Oprah Winfrey condemned fake news and disinformation in a commencement speech to graduates of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on Friday, imploring students to conquer the “hysteria” that grips national politics and “strike down deceit” wherever they see it.
Winfrey deplored the ways the internet was being used to “erode trust in our institutions, enter fear in our elections and wreak havoc on our infrastructure” — a veiled swipe at Russia-linked propaganda and the social media platforms, like Facebook, on which it spread during the 2016 presidential election.
The modern digital ecosystem, Winfrey said, “enables misinformation to run rampant, attention spans to run short and false stories from phony sites to run circles around major news outlets.”
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