In the wake of Obama’s too-little-too-late retaliation against Russia, CNN and other outlets ran this story:

Russian authorities order closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow in response to sanctions, US official says https://t.co/AXy3A1o1cB pic.twitter.com/bcvP13xs1W

— CNN International (@cnni) December 30, 2016

And others picked it up:

#Russian authorities order closure of Anglo-American School in Moscow https://t.co/5gcwkoMN4r pic.twitter.com/4HtxsDvCPc

— WTKR News 3 (@WTKR3) December 30, 2016

So @BarackObama kicks out a bunch of spies, and Russia/Putin retaliate by kicking out a bunch of kids, closing Moscow Anglo-American School

— Matt Gutman (@mattgutmanABC) December 30, 2016

“Russian authorities on Thursday announced the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow” https://t.co/4OhmYxtZI4

— Adam K Olson (@adamkolson) December 30, 2016

There are hundreds more like it.

The only problem is that the story is total bullsh**. From the school’s Facebook page:

The Russian foreign ministry is denying the story while the US embassy in Moscow, according to various reports, is refusing to comment.

The story, however, clearly originates with the single anonymous source in CNN’s article. There was no apparent effort made to contact the Russian government or the school for comment. Just an anonymous source. A source that, as it turns out, was not much of a source.

This story took off on both Twitter and Facebook. As best I can determine, CNN has not been sanctioned for fake news. We can be damned sure that none of the “fact checkers” are going to pay any attention to this because this story fits a nice narrative that they want to build: Obama=good; Russia=stupid+evil. (Just a note here, I don’t disagree with the “evil” part of the equation). It serves as a cautionary tale for the new media world where an unelected, self-annointed body of Democrat and socialist apparatchiks are going to be deciding what is real and what is fake.