The headline – School system will reduce lunch menus due to shutdown – evoked images of hungry children; I clicked and read: Vance County Schools’ reduced lunch menu will be one main dish, bread, two vegetables, one fruit and milk. What had been ‘reduced?’ There’d be no ice cream, no more bottled water and canned not fresh produce.

I’d walked into a trap. By clicking.

Evoking a picture of hungry children a newspaper had sold internet ads and, within minutes, the contagion had spread – the same headline popped up in cash-strapped newspapers from Raleigh to Charlotte and Winston-Salem, validating a suspicion: It’s not politics or just politics – greed drives fake news.