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"We should not overlook how awful this is," NiemanLab's Joshua Benton wrote. "A sitting member of Congress suing a news organization on clearly nonsense grounds to harass a free press."

That was on Monday, when Representative Devin Nunes filed a $150 million lawsuit against the McClatchy newspaper chain. He claimed a story in his district's newspaper, The Fresno Bee, defamed him. Nunes gave the scoop about the suit to Fox News, which led its home page with the story , treating the suit like something really serious. Sean Hannity brought Nunes on and celebrated the suit. You could almost hear Hannity's viewers at home at home saying, "Yeah, sue the fake news!"

The reality is... very different. Nunes is getting ridiculed for his legal filings, first against Twitter, now against McClatchy.

And the newspaper publisher isn't mincing words. McClatchy CEO Craig Forman sent a memo to the entire company on Tuesday reassuring staffers that "we will vigorously defend The Fresno Bee." And later in the day, in a detailed statement, the company said the suit "represents a baseless attack on local journalism and a free press," an unproductive distraction" and "a misuse of the judicial system."

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