What if I told you that the very first American newspaper told a fake story?
That the very first interview published in a newspaper was a fabrication?
The history of fake news in America is exactly as long as the history of news in America.
Fake stories are a problem to this very day. By fake I mean a story that’s either outright untrue or built around misrepresentations of what happened. The headline of the story will sizzle, but the steak will be overcooked.
So it was when I saw a story in the Detroit Free Press headlined, “Wrong turn at Ambassador Bridge exit leads to detention for Detroit immigrant mom, kids.”
Just from the Freep headline, you already knew what happened—they took that wrong exit at the bridge and got pulled into the Canada Vortex, never to return again.
But the headline oversold the story. And Mallory McMorrow, the Democrat state senator now running for the U.S. Senate, must not have read past the headline either.
McMorrow wrote: “Taking a wrong turn in Detroit and ending up in Canada is something that happens so frequently we all joke about it. That wrong turn with your kids on a trip to Costco shouldn’t land you in a cold detention center where your kid comes down with a fever.”
To anyone who lives in Metro Detroit, the Costco mention was a red flag. The only Costco off I-75 is on 13 Mile in Royal Oak. It’s not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from there to Southwest Detroit and the Ambassador Bridge. They’re in different area codes, literally and figuratively.
As the woman’s lawyer explained to the Freep’s Niraj Warikoo, she didn’t take a wrong turn into Canada at all. Canada was always her destination.
“But unfortunately, the GPS was leading them to Costco in Windsor, which is… as the crow flies, the closest Costco to where they were in southwest Detroit,” the lawyer said. “GPS doesn’t know that it’s not a good idea to go toward the bridge.”
Because the woman is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, who has no damn business being in America, she didn’t know the difference between America and Canada.
Look, I like Niraj. But I don’t like this story. Niraj knows better than to present a bad plan as a wrong turn. But he wrote the story in a way designed to draw maximum attention, even if the facts didn’t line up.
Journalism is about printing true stories. Not writing bait-and-switch headlines that make a sucker of the reader. The Free Press never had a story about a driver who took a wrong turn. But they said so anyway, trusting that most people wouldn’t actually read the story.
And in the case of Mallory McMorrow, they were right.
Is this the kind of person we want in America? Someone who comes over illegally and lacks the basic smarts and literacy needed to tell the difference between America and Canada? No, and in fact this is the kind person we elected Donald Trump to deport.
Is this the kind of news we want to read? Where the headline is a lie, and you have to read down to the 13th paragraph of a boring-ass story to learn the truth?
Is Mallory McMorrow the kind of senator we want? Someone who takes the side of the illegal alien? Someone who can’t be bothered to read the stories she amplifies? Someone who takes so little interest in the truth that they’ll say anything, if she thinks it moves a poll number?
In one headline and one share, we see why the Democrat-media alliance died last year. They’re building a home on sinking sand.
Our news and our politics in Michigan will need to get worse before they can get better. They haven’t hit bottom yet because they’ve paid no cost for telling lies.
But soon they will. And when they sink, we should feel no duty to save them.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
