Simply put, the “fake news” hysteria is just that: hysteria. It’s a narrative being pushed by progressives to explain how Hillary Clinton could have possibly lost an election to Donald Trump. Rather than come to terms with the reality that Trump, flawed though he is, was more appealing to American voters than the scandal-plagued, corrupt crony Hillary Clinton, the media choose to cling to conspiracy theories that explain his win. That’s why liberal elites from Hillary Clinton and President Obama have joined fellow progressives in the media to call for people to “do something” about this problem.

This is not to say that “fake news” doesn’t exist. Of course it exists. It always has and it always will. But the idea that it’s a major problem requiring limits on expression is crazy. Even the stories claiming it’s big news show that it’s not. Pew Charitable Trusts followed their progressive marching orders and did a poll on the matter. They spun it as dramatically as they could: “Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion.”

But it actually showed that 84 percent of Americans are confident that they can detect fake news when they come across it. Their concerns about fake news are really concerns about the spread of false information — something that just as well describes mainstream media as sites that more overtly craft fake news.

To give just two examples, this week we saw that two stories pushed hard in many major media outlets were false. One was about a Santa holding a dying boy in his arms and one was about yet another hate crime hoax, this time from a Muslim New York woman. The supposedly respectable media find it very easy to spread completely false stories and unsubstantiated reports.