In the days following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the New York Post's coverage repeatedly cast transgender people as central to the violence, leaning on anonymous sources and unverified leaks from law enforcement, some of which Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and investigators have since contradicted. The effect has been to paint a target on a community already living under intensifying political scrutiny and cultural hostility.
Talk about fake news: In 1907 a New York Times banner headline declared, "There Is Life On the Planet Mars." Upping the ante the next year, the stodgy Wall Street Journal claimed "proof" of "conscious, intelligent human life" on our red neighbor. The idea of life on other planets had been orbiting the public imagination ever since the realization that the Earth wasn't alone in the solar system.