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In the first paragraph under the side-heading "I know nothing", the above article states, presumably ironically: "And as an aside, it’s always nice to see journalism attacked as fake news these days." This is after mentioning that an MP had told a constituent that the Gazette had not corroborated its previous story with the Department for Education, as the MP alleged that he had done, when in fact the Gazette had had an email exchange with the Department for Education, and this exchange provided evidence for the Gazette's story.

This illustrates the problem with trying to make "fake news" something with legal consequences, such as holding social media companies to account, for example, for any "fake news" they allow to be published on their websites. Who decides what news or information is fake? Inevitably, it will be the government of the day, or some body appointed by it. Will the government be an impartial seeker after truth? I don't need to answer that one.

Once "fake news" is made into something with legal consequences, you effectively have a "Ministry of Truth" that will decide what version of reality (or otherwise) is allowed to be disseminated, and that will have power to ban any other version.

It is surprising that so many people are so easily persuaded that this would be a good thing, and that the UK can still be a free country (compared, say, with Russia) with such a regime in place.