Given how tense things have been on the Korean peninsula lately, it would be hard to imagine how the perilous North Korean/American military standoff could get any more dangerous. And then a headline like this comes along: “U.S. Reroutes Warships Toward Korean Peninsula in Show of Force.”

Just to get everyone up to speed, here’s the story so far (in Star Wars opening scroll form, no less!):

The Korean peninsula is in crisis! The evil General Jong-un, angered by the Empire’s Foal Eagle, has threatened a “super mighty pre-emptive strike” against the forces of Emperor Trump. Grieving for his fallen grandfather, Jong-un displays his most fearsome papier-mâché weapons. Emperor Trump consorts with Grand Leader Xi of Planet ChiCpom, plying him with enchanted Mar-a-Lago cake and enticing him to join the Empire with a truce in the currency war. Then, word comes that the Emperor’s armada is bearing down on Korea…

That’s right, after a decade of disquiet over North Korea’s nuclear program (thanks, Donald Rumsfeld!), years of fears over rising defense budgets and military exercises and armament upgrades, months of melodrama over North Korea’s missile launches, and weeks of worry over North Korea’s annual military parade and South Korea’s political turmoil, the US decides to ratchet the mayhem up to eleven by sending a freaking armada into Korean waters!…

…Or at least that’s what we were told. By The New York Times, no less. And they’re the infallible, unimpeachable, venerable paper of record, so it must be true! As always, they were first out of the gates with their crack reporting on the fearsome armada: “The commander of American forces in the Pacific has ordered an aircraft carrier and several other warships toward the Korean Peninsula in a show of force by the Trump administration just days after North Korea tested another intermediate-range missile.”

There’s only one problem with that story: It was totally false. Completely wrong. Fake news.

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