A panic is sweeping the land – or at least something like it has unnerved CNN, Vox, and other precincts of progressive sensibility. They are alarmed that millions of Americans are being misled by “fake news.”

As someone whose inbox has lately bulged with items about Hillary Clinton’s impending demise due to a concealed, terminal illness; who has shaken her head at “breaking news” that Turkish coup plotters had gotten their hands on NATO nuclear weapons at Incirlik air base; and who has sighed at the endless iterations of stories like the “47 Clinton friends who mysteriously turned up dead,” I don’t deny that misinformation, disinformation, rumors, and malicious gossip appear to have achieved new salience in the national conversation. I shun right-leaning publications and sites that traffic in this sort of drivel.

You know there’s a “but” coming, and here it is: The death of Fidel Castro reminds us that the respectable press, the “two-sources” press, the press that enforces standards and performs reality checks and practices “shoe leather” journalism and all that, has been peddling “fake news” about Cuba and Castro for 60 years.