This is so far the best article on the subject.The whole article is considerably longer and deserves to be read.
Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group
Ben Norton/Glenn GreenwaldNovember 26 2016, 10:17 a.m
.THE WASHINGTON POST ON THURSDAY NIGHT promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by a new, anonymous website calling itself “PropOrNot,”which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.....The Post itself – now posing as warriors against “fake news” – published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that’s to say nothing of the paper’s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with Al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of “fake news” from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it. [bolding mine]
Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth which reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalistsSo the story spread in a flash, like wildfire.
Tens of thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions, consumed it, believing that it was true because of how many journalists and experts told them it was. Virtually none of the people who told them this spent a minute of time or ounce of energy determining if it was true. It pleased them to believe it was, knowing it advanced their interests, and so they endorsed it. That is the essence of how fake news functions, and it is the ultimate irony that this Post story ended up illustrating and spreading far more fake news than it exposed.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promot...
See also Max Blumenthal,
Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants
http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-a...
Journalists Denounce WaPo Fake News Blacklist as Red Scare Redux
"Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty." byLauren McCauley, staff writer
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/28/journalists-denounce-wapo-fa...
The “fake news” theme has captivated The Washington Post and the mainstream U.S. media so much that it is stooping to McCarthyistic smears against news outlets that don’t toe the State Department’s propaganda line,s Robert Parry.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/27/washington-posts-fake-news-guilt/
Confessions of an Alleged ‘Russian Propagandist’: A Pentagon Hit? by DAVE LINDORFF
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/28/confessions-of-an-alleged-russian...