Figure 1

Accuracy rating of real news minus fake news along pro-governmental versus anti-governmental orientation and news type on a representative sample. Based on a representative sample, conservative Hungarian pro-government respondents (green dots) rated fake news almost as accurate as real news on average, however, anti-government voters (orange dots) can distinguish real from fake news better. The left panel displays the means of discernment of pro-governmental news headlines, whereas the right panel displays anti-governmental news headlines in terms of mean real news minus mean fake news evaluations. The scores close to zero mean that the respondents evaluate fake news as correctly as real news, meaning they can hardly distinguish them from each other. Fake and real news were rated on four-point scales; therefore, media truth discernment ranged between − 4 and + 4. On this scale, pro-governmental respondents (green dots) had 0.03–0.1 mean differences between real and fake news headline evaluations, meaning they could hardly distinguish fake from real news headlines. The mean difference was 3.5–13 times larger among anti-government voters.