All of a sudden the Left is concerned about the dissemination of "fake news" (you know, those seemingly realistic articles that often flash across our Facebook newsfeed and which bear headlines like, "BREAKING: Trump Just Tapped Bill Clinton as Sec State"?). 

The irony, of course, is that essentially all of the "actual" reporting engaged in by members of the mainstream media is equally fake -- and best of all, they completely lack basic self-awareness about that well-established fact. 

Case in point: Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak has been lamenting the perils of so-called fake news while actually citing debunked news stories to support her attacks on Republicans.  

The Washington Examiner notes that Dvorak "dredged up the false charge that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin inspired a mass shooting in 2011 in Tucson" and continued to cite the baseless claim. Dvorak was citing a factually inaccurate article titled: "At a D.C. pizzeria, the dangers of fake news just got all too real."

The Examiner summarizes that article and explains how it was later debunked: 

On Sunday, an armed 28-year-old man, Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, N.C., marched into a D.C. pizzeria, pointed his rifle at restaurant employees and fired at least one round. Luckily, no one was hurt.

After Welch surrendered to the police, he reportedly told authorities he was "self-investigating" a conspiracy that the eatery quietly operated a child sex ring on the side. Bizarre theories alleging pizzerias act as fronts for some massive international child sex ring can be traced back to a thread that appeared first on the imageboard website 4Chan. The rumor was picked up later by the conspiracy theory website InfoWars.com, which then "reported" the story to a much larger audience.

After the incident, Dvorak complained that fake news stories carry grave repercussions, but as the Examiner astutely points out, she juxtaposed her complaint with the very debunked charge "that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helped inspire a mass shooting in 2011 in Tucson."

On those lines, Dvorak wrote:

Five years ago, it wasn't fake news but an equally careless use of words that helped incite an equally terrible burst of violence.

Supporters of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin put out a map with crosshairs targeting the districts of 20 House Democrats and urging folks: "Don't Retreat, Instead — RELOAD!"

Then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was on that map and criticized it as soon as it was posted online and her office was vandalized.[…]

On Jan. 8, 2011, the consequences were chilling: Jared Loughner showed up with a gun outside a Tucson supermarket where Giffords was greeting constituents and killed six people and injured 20 more, including Giffords.

The issue is that there is no evidence to support Dvorak's claim. 

"In fact, the gunman's obsession with Giffords dates back to at least 2007, before Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced Palin to the nation as his vice presidential nominee," the Examiner concludes. 

As usual, the Left's hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness knows no bounds.