What is the Washington Post article "Fake news? That’s a very old story" about?

This article was written by Robert Parkinson, a historian of the American revolutionary era. Basically, it highlights the systematic attempts on the part of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many printers to influence American public opinion through spreading false information. This story was published in the context of the spread of "fake news" during the 2016 election, especially via Facebook. But Parkinson's point, which is essentially the argument of his recent book The Common Cause:...

This article was written by Robert Parkinson, a historian of the American revolutionary era. Basically, it highlights the systematic attempts on the part of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many printers to influence American public opinion through spreading false information. This story was published in the context of the spread of "fake news" during the 2016 election, especially via Facebook. But Parkinson's point, which is essentially the argument of his recent book The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution, has to do with the content of the "fake news" Franklin and his colleagues spread through American newspapers. They sought to mobilize support for the revolution by highlighting supposed massacres by Native Americans. These alleged massacres, it was reported, were encouraged and abetted by the British. By mobilizing anti-Indian sentiment, the revolutionaries created a group of people who were defined as enemies of the new United States. This encouraged violence against Native peoples. (He makes the same point about enslaved people and African Americans in general in his book.) He points out that today's fake news is, like that in the past, "about stirring up fear and passions" and about "who belongs to the republic and who does not." More broadly, he shows that throughout history, demonizing entire groups of people in the media has had terrible consequences.