Let’s talk about fake news.

I know, I know. I’m just as sick of that term as you are. We hear it constantly on our social media news feeds, on television, in newspaper stories.

But it continues to be a topic because the president chooses to call any news published or broadcast anywhere that disagrees with him or that doesn’t show him in the best light fake news.

We do have a lot of fake news out there, but it’s not what Trump is calling fake news.

Let’s take Facebook for example. A story showed up on my newsfeed on Saturday that claimed President Obama has no birth certificate and no Social Security number and Michelle Obama has a Social Security number that belongs to someone named Guadalupe Megndenez.

Seriously? I’m not making this up, folks, but somebody did.

Some website entrepreneur, meaning a guy or girl with a laptop and a GoDaddy account, made up a story — probably around pizza and beer with his or her buddies — and published it on their “friends of liberty” or some similarly-named website, knowing that lots of conspiracy theorists and those who love to hate everybody different from themselves would grab onto this salacious little tidbit and share it and share it and share it.

Those shares would then drive thousands of people to the entrepreneur’s website to read more of the made-up story. The entrepreneur then makes thousands of dollars off of the Google ad revenue because of all of the visitors to his or her website. All because the entrepreneur completely fabricated a story he or she knew lots of prejudiced people would believe true and spread it around to their small-minded friends.

That is fake news.

You know what else is fake news? Trump standing up at the strangest presidential press conference ever held in the world to date and claiming he won the presidency by the largest electoral college landslide in history. When he was challenged on that and presented with actually accurate numbers that prove, in fact, several other presidents — even recent ones — have won by a larger electoral margin, Trump simply dismissed it, saying, “Those are the numbers someone just gave me.”

If that’s the case, Trump should fire the “someone” who provided him with the numbers because they gave him false information. They caused him to provide the citizens of our nation — those who he is elected to represent and keep safe — with fake news.

What is not fake news are the reports of Trump campaign operatives and their contact with Russian officials during the election. That will become adundantly clear in coming days.

The truth does matter. Facts matter. And making reputable news outlets the enemy just because you don’t like to hear that truth does nothing but undermine our democracy.

Jan Griffey is editor of The Vicksburg Post. You may reach her at jan.griffey@vicksburgpost.com. Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication.