deere front-end loader?”)