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The former lead failed to live up to the WP:LEAD guideline as a "an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents". It remains in the article as the new, "#Terminology" section, because it is a definition of the expression "Fake news". However, it says nothing about the United States, and does not summarize the contents of any part of the six major sections of the body. It's fine in a terminology section, but this leaves the article without a lead. This is a large article (probably too large, with 110k prose, 258k raw, well into WP:SIZESPLIT territory) and it deserves a lead of " four well-composed paragraphs" to summarize the current content.
As for adding a definition, there's nothing wrong with having a definition in the lead, which may be in the first sentence, but it's not always necessary. This may be one of those cases where it would be awkward to do so, and per MOS:REFERS and MOS:REDUNDANCY, we don't want a lead sentence like, "Fake news in the United States refers to fake news taking place in the United States of America" which is just an awkward attempt to force the article title into the first sentence, and in the end, that sentence doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, so it isn't a definition. It may be better to just introduce the topic in a natural way per MOS:LEADSENTENCE, and not include the bolded title in the first sentence at all. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:23, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would probably say "Fake news in the United States refers to news items which have been made up or substantially modified to fit someone's objective." The latest example, not in the article, are the news items relating to the war in Ukraine; i.e. Putin can no longer trust his advisers, Russia asked China for military help in the Ukraine etc. Apparently someone from 'the services' is to have admitted the fakeness to NBC. The objective was obviously to unsettle the Russian and Chinese leaderships. It is a classic example of how to launch some made up information to manipulate. The topic Ukrainian war of 2022 ought to get a paragraph. 2001:8003:A070:7F00:5B8:F6F5:31BE:F87C (talk) 02:25, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
