Fake news: It isn't fair, it isn't right

These aren't "news," in that they've been sitting on the desktop for a while and I'm trying to get things cleaned up for a new semester, but they're a part of the spectrum that we need to not overlook amid the broader discussion of news and faking it. That's the Washington Post above, from Jan. 18, 2016,* and the Washington Times, below, from July 9.

The Times has slightly the worse of it, both on general suckerhood and on syntax:

If luck be a lady tonight in the $540 million Mega Millions lottery, she very well could appear at the Tenley Market on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest Washington.


And then again, she might not. But the larger problem is that some of the most dangerous forms of fake news are self-inflicted. The lottery story is a persistent example. It's not a partisan affliction, and the Russians aren't pumping it into our water supply to sap our precious bodily fluids. News organizations do it to themselves, and they're the ones who can stop doing it to themselves. File with Bigfoot; tell him his poetry smells and kick him downstairs.

* Yes I'm aware that the URL and the online hed both say "Sorry, Powerball dreamers: There’s no such thing as a ‘lucky store.'" Let us know how you inferred that from the 1A "numbers don't lie" play, OK?