A Phony Story About Ducks

While fact-checkers descend on Ohio, a brief reminder about a strange episode

The world is mad about ducks. Newspapers and fact-checking organizations are zeroing in on Springfield, Ohio, site of what the BBC calls a “baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets.” California congressman Eric Swallwell delivered an impressive rant at the House GOP for retweeting a “Trump will save the ducks” meme, and the unreliable news specter has been deemed scary enough for National Security Council spokesman John Kirby to decry a “dangerous… conspiracy theory.”

I’ll wait until ten million reporters finish the inevitable colonoscopy of the Springfield area to weigh in on that controversy, but it seemed an appropriate time to mention another fake news story about ducks that got less ink and aroused far less outrage, perhaps because it was attributed to the director of the CIA: