Who started the expression "fake news"?

Solution 1:

The earliest example I could find is from 1890, in the Daily Tobacco Leaf-Chronicle from Tennesse; it is a headline:

TOO MUCH “FAKE” NEWS,
The Indian Situation Was Never So Grave as Reported.

There’s an example from the previous year uses the verb fake in to fake news, in The American Bookseller (emphasis mine in all quotes):

Mr. A. V. Philip is an enterprising Englishman who publishes a paper called "The Egyptian Gazette." Being, like many worthy British subjects, somewhat deficient in imagination, and lacking the ingenuity required to fake news, perhaps too being afflicted with a taste for literature, he brightened up the pages of his Gazette by republishing the latest feuilletons of the most popular French writers.

From then on fake news keeps appearing in the in the press across the US, and it is always about the press too. Here’s a couple of early examples from the 1890s. The first two may be related:

STILL THE CONTEMPT PILES ON.
The Verdict of the Press on Joseph Pulitzer and His Newspaper.
[…]
From the Chatham Courier.
THE SUN charges the World with manufacturing news in its own office purporting to be cable news of interviews with prominent scientists in Europe […]
Of all unfortunate and foolish things a newspaper may do, that of destroying public confidence in itself is most unfortunate and most foolish, And it can accomplish this end in no other way more quickly or more completely than in the matter of “fake” news.
(The Sun, New York, September 3, 1892.)

New York dailies would better sing lower about “fake” news, foreign or domestic. The most of them are no about using it at times, and with some of them the times come most almighty close together. (Democratic Northwest, Napoleon (Ohio), September 8, 1892.)

A bill has been introduced in the Connecticut Legislature providing for the punishment of persons who send “fake” news to newspapers. The evil complained of has grown to great proportions lately. Three or four centers of humbug Connecticut news send tales to New York papers and to Connecticut papers that will pay for such service.
(The Morning Call, San Francisco (Calif.), April 10, 1983.)

Google Ngram shows fake news has a long history, but the occasional occurrences prior to 1889 turn out to be false news. Fake news had a first period of relative popularity between the 1910s and the 1940s; and then it started growing again in the age of the internet, and exploded right after 2000. The Google Ngram goes until 2008 only, so not sure how it compares with present popularity.

Of course fake news is just a newer name for what was known before (and still is) as false news (Google Ngram):

An early example of first false news, in Calendar of State Papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II, 1672:

Proclamation forbidding the spreading of false news, and licentious talking on matters of State and government, many persons having lately assumed liberty, in coffee-houses and elsewhere, to defame the proceedings of State […]

Solution 2:

According to the website Source Watch, the catchphrase "fake news" became mainstream as a result of an article in TV Guide written by David Lieberman, and published, 22 February 1992.

A search of the Nexis media database indicates that the term was initially used more broadly. In May 1989 Adweek writer Barbara Lippert panned ads in which former newsreader Linda Ellerbee appeared "in a fake news setting" hustling Maxwell House coffee. In August that year Ad Day's Ed Buxton criticized the use of "the fake news bite" where reporters re-enacted news events as part of a news story. However, it was a cover article by David Lieberman titled "Fake News" in the February 1992 edition of TV Guide that popularized the term

(image)

A 1992 article from Z Magazine confirms

There is NO more wide-reaching print media message-bearer than TV Guide. The cover story, "Fake News," says not only did the government lie to pursue its Gulf War aims, the government and corporations lie regularly to pursue their aims, and do it with the connivance of the media so it appears that the lies are honest...

During the George W. Bush administration, 2001-2009, the expression reappeared in a 2005 article posted in PRWatch, run by the progressive watchdog organisation CMD. The author refers specifically to the 1992 Lieberman's article

Fake News? We Told You So, Ten Years Ago

MediaLink, a PR firm that distributed about half of the 4,000 VNRs [video news releases] made available to newscasters in 1991, conducted a survey of 92 newsrooms and found that all 92 used VNRs supplied free by PR firms and subtly slanted to sell a clients' products and ideas while appearing to be "real" TV news. On June 13, 1991, for example, the CBS Evening News ran a segment on the hazards of automatic safety belts. According to David Lieberman, author of a 1992 article titled "Fake News," the safety belt tape "was part of a 'video news release' created by ... a lobby group largely supported by lawyers."

In a 2006 report titled Disguised as News, John V. Pavlik, author and professor of Journalism and Media Studies in Rutgers University, denounced the use of abusive and deceitful VNRs. He claimed

Fake news has a long and inglorious history in the U.S. and around the world. Since at least the mid-1800s, showmen such as P.T. Barnum have staged for publicity purposes what historian Daniel Boorstin a century later dubbed “pseudo-events.” Perhaps the most potentially deceptive form of fake news, the video news release (VNRs), emerged in the 1980s as a video version of the traditional news or press release […]

“FakeNews,” a landmark article about VNRs, was published as a cover story in TV Guide on Feb. 22, 1992. Author David Lieberman argued that newscasters should not “pretend out of pride that what they broadcast is real news, instead of labeling it for what it is.” He added that “There’s a good chance that some of the news they [the public] see will be fake. Not that it’s necessarily inaccurate. Just that it was made to plug something else. And it’s something the PR community has grown skillful at providing.”

Then in the early 2000s, the phrase “fake news” began to be increasingly associated with the conservative Fox News cable channel. Launched in 1996, it was universally known (and derided) for being pro-Republican, and the epithet Faux News was employed by opponents.

Jon Stewart, the liberal comedian and presenter of The Daily Show, said “I do believe we need to go to a 24-hour fake news channel. Fox can't be the only fake news channel out there!” (4 August, 2003)

On 8 August, 2003, a user called Blah posted the following definition in Urban Dictionary

Faux News

A 24-hour neocon propaganda channel. Tonight on Faux, we bash a liberal traitor for disagreeing with Bush! Later, O'Reilly yells at the son of a 9/11 victim, but don't worry, because he's a DEMOCRAT!!11!

The liberal journalist and historian, Eric Alterman, wrote in April 19, 2007 an article entitled
The Real ‘Fake News’, condemning the conservative bias of Fox News, and its alleged fabrication of news.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report likely to be better informed than the average Fox News consumer. But the impact of Fox’s brand of fake news is not limited to its own viewers. When the hapless Katie Couric recently misreported that Barack Obama “grew up praying in a mosque,” she was parroting a discredited Fox report that had appeared three months earlier.

Shortly afterwards, the following entry for fake news was recorded in Urban Dictionary in 2008.

Typical coverage from Fox News. Their reporting contains so many exagerations, falsities, and interjected opinions, that it can in no way be considered proper and informative.

Naive Fool: I wanna find out what's going on in the world today, let's flip on Fox News.

Person Who's Not A Moron: Don't watch that crap, it's fake news, they're brainwash ya.

Naive Fool: Nah, it's on TV, it has to be true.

Today, what makes the derogative expression even more interesting is the switch in its political stance. Once an epithet of Fox News, today fake news has been tagged onto hoax news websites, FaceBook, and the left-wing cable news CNN.

If we compare the two search items, ‘Facebook fake news’ with ‘CNN fake news’ in the past twelve months (March 13, 2016-March 13, 2017), Google Trends produces the following graph

Why did the search term CNN fake news experience such a sharp increase around 14 January?

Three days earlier, the Republican Donald Trump, in his first press conference as President- elect, claimed Buzzfeed was “a failing piece of garbage” and told a CNN journalist “You are fake news”. At 5.00 the following morning, the newly-elected President tweeted:

We had a great News Conference at Trump Tower today. A couple of FAKE NEWS organizations were there but the people truly get what's going on— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017