“Is this thing on?” said the microphone.

There’s a lot of talk about fake news these days, especially from current president of the United States himself dictator wannabe, Donald “Dumb Dork Dodo Fuck Dork” Trump. It begs the question, what is fake news? If we are to believe and agree with Trump’s definition, which is never a good idea, it is any news source that disagrees with his point of view. To put things in perspective, any news Hitler didn’t write was fake news back in the day.

Here is a reasonable definition: Fake news is like fake jewelry or costume jewelry. From far away it looks like real jewelry, but on closer inspection, it just ain’t. But if enough people can convince you it’s real, then who knows? I would like to rename fake news, costume news, using the same conviction Rudy Giuliani used when he said, “Truth isn’t truth.”

News is the retelling of truth in order to inform. It is the who, what, where, why and how of a story. Anything else is editorial or The National Enquirer. With this, it is high time for the news outlets to be rated by some kind of editorial police. In the same way we have censors bleeping out profanity, we need censors to brand all this unbridled brain vomit. Any time the news transforms to opinion, a flashing red bar must appear indicating that it is an editorial stance. Let’s not kid ourselves; our society needs a watchdog, for we are stupid mindless sheep who can’t keep our eyes off our phones/computers. Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you, especially you, Tom.

I get it. 24-hour news is a thing that will never go away. If a news outlet can’t be responsible enough to clearly differentiate news from opinion, they do not deserve the right to carry the word news in their name, in the same way I cannot use the word Dr. in my name. For two days in the late ’70s, I was Dr. Sung Koo, but that was when I had a couple sheets of Mickey Mouse blotter, but that’s a serious digression.

In a perfect world, which this one clearly is not, every time a network fails to clearly identify editorial content, they will lose that specific amount of airtime, and be forced to donate that time to an unbiased public service announcement.

Here are some words straight from the horse’s mouth, and yes, I’m insulting horses and maybe mouths too, by citing Sean Hannity of Fox News. On December 2017, Hannity said, “I’m a journalist. But I’m an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.” This is admission to being fake news.

By the way, check out Sean Hannity’s Wikipedia® page. The only time news is mentioned is in association with Fox News®, and never directly with Hannity. SPOILER ALERT: Hannity is a racist.