Many years ago I visited the island of Patmos, where St John The Divine is supposed to have written the Book of Revelation. It was my first trip to Greece, and I knew not one word of the language upon arrival. While I was enjoying the luxury of a barber shop shave, I heard the guy in the next chair to mine point at the newspaper he had been reading and repeatedly refer to it by calling it "efimerída". A younger Greek man waiting his turn to be shaved, or clipped, asked me in impeccable English how I was enjoying his country. After giving a polite answer to that and a few more questions, I asked him if "efimerída" meant "newspaper" in Greek. He said it did. Then I asked, guessing wildly, if he knew whether "efimerída" was related to our English word "ephemeral". He said, in a parched tone that I subsequently learned was very Greek: "But yes, of course, you can tell by the sound."

My point is that if you think of the news, in whatever form it is conveyed, as ephemeral, and supplanted in our heads by something else within days, at most, the almost complete triviality of the stuff, 'fake' or not, relegates it to its place in the pecking order, which is obviously the bottom. Indeed, its place may even be under the bottom, although I don't personally feel the need to look for it there. Or, as the Brits like to remind us, newspapers are good only to wrap fish & chips, or flowers, by the day after they are published. I would add to that list their widespread use as insulation to fill the massive, uneven gaps at the bottom of Brit doors in the bloody cold and dank of an English winter. Journalists like to claim that they're writing 'the first draft of history' by mouthing whatever their corporate bosses tell them to mouth. Unfortunately, that turns out to be what 'fake news' actually is, par excellence: somebody's propaganda presented by a nice, shiny, but very cheap suit who likes to run his mouth. But since its ephemeral, who cares?