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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鈥檚 a little concerning because they鈥檙e running for a job where the decisions involve trillions of dollars and the world鈥檚 most powerful military 鈥� and they went public with a story that turned out to be a neighborhood rumor.

I understand why they鈥檇 run with it. It鈥檚 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 鈥� who shared it with the 67 million people watching the debate.

When Erika was contacted by , she said she was very sorry about this, and didn鈥檛 mean for her post to go viral. But of course, it鈥檚 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 鈥� everybody acknowledges that 鈥� and Vance argued that if a made-up story helps to call attention to a real problem, it鈥檚 fair game.

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That鈥檚 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 鈥� you are playing with matches in a very dry forest.

Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on 成人X站 Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast聽here.