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Feds take down fake news queen

by Sidd Finch Staff Writer
| April 1, 2017 1:00 AM

COEUR d’ALENE — RIP, fake news. And long live the truth!

With the arrest Friday of a 36-year-old Coeur d’Alene journalist, the Fake News Movement suffered a devastating blow, sources in Homeland Security confirmed.

“We have been monitoring this enemy of the American people for 14 years,” spokesman Glitz Gropnik said. “Today’s arrest signals a high-water mark for freedom.”

Gropnik said authorities apprehended reporter April Fuhl in the newsroom of the Coeur d’Alene Press at 5:13 p.m. Friday. Fuhl reportedly was being flown directly to Guantanamo Bay for “further questioning,” Gropnik said with a wink and a snicker.

One of the least productive reporters in U.S. history, Fuhl wrote just one story a year for The Press. However, they were doozies: Discovering a tree that sprouted money out on the Rathdrum Prairie; digging a hole to China at McEuen Park; disclosing Barack Obama’s plan to replace tap water with wine to ease the pain of the Great Recession; and many others.

Shockingly, the stories were all fake.

“Our investigation shows that Ms. Fuhl started the Fake News Movement, which then was imitated and perpetuated by The New York Times and Washington Post,” Gropnik said. “But her stories were so convincing. We had agents out on the prairie for six years, looking for that dang tree.”

A little-known federal grant rewarding communities for the capture of fake news purveyors is being applied immediately. According to Seymour Munny of the feds’ Fake Newsbusters Bureau, every Coeur d’Alene-area resident is entitled to $401 and an official Sean Spicer-autographed Super Soaker. To pick up your money and squirt gun by 5 p.m. today, go to

See FAKE, A9