"We find that exposure to talk about fake news may lower individuals’ trust in media and lead them to identify real news with less accuracy."

Their esteem of other people's IQ seems to be pretty low but they do have some points.

Priming and Fake News: The Effects of Elite Discourse on Evaluations of News Media

Permanent talk about fake news does more harm than the product itself. There you go. Live with it.

We explore how the prominence of talk about fake news has effects on overall media trust and the ability of the public to accurately distinguish between real and fake news. Second, we add to research on media skepticism (Tsfati & Cappella, 2003) by offering causal evidence of the relationship between exposure and overall media trust. Finally, we offer evidence that accurately identifying news as real or fake may not be explained by ideology like other priming effects (Watts et al., 1999). Our findings suggest that discourse about fake news may be doing more harm than exposure to fake news itself.

Those believing to be in the know are probably less so.

Individuals primed with elite discourse about fake news identified real news with less accuracy than those who were not primed (H1b). As expected, political knowledge related to accurate identification of real news, where the more knowledgeable were more accurate than the less knowledgeable. Neither of these findings were true for the identification of fake news. 

Then take into account the extreme form of "media nihilism".

Considering that our results differ from media skepticism associated with political ideology, it is possible that the phenomenon exhibited here is an extreme skepticism that impedes one’s ability to identify truth, what we call “media nihilism.” Beyond media skepticism that questions the fairness of both fake and real news, media nihilism is a skewed perception ofnews media that assumes falsehood even in the face of truth. Our data reflect this skewed skepticism of real news after exposure to elite discourse about fake news. Taken together, findings suggest that the prominence of fake news in elite discourse is problematic for democracy. As fake news continues to be a point of elite attention, it becomes a more prominent standard for the evaluation of news media as a whole. These results have practical implications for how fake news is discussed publicly. Although elites may have good intentions in drawing public attention to the issue of fake news and misinformation more generally, this may highlight a minimal problem at a great expense. When discussing fake news, it may be important to provide context to qualify the extent to which it is actually present. Moreover, as news organizations look to distinguish themselves from fake news alternatives, they should do so with linguistic caution. Simply echoing the language of “fake news” may have a boomerang effect on the public’s trust in and evaluations of their own work.

More here

Funding was meager.

"This work was supported by the the Center for Media Engagement ($500)."