If you're looking for insights into the basics of fake news, you won't get it from those in the entrenched media. They are willfully blind to their own complicity in fake news, because it makes money too. In fact, fake news often sells better than the truth on balance. Which is why the media is so quick to repeat unsubstantiated and even dubious information. "The Russians hacked the election!" Now that's a headline that sells. "FBI investigating election irregularities." Not so much.

Many decades ago, in several books on the subject, Noam Chomsky demonstrated how today's media is the willing handmaiden of government. Media abandoned its role- assuming it ever truly took it on- as the relentless adversary of the political class. It's so much easier, and much more profitable, to simply be the conduit through which the government's message flows.

Mr. Greenspon won't admit it, but you've been living in a world of fake news all your life, courtesy of the people he represents.