Ross: With claims that Haitian migrants eat pets, fact-checking remains vital to debates

Over the weekend, after some fact-checking, the news shows did a deep analysis into why J.D. Vance and Donald Trump would spread a rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets and hunting geese.

It’s a little concerning because they’re running for a job where the decisions involve trillions of dollars and the world’s most powerful military – and they went public with a story that turned out to be a neighborhood rumor.

I understand why they’d run with it. It’s because some stories are just too good to fact-check. And sure enough, once fact-checking was done here, the story fell apart and became boring: It was based on fourth-hand information; pictures of a cat and geese from unrelated incidents.

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A site called “Newsguard RealityCheck” quickly traced the story to Springfield resident Erika Lee, who had heard it from an acquaintance of a friend of a neighbor and then posted it to a Facebook group called “Springfield Ohio Crime and Information.”

There it was picked up by a conservative influencer, and then by J.D. Vance, then Trump – who shared it with the 67 million people watching the debate.

When Erika was contacted by NBC News, she said she was very sorry about this, and didn’t mean for her post to go viral. But of course, it’s too late.

The lesson here is that all of us need to understand that in any heated political campaign, there are politicians who will believe anything we post if it helps their argument.

On the weekend talk shows, J.D. Vance was unapologetic, basically saying that whether the story was true or not, it reflected the very real concerns of his constituents about immigration, and so it would be wrong to suppress it.

Because there is an immigrant crisis in Springfield – everybody acknowledges that – and Vance argued that if a made-up story helps to call attention to a real problem, it’s fair game.

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That’s the reality of our information universe.

So I say to Erika Lee, and to everybody else out there spreading rumors, you are the mainstream media. The politicians are listening to you, not me. I know that fact-checking is a pain, and you are under no obligation to do the work, but just understand – you are playing with matches in a very dry forest.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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