Dear Editor: Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) said recently that “If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press.” He added that dictators “get started by suppressing free press.”

Given the seriousness of President Trump’s attacks on the press, it was very distressing to see the false equivalences presented in the Feb. 25 editorial “Fake News.”

When you accused journalists of stirring the pot, you should have given examples. Were you referring to stories about possible connections between the President and Russian officials, stories that Mr. Trump attacks as Fake News? Or something else?

The sentence, “‘Alternative truth’ is the product of “fake news” on both sides of the spectrum, from the White House and from the “Grey Lady,” is astounding. Fake News is hoax news, a deliberate attempt to perpetrate falsehoods and misinformation. What stories presented by the New York Times, or the Grey Lady as you call it, fit this definition?

PATRICIA KENNEY

Whitestone