The Murdoku of the triple homicide in the swimming pool

It's summer; it's time for Calippos, for playing Uno, for towels on the grass and for solving Murdokus, that delicious mix between Cluedo and Sudoku. But my son Quim puts me on the trail of a beastly story. In the Italian town of Manarola, an eight-year-old boy playing in the pool with his six-year-old cousin, pushed him, while playing, until he drowned him. When the little one's father saw it, he submerged the other child until he killed him. And, when the older boy's father saw the scene, he fatally stabbed the other father. They report it in Marca, on Telecinco, in the Portal de Cádiz and in several other media... but not in any Italian ones. Suspicious, isn't it? In fact, the first news seems to be from a digital outlet in Castilla-La Mancha, 1,200 kilometers in a straight line from the alleged scene of the events, which should set off all alarms. The article, moreover, does not cite any source, beyond the misleading generic formulations such as “According to information confirmed so far” or “According to initial reports”. Let's see: confirmed by whom? By the police? By medical services? It's not stated anywhere. Nor is any proper name mentioned. Everything suggests that it is a fabricated news story by someone and that other media have reproduced it without taking the slightest trouble to check if it was true.

The problem with this practice is that it is unpunished: all those who published it will have billed their share of advertising for all the clicks obtained, and most readers will never know that the story was more toxic than a street vendor's mojito. And the few who detect it, I fear, will not ban the medium from their media diet because, in the end, they hook you with the next sensational story. Anyway, at least I've solved the Murdoku: the victim is the truth and it was murdered by the lazy journalist in the pool.