WHAT IS THIS? Looking for real news coverage of crisis pregnancy centers? This isn't it ...

If you have been around newsrooms for several decades, especially after the arrival of the Internet, you know that Donald Trump didn’t invent the term “fake news.” Yes, he grabbed it and ran with it. Big time.

Basically, what Orange Man Bad wanted was news coverage that praised all things Trump and, whenever possible, attacked his enemies. This is the flip side of mainstream news offerings that conservatives criticized during the whole Barack “The One” Obama era, when some press people had a thrill-up-the-leg or messiah-esque approach to news.

This preach-to-the-choir ethos is, I believe, one form of “fake news” and I started hearing journalists expressing concerns about it back in the 1980s. Journalists also, as newspaper economics soured, began worrying out loud about news coverage of powerful businesses that resembled cheerleading for the home team. Many feared the line between news and public-relations was in danger.

Then there was the whole “news you can use” phenomenon. The idea is that newsrooms need to offer “news” that is, in reality, offers handy, cheerful, useful, positive guides to local services and worthy causes.

With all of that as a backdrop, let’s look at a recent headline in The Olympian, a mainstream McClatchy chain newspaper up in the deep-blue Pacific Northwest: “Anti-abortion ‘fake clinics’ exist throughout WA. Here’s what they are and how to spot them.”

Read this article and then ask: WHAT IS THIS?

While the scare quotes around ‘fake clinics’ provide a smidgen of editorial distancing, it’s clear — if you look at the sources for this article — that the newspaper is cheering for the pro-abortion-rights activists who are using that term.

But first, WHAT IS THIS? Here is what this article is NOT. It is not an editorial. It is not an opinion column. It is not even a news “analysis” feature.

I would argue that this is a “news you can use” feature for readers who want to attack — that word can be used in several ways — religious and nonprofit groups opposed to abortion and, in particular, crisis pregnancy centers. If you have scanned small headlines deep inside mainstream news outlets, you may know that some of these centers, and the churches that support them, have recently experienced vandalism and even arson.

Although I just moved to Washington state a year ago, I was unaware it is the only state in the country that mandates pharmacists to supply medicines they are opposed to on religious grounds. All other states have some sort of right of refusal for pharmacists.

Then along came Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman, a case involving an Olympia, Wash.-based pharmacy that objected to a state law mandating it sell certain forms of emergency contraception. The Tacoma News Tribune describes the background here.

Here is what CNN wrote about the latest Supreme Court action on this case:

Washington (CNN) -- Over the dissent of three conservative justices who expressed concern for the future of religious liberty claims, the Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a case brought by the owner of a pharmacy and two pharmacists who objected to delivering emergency contraceptives such as Plan B.

The plaintiffs in the case, the Stormans family, sought to challenge Washington State regulation mandating that a pharmacy may not "refuse to deliver a drug or device to a patient because its owner objects to delivery on religious, moral or other personal grounds."

The Stormans are devout Christians and own a pharmacy in Olympia, Washington.

A federal appeals court held that the Washington regulations did not violate the First Amendment.